On Dell E

Props to Dell, not sure about the name – rather reminiscent of the Asus Eee PC. Perhaps the plan is to bamboozle unsuspecting consumers into purchasing the Dell when they were looking for the Asus. There is no need – I have previously lauded the Asus Eee 1000 but now my affections are transferred to this little beauty.

Engadget has a rather crappy slideshow from Dell which gives us the lowdown. The Dell E It will have 1GB RAM and up to 16GB flash and run a choice of XP or Linux. I will buy one when they arrive. A shiny black one please Michael. Mmmmm.

On Ultramobile PCs

Hot on the heels of Asus announcing its Eee PC 1000, Dell has got in on the act by announcing its own UPMC. This is the beginning of the end of the traditional laptop. Nobody really needs desktop specs in a mobile device, what they need is portability. Asus has had the market to itself for a while (the HP 2133 is expensive and looks terrible so I ignore it) but now, finally a worthy opponent has arrived.

The Dell looks nice, very very nice. Maybe it is my penchant for all things ultramobile but this is what I have always wanted. A PC with a flash drive from which I can access the internet and occasionally use Word and Excel.

This has implications for Microsoft and Apple. The former has to decide whether it is going to develop a UMPC specific OS. It already has XP of course, the simple option would be to declare it the Microsoft UMPC OS and keep supporting it. Alternatively they could just acquire Splashtop.

This is not great news for Apple either. With the MacBook Air they have plumped for thin and expensive rather than small and cheap. Good design has allowed them to pursue this strategy in the past but others are now wising up to that idea. They need to get the shrunken MacBook out there. Fast.

On Asus Eee PC 1000

Well, I’ve pussyfooted around the issue without ever writing a post dedicated to Asus. So here it is. Gizmodo reports that the Asus Eee PC 1000 will be presented at Computex 2008 in Taipei.

It looks laavley! When they make a black one it will rule the world.

On Linux

Attitudes to Linux is one of the great dividing lines between technical and mainstream users. From what I read from Linux enthusiasts it is fantastic and Windows is terrible by comparison.

Now for programmers, using Linux to build out a back end is doubtless as fantastic as they say. I have no idea since I will never do this but for users trying to install a front end Linux is terrible. My only experience is with installing Ubuntu on an old laptop only to rip it out moments later. The problem was I couldn’t get anything to work, the wireless didn’t work, printer drivers didn’t work. Nothing. This may be down to my technical incompetence but Windows XP is much more usable. I have never used Vista, now having switched to Leopard.

The Ubuntu UI wasn’t too bad and I’m sure if it or some other Linux distribution had come pre-installed like on the Asus I would be fine with it. With more and more of my applications migrating to the browser I don’t really care about using Word or Excel when Open Office can open documents adequately enough. I think I’d probably have to keep a machine capable of running MS Office somewhere but my reliance on those programs is waning fast.

People are already starting to speculate about what is in Windows 7 but I think the Andreessen prophecy about the OS migrating to the web is finally coming true. About a decade too late to save Netscape but there you go.

This could be Linux’s time. If someone can reliably put out a stripped down, good looking Linux OS then the time could come when Windows finally has a worthy competitor. MS is scrambling to get into the UMPC market perhaps realising that simpler operating systems which can fit on smaller machines are the way of the future. This makes Microsoft far more vulnerable to a nimble competitor as its advantage lies in having thousands of programmers making an ever more complicated OS for ever more powerful machines.

If machines start getting simpler and less powerful because more is migrating to the web where does that leave MS? Turning round the super tanker takes a long time. Getting into the console market with the Xbox was a clever move to diversify but making up all the lost revenues from its core business will be a hard task.