PC World now selling the Eee

Just received this from Jah- “PC World now has stocks of the Eee PC at £199.99 in the UK.  My local store in Farnborough only has white ones.” Link.

UPDATE- “As soon as I read this I ran to my nearest PC World (in Fulham, London). Well I am very disappointed, it is the usual PC World mess and incompetence:

1. The product is not on display.
2. You’re not allowed to look at it.
3. You can’t even see the box.
4. After I spent a good 10 minutes discussing with a sales assistant, he eventually and reluctantly agreed to go to storage to check the box: the one they sell is the basic model (2G, no webcam) for £200.

Although I really want one, I didn’t buy it because I want the one with 4G and webcam (+ I would prefer black). With some patience, you can get double the memory, an integrated webcam and the color you want for only £20 more!”

Asus Eee PC book style leather case

PDA Hut are offering £5 off any Eee PC Case ordered before or on 10th January 2008. Hand crafted in soft leather, this beautifully custom designed high quality case is designed to fit your Asus Eee PC securely.
- Contains 2 credit card slot and 4 memory card slots.
- Magnetic closer for ease of use.

- White stitching compliments the case perfectly and has magnetic closer for ease of use.

Please note, first stock of these is expected to arrive on 7th January, 2008. Place you order today, your Credit Card payment is not release until stock is dispatched.

Order today and receive £5 discount.
At checkout, in discount coupon field, please enter “asuseepeeoffer” without quotes. Offer ends 10th January, 2008. Offer subject to stock availability.

Eee PC competition on the horizon…

Everex has confirmed plans to ship a UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) with a 7-inch screen, similar to competitor Asus’s EEE PC. A source close to the company revealed that the device — codenamed “Cloudbook” — will ship with the Google Apps-oriented “gOS” Linux distribution early next year.

According to our anonymous source, the initial Cloudbook model will be powered by a Via C7 ULV processor clocked at 1.2GHz, and come with a 30GB hard drive. It will ship in mid-January in two models, one of which will have a 1.2MP webcam. In general, the hardware appears to closely resemble Via’s Nanobook design.

Preceding the Cloudbook’s mid-January launch, Everex plans to ship a “Developer” version equipped with a touchscreen, our source revealed. That version will come with gOS source code and toolchains, similar to the gOS development board. gOS is an Everex-sponsored Linux distribution optimized for use with Google Apps.

Everex itself officially confirmed the Cloudbook’s existence Tuesday, when a press release on another topic alluded to a “Cloudbook” UMPC with a 7-inch screen. Our source suggested that Everex would likely launch the Cloudbook at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the week of Jan. 7, with consumer availability as soon as Jan. 15.

The Developer edition will launch earlier — possibly on January first. It was originally scheduled for earlier release, but was reportedly delayed by short supplies in the market for 7-inch touchscreens… Full story at Linux Devices. Thanks to Luca.

New leather case for the Eee PC

CarryMobile has now released a new leather case for the Eee PC. I was on the phone today to a colleage who advised that another one will be released just after Christmas. Exclusive details on that coming soon.

Description:
Opens and closes with magnetic studs,for ease of use.
White stitch finishing,making this case look more beautiful.

With 4 Memory card slot.
With 1 Card Slot.

Cheap laptop as money maker

The dream of a laptop computer cheap enough to distribute to millions of poor children is finally coming true – but not quite in the way its backers imagined.

The nonprofit One Laptop Per Child Foundation of Cambridge, founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte, is struggling to lower the actual cost and increase the sales of its highly-touted “$100 laptop.” But two major electronics companies – Intel Corp. and Asus Computer International of Taiwan – have complicated the foundation’s job by introducing rival laptops that seek to deliver cheap computing to low-income youngsters, and make money, too…

Asus has begun to ring up sizable sales for its new mini-laptop, the Eee PC. The machine is being sold for $399 in the United States, but also will be sold for as little as $199 to school systems here and abroad. “Our idea is to provide computing access to children,” said Donald Leung, Asus product manager, “and to sustain our own company’s need, which is profit.”

Meanwhile, Libya and Nigeria have purchased nearly 170,000 of Intel’s Classmate PC mini-laptops, priced at $200 to $300. This year, Negroponte denounced Intel, saying it is distributing the Classmate below cost in a bid to undercut the One Laptop Per Child device. But Intel has stated it will make money in the long run as the machines create new markets in developing countries. “We’re not coming at this only as a philanthropic approach,” said Jeff Galinovsky, senior product line manager for the Classmate. “We’re in it for business reasons.”

Negroponte launched his program in 2005. Millions of his laptops were to be purchased by governments of developing countries, which in turn would give the machines to schoolchildren. The laptops cost almost $200 to make, but Negroponte said that with millions on order, manufacturing costs would plummet, driving the cost to $100 or even less.
But, so far, only Uruguay has signed onto the plan, and for just 100,000 laptops – a mere fraction of the 3 million machines the foundation had hoped foreign governments would order.

Walter Bender, the foundation’s president for software and content, said the slow pace of orders won’t keep it from achieving its goals. “We already have enough sales to bring the cost down,” Bender said. “The more sales we get, the more the costs will come down. There’s plenty of business out there for everybody.”

But last month, the foundation began appealing to individuals and charities, as well as governments, to begin buying machines. For $400, people can buy a laptop for themselves and have the foundation donate another unit to a poor child. Foundations and charities are being urged to buy hundreds or thousands of the machines for giveaways in developing countries.

“Having to require governments to buy in great bulk to achieve these economies of scale just hasn’t worked out,” said J.P. Gownder, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge.

The foundation has rejected the idea of selling its laptops as a retail product in affluent nations. But Asus executives believed there was a sizable market in rich countries for cheap, basic laptops.

“They’re selling like hotcakes,” Leung said. “We don’t have enough in stock to fulfill everybody’s demand at the moment.” Leung said that Asus is already making a small profit from sales of the Eee PC, and soon will release a $500 model with a larger screen, as well as two cheaper versions, selling for $349 and $299. Full story at The Boston Globe. Thanks to Luca.

QuickTip: Printing to PDF

I often find myself needing to print webpages, and one of the most convenient ways of doing so is to print them as PDF files. Now, as I’m sure you’ll be unsurprised to know, this is possible without too much effort on the EEE, but, you might like a bit of hand-holding whilst you set it up. So, I took mkrishnan’s guide on EEEuser.com, and added some of my own steps to prevent overwriting of previously-printed files. As such, if you want to be able to print to PDF, and have each output file assigned a unique prefix to the name so that you never need worry about accidentally overwriting existing documents, then this guide is for you…

1.) You will need a standard repository available for adept (your package manager), to allow you to install the necessary printing software. If you have not already done so, you can add extra repositories directly to the sources.list file. You can get the relevant software for this QuickTip from the default Xandros repository, so, what you’d need to do is:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And add the following line:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main

Then, save your changes (Ctl+O, then Enter), and exit (Ctl+X)

2.) Install cups-pdf from the repository

sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

3.) Now it’s installed, you need to configure it, so that it creates a virtual printer for you:

• In FireFox, open http://localhost:631/
• Select “Add printer”
• Enter some text into each of the three fields. You can enter anything you wish- I’ve just used “cups-pdf”, as it seemed neat. Select “Continue”
• From the drop-down list, select “Virtual Printer (PDF)”. Select “Continue”
• From the drop-down list, select “Postscript”. Select “Continue”
• You will only have one option on this screen, so, select it, and then select “Add Printer”

Now, you have installed a PDF printer- if you hit Ctl+P, you can print directly to PDF. The output file will be stored at /home/user/PDF. In order to change the settings to give each printout a unique identifier, you will need to edit the cups-pdf configuration file. If you wish to take a backup of the file first, which is good practice, type:

sudo cp /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf.bak

Now, edit the configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf

Look for the setting “Label”

Uncomment it, and change its value to “1″, so that the line reads

Label 1

Save the changes (Ctl+O), then exit (Ctl+X)

You should not need to restart cups for the changes to take effect, but, if you want to:

sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

In cups-pdf.conf, you can change output path etc if you should wish to do so.

Printing PDFs on your EEE… enjoy

Neil

Toys R Us

Whilst many online retailers are struggling to get hold of any EEE devices, it appears that the high-street (well, retail park) giant Toys R Us are in Asustek’s good books, as they seem to have regular stock of the EEE at the moment. On Friday, the store in Reading had four devices, and, on Saturday morning, they had ten in stock… well, nine, as my brother snapped up one of them after playing with mine. The Reading branch only had white models, but, apparently, other stores have black and silver available.

If you’re looking for an EEE in a hurry, your nearest Toys R Us might be the way forwards; reports also of machines in Asda stores, but, I haven’t been able to verify that myself.

One user of EEEuser.com has reported an issue whereby apparently Toys R Us have a no-refund policy on laptops, irrespective of whether the machine is faulty or not. I have not experienced this myself, and have no evidence that such a policy is indeed in force, but, if you buy one (from any retailer), and discover a fault, which is reported within a reasonable time of purchase, do not be afraid to insist on your rights as a consumer and ask for a refund, informing Trading Standards if any no-refund policy is evident.

Fingers crossed that you are able to get hold of one, and have no problems!

EEE 1Gb Internal Memory Upgrade

This 1Gb internal stick replaces the 256 or 512Mb memory card installed in the EEE for the maximum 1Gb System RAM. This is an SO-DIMM stick of memory @ 667Mhz.

This is a user-replaceable item (it can be installed in less than a minute). There is only one slot in the EEE for memory, max 1Gb.

Corsair Memory with lifetime warranty.

“You shalt learn the art of Linux” yet the inherently lazy bugger side of me says “ah..stuff it”

The comment in the title of this article rather sums up what some feel about the Eee and Murray over at Palm-Mac has posted his thoughts on this wonderful device. It does everything I want, but I don’t seem to have the time to use it to maximum potential. The full article is here.

“This cheapo laptop is garnering some interesting praise and useage. Shaun from PDA247 and the guys from jkontherun have been using them of late and seem very impressed. It’s odd though as they’re probably exactly the types that Asus are not trying to entice into the EEEPC experience yet it seems the opposite is happening.

There’s an interesting post at the aforemntioned 247 regarding the underlying operating system, in fact there have been several posted by Shaun over the past week or so, one likened it a little to the abandoned and late-lamented, well by me anyway, Foleo. I’d still be very interested in the Foleo now if the price point was reasonable, I’d pay £300 tops for it. I’d rather have one over the Asus anyday, not because I think it would have been a superior product, far from it, but rather because the Foleo would be used with an existing system, my palm treo, as opposed to starting out trying to learn a whole new one from scratch as is the case with Linux…”

Accessories that work with the Eee

Jaypoc has been compiling a list of accessories that work with the Eee over at Amazon. If you know of more, let us know…

Jaypoc says: “As I have recently purchased an ASUS EeePC, I have been investigating accessories and add-ons that could be utilized with this ultra-portable PC. If you have any recommendations for this list, let me know and I’ll add them. (I can be reached at jaypoc “at” gmail “dot” com.)”