OStatic

The new Asus Eee PCs, as reported in Laptop Magazine, will offer Intel's new Diamondville CPUs instead of the VIA chips they've been based on. That's sure to bring some speed and power consumption benefits.

I'm even happier to hear that the size of the display on the Eee PCs will increase to 8.9 inches from 7 inches, with 1024 x 600 resolution. That should take care of a major annoyance I've discovered with the Eee PC which is that you have to keep scrolling to the right because of the machine's tiny display and ultra-low resolution.

Among other details, Asus will be delivering some of the new systems in April, and a 12GB or 20GB model will be available with Xandros. Those will still have solid-state local storage, but Asus has gone on record saying that they may offer hard drives as an option--and I would take that option. Also, while the Eee PC's slick-looking white case is nice, the company will offer more colors and styles in coming months.

Hopefully, these systems will still be available in the $400 range, which is awfully cheap for a Wi-Fi-enabled, reasonably powerful laptop. A big catalog of open source software, including OpenOffice, several Google applications, Firefox, and more comes with these machines.

Also priced at $399, Everex's Linux-based Cloudbook laptops are worth a look. I haven't tried one of these yet, but they're based on VIA processors, and I would tend to prefer a system based on Intel's Diamondville chips.

I haven't found a consumer-focused Linux-based laptop that I would use as my primary machine yet, but for lightweight systems that I can write on and tote to meetings, some of these are looking great. If Asus can massage the display and local storage problems they've had, Linux laptops may become a hit with consumers.

Do you think these Linux laptops have a future? Would people be better off just slapping Ubuntu on an inexpensive system?

• linux
• laptops