ASUS Post-Computex 2009 Press Event & Product Launch

Nice new products – shame about the price tags and the abandonment of Linux

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

On Thursday, June 25, 2009 the members of the press and other media were treated to the post-Computex press event and the launch of some new products by ASUS, which will soon be available in the UK, at the Lamborghini Showrooms opposite South Kensington Underground Station.

While the new products are very nice indeed – some of the really something to drool over – the price tags attached to them are, unfortunately, also are very steep.

Also, it is a great shame to see that the Netbooks, for which ASUS became known primarily in the UK and ASUS became synonymous with Netbook initially and others but followed, the true Netbooks and the usage of Linux, a far more superior OS for mobile computing, is basically being abandoned.

Everything is now just loaded with Microsoft Windows XP and Vista. Why? This is not progress. This is going backwards.

The reply to this question from members of the ASUS team that it is what people, that is to say, users want does not wash at all and it is a sign of bad marketing of Linux over MS Windows.

While there are indeed a few problems with Linux the Linux operating system in general is superior in most if not indeed all ways to Microsoft Windows and this not just in regards to security in that it is basically immune to viruses and such like.

I hate to suggest that there may be more behind the more or less total dumping odf Linux in the Eee PC Netbooks by ASUS than meets the eye but I am beginning to worry and wonder.

We sure know that the folks at Redmond would and indeed will do anything to ensure that Microsoft and Windows is the primary operating system in the world for personal computing and that Microsoft retains the monopoly here with the aim being to have only one viable operating system really.

The latest Eee PC, of which we have spoken before, the Seashell, though still a small enough size for a Netbook though, in my opinion, being the absolute maximum in size with a ten inch screen. However, this Eee PC comes with Windows XP and no Linux versions are available. This makes that Eee PC no longer viable and of interest for me as a user.

Yes, it is indeed possible for anyone to install any Linux distribution onto it, by means of an external CD/DVD drive (you'd have to have your own, as the Seashell, in the same as other Eee PCs, has no optical drives) but that is not what I would be looking for.

It is indeed as another journalist said at the event: It is a failure of the marketing section to not continue to “push” Linux. The version that is installed on the Eee PC in general, like my Eee PC 900, is a very nice and easy system that is extremely intuitive and easy for any new computer user.

Admittedly, mobile broadband dongles do not work on that Linux version – and only few work on Linux anyway. This is, however, not the problem of the developers; it is the fault of those that provide the mobile broadband services who seem to think that there is only Windows as an operating system for computers and hence do not make the dongles work with Linux. That is where the problem lies and mot with the operating system, regardless of whatever version of Linux.

While ASUS makes great products it is a shame to see them abandoning their own version of Linux that was the hallmark of the Eee PCs and which is that makes the Eee PC such a green machine too. Without Linux, in my opinion, it will lose that point; a point that seems to be lost at the company though.

© 2009
<>