Elonex ONE Subnotebook Shows Right Path For Linux

davidmwilliams writes "Whether it was to your taste or not, there's no denying the ASUS Eee Linux subnotebook was a massive sales success. Demand far exceeded initial production so it's not surprising competitor models are on their way. Just like the Eee, the Elonex achieves cost savings by bundling freely redistributable open source software including, of course, the Linux operating system (specifically, Linos 2.6.21). Those who use the Elonex ONE may well understand it uses something called Linux under the hood, but they don't really have to grasp what this means. They don't have to care that the WiFi hardware was carefully chosen to be one of the exclusive few which has supported Linux drivers. They don't need to tamper with the way their family computer is already set up."

Year of the Linux Desktop!

[Leonard Fedorov]

"And hence, shall usher in the Year of the Linux Desktop..."

At least, thats what reading between the lines gave me. Your milage may differ.
Its a nice idea, but how many of things have said they've managed to bridge the gap?
I'm not holding my breath.

What market?

[grizdog]

They say they are targeting the education market, "every child should have a laptop", which is great, but isn't there a big market just as a thin interface/word processor? I can think of lots of people who don't play games, and wouldn't need any more than this to satisfy their computing needs, maybe with a bigger monitor at home, maybe not.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the years. It used to be that people who didn't like computers, but had to use them for a few things, avoided Linux like the plague. It may be that these very people are about to embrace it, if it gives them all they want.

Re:Linos...

[Vectronic]

Aslong as the proprietary only applies to distribution, im (somewhat) "ok" with it.

But if we start hearing about lawsuits and crap because some kid modded his Linos so he could do [whatever], this is not going to help "Linux". Because the articles "Bob Smith sentenced to a $1,000 fine for modding his Linos" just makes people scared of touching their OS.

Didn't Elonex Go Bust?

[Temeraire]

I thought Elonex (i.e. the north London PC makers we once bought from) went bust and were then bought from administration by someone else. Nothing wrong with that, except that New Elonex was reported in the press to be refusing to honour Old Elonex's warranties on the grounds that they were a different legal entity. Nothing illegal in that, but New Elonex's web site gives the impression of business continuity.
    Could we perhaps ask New Elonex to clarify this point? Are they as honourable a business as we would all like to believe? The world is a bit too full of dodgy phoenix companies for my liking.

Re:Hideous design anyone?

[Constantine XVI]

How many laptops have you seen rendered useless because the connection between the screen and the rest of the machine snapped? I can guarantee you this one won't be.

A solid company created distro could be the ticket

[rAiNsT0rm]

However, it won't be Elonex. Asus is my personal bet for the one company to take Linux to the true desktop. They have the advantage of being both hardware mfr. and Linux developers, they have great stuff from Apple using them as their vendor.

Linux has needed a single, unified, vision from the beginning to get past all o fthe choice/freedom crap and get on to a unified UI, a solid look and feel, and most importantly ONE of everything that is best in class and 100% working by default. Since the OSS community will never agree to do this, a company is my only hope (as sad as that is). I'm wishing ASUS nothing but luck.

Re:Didn't Elonex Go Bust?

[Dogtanian]

Well, since they bought the name, they probably want to benefit from the recognition of the old company, so they're not going to play up the fact that they're a legally different entity.

Brands are in truth increasingly meaningless these days. Take Polaroid for example. The original company went bankrupt a few years back, and the current "Polaroid" is a legally separate company that took over their business and the name. With the exception of film cameras (which they continued for a while, but I believe they've stopped doing now), almost all "Polaroid" products are made by third-party companies who've licensed the name and slapped it on some cheapass LCD TVs (or whatever) in an attempt to trade off the reputation of and goodwill towards the original Polaroid.

In other words, "Polaroid" is totally meaningless as a brand (in the traditional sense) nowadays.

What I don't understand is companies taking over names like "Time Computers". For those who don't know, Time are a UK company that's gone bankrupt and had its name bought at least twice, despite having a really manky reputation in all its incarnations. I guess that "brand recognition" has some value, no matter how bad the associations with that brand are.

Removable keyboard is nice

[emj]

Elonex has a removable keyboard [slashdot.org], even though the lack of touch screen makes it less usefull. I really want to have one of these with out keyboard, because of the small form factor the keyboard becomes alot more conspicuous.

I've been using small Laptops since 2000 and the keyboard has always been an issue. Sure 90% of the time it doesn't matter, but sometimes it really is helpful to remove the keyboard.

Re:Year of the Linux Desktop!

[H3g3m0n]

Personally I think it is fairly safe to consider this the year of the Linux desktop.

Several million EeePC's where shipped with Linux on them after all, and many other subnote books are planning too.

Then add into account the exponential Ubuntu user growth and the absolute suckage of Vista.

I'm not sure exactly what conditions are needed to be officially branded the year of the Linux desktop. Or are we expecting over %50 usage or some astronomical usage jump from %4 to %12 within months. Some kind of Linux singularity similar in concept to a technological singularity where the computers basically just start to install Linux themselves and it spreads virally?

Then again, perhaps this is just the year of the Linux laptop instead although for many the laptop is their desktop.

Re:Removable keyboard is nice

[hitmark]

while no touch screen, there is a nub and button on the back that makes it ideal for holding with the right or both hands and operate that way.

one finger on the nub, two others on the buttons.

No, this is the completely wrong path for linux

[NotZed]

Yes, lets hide all those 'nasty details', like GNU and Linux being Free Software.

You wouldn't want users knowing they are actually allowed to modify or copy all of the software with no cost or legal problems. Lets hide all those details for those silly overweight four-eye geek types to worry about.

Absolutely disgraceful.

Re:Yeah, that damn CPU- why all the secrecy?

[arivanov]

Thanks for the info. This sounds plausible as Elonex has a history of shipping Via based kit and hiding the bleeding obvious behind marketing bollocks.

This puts the One more or less in the right frame. Assuming this is C3, model 8 of C3 is a fairly low on the pecking order. Model 7 is classic Eden with no AES. Dunno what is model 8 is as I have only 8 and 10+ around the house, but it is likely to be more of an Eden than C7. 300MHz is lower than what is usually used for fanless Via Thin clients (400 for the HP based ones), but not entirely out of whack.

If it is Via at 300 MHz it can just about load a non-OO wordprocessor and be used as a general purpose typewriter, mp3 player and a note taking machine. By the time it has loaded a modern OpenOffice install you might as well go to the coffee shop and come back. Older Via CPUs need at least 1GHz to play MPEG2 video so this is out of the question as well. It will however have an excellent power consumption. I would not be surprised if it manages sub-3W for the CPU. If Via has fixed the errata for their DMA when changing CPU frequency it can also throttle even further to around 200 or less.

Overall, IMO this is probably too under-spec for a sublaptop. I would not buy it for that purpose. It is however a very reasonable spec for a machine to run specialised education software and/or a machine to run lab automation. In fact if I have to do lab automation again this looks like a perfect choice (with the splash-proof keyboard).

Oh, and this is definitely a linux only project. Even W2K will struggle on this one. 300MHz pre-P3-like CPU is too low for anything but linux.