First of all, I love my little Asus eee pc netbook, purchased recently on Craigslist for $100. A new $40 battery ($36.88 actually, including tax and delivery) and I’m good for up to 10 hours between charges. That’s amazingly good.
The machine is conveniently small with a 10 inch screen, built in wifi and web cam, speakers and microphone. Danica and I have had a Skype conversation, netbook to iPad, Works!
Here’s the kicker. It’s running the free Xubuntu (Linux) operating system. It connects me to the internet via wifi and does email. Browser and email apps are free and so are thousands of others. Word processing, photo editing, spreadsheets, no problem.
So why do people pay Microsoft for the privilege of running virus-plagued Windows? Until relatively recently, Linux wasn’t very user friendly. It has alwaon anys been very reliable and stable (most of the world wide web runs on Linux servers) but interfaces were geeky.
All that changed with the arrival of Ubuntu Linux and its many variations (called distros in Linuxspeak). Graphical interfaces are polished and easy to use. I can watch Flash videos on my netbook. Can’t do that on an iPad.
I wrote this post on my eee pc. The keyboard feels solid and well made. If I can just stop hitting the trackpad when I mean to hit the spacebar, I’ll be laughing.