Asus To Phase Out Sub-10" Eee PCs

jeevesbond writes "The Register reports that Asus president Jerry Shen has revealed his company will be phasing out all sub-10" Eee PCs. According to Shen, the 'standard' netbook next year will be a 10" model with a hard drive running XP. Shen also said XP is outselling GNU/Linux on netbooks by a ratio of 7:3. This is somewhat contrary to news from the UK earlier in the year that GNU/Linux units were out of stock while XP machines sat unsold. Are Brits more open-minded than the rest of the world when it comes to choosing an OS?"

XP outsells Linux, guess why

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I sat posting this on my XP-equipped EeePC 901. Why XP? Because I can't find the Linux version at any store around my area. Whenever I ask whether they'll offer the Linux versions, store managers invariably answer "we won't offer them, they won't sell, people are afraid of non-Windows machine". Can you say chicken and egg?

Oh and yes, and another thing, the Linux GUIs offered on netbooks are designed for retards. That's also perhaps geeks don't buy them. When I have a minute, I'll install Debian on mine, but even if I had managed to find the Linux Eee, I'd have zapped the original distro.

Of course XP is outselling Linux...

[padonak]

In my country, only XP models are available. All the retail networks here buy them from one or two importers, who only provide XP models.
That way, they can charge for them almost as much as for real laptops.
Wasn't this clear from the beginning, when they only started offering XP as a choice? Soon you won't be able to run Linux on them at all, not without tricks like ndiswrapper at least...

Re:Linux on Netbooks

[Yst]

Yes, in the Aspire One community, this has similarly become a common piece of advice: buy the XP model for its better battery; install Ubuntu.

I bought the Linux version partly for the sake of supporting the Linux product, and partly for the sake of the slightly lower price. But now I'm starting to kick myself, wishing I bought the XP version and installed Linux. It's kind of a Catch-22. The best Linux netbooks available have XP installed on them.

XP outsells Linux because...

[The Famous Druid]

...it's so hard to find a Linux one.

I searched the computer retailers of Melbourne for 3 weeks before I found one that had a Linux 901 in stock, and bought their last one.

Memo to the geniuses of retail: customers can't buy if you don't have stock.

Re:Linux on Netbooks

[mckillnm]

I bought a Dell Mini 9 a few days ago.. Bought the XP version.. ONLY for the increased HD capacity. XP is gone, Ubuntu is on, but I guess that will be chalked up as a XP sale. The small price difference probably means that I'll never try and send back the XP disk and look for a refund. Just my 0.5c worth!

Major Misquote by The Register.

[Odder]

He was not talking about sales, he was talking about preloads. Digitimes has the actual quote [digitimes.com]:

The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows XP and Linux stands at 7:3.

This contradicts common sense but not the fact that XP EEEPCs don't fly off shelves.

Re:XP outsells Linux, guess why

[mollymoo]

True, but you get a larger SSD with the Linux machines (20 GB vs 12 GB for the XP models).

I prefer the smaller sized netbooks

[gameguy1957]

Looks like their going to lose sales then. The schools I'm in charge of find the smaller ones better for the students. It's used as an appliance to type, print and for some web browsing. If we wanted a larger sized machine with a hard drive and XP then we'll just buy standard notebooks. If they give us no options in the size we want then we'll just buy several hundred of them from another manufacturer. -JM

Linux versions are hard to get in some countries

[Peter H.S.]

Where I live the Linux versions of the eeepc 901 are impossible to get, Asus simply refuses to release them. They give no reasons, but it is well known that MS have been very active in negotiating with vendors like Asus in trying to curb Linux version sales. It is interesting to note in this regard how MS has backed down on their "maximum 80GB hdd" for using MS-XP, since Asus are selling 120GB XP version of their eeepc's.

Anyway, I find it impressive that Linux sales amounts to a whopping 30% of the eeepc's.

--
Regards

Re:XP is closer to "just works" for most

[c6gunner]

That is just about the polar opposite of my experience. XP is showing its age because shoe-horning it onto an eeepc 901 was a horrible task. The installer is just dumb and can't handle anything but a CD-drive, which I don't have.

Sorry, that's wrong. I installed XP on my eeepc from a USB stick without any difficulty. Of course, since I have the old 7" model with a 2gb SSD, I spent quite a bit of time beforehand with nLite, ripping the guts out of XP. Making my flash drive bootable and then installing XP from it took very little time, in comparison.

If you're really having problems figuring out how to make XP install from a USB drive, you can skip the hassle of doing it manually by using the MultiBoot [boot-land.net] utility provided by the wonderful folks over at BootLand.

Re:cheap PC

[argiedot]

Not only is Qt under the GPL, you can also link to it if you use any of a whole bunch of licenses [trolltech.com].

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

The number wasn't one in four for linux machines being returned. It was that the Acer One model with linux on it was being returned 4x as often as the XP model. Asus claims the EEE return rates for Linux and XP are approximately the same. This is likely just because Acer picked a limp distribution.

Re:cheap PC

[RiotingPacifist]

Qt is not free to develop with? funny because it being under gpl says differently. Sure if your trying to make a proprietary product then you'll run into problems, but you can develop your program at zero cost, then either use a GPL compatible license for your product (nothing says you cant sell it) or pay for a license.

ubuntu-eee.com

[tepples]

Oh and yes, and another thing, the Linux GUIs offered on netbooks are designed for retards. That's also perhaps geeks don't buy them. When I have a minute, I'll install Debian on mine, but even if I had managed to find the Linux Eee, I'd have zapped the original distro.

Have you considered Ubuntu Eee [wikipedia.org], based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix?

Re:XP is closer to "just works" for most

[Ant P.]

For Linux to compete, it should aim at producing distributions that support as much hardware as XP

XP? You mean that OS with the sick joke installer that asks for a *FLOPPY DISK* to install to a SATA hard disk?

Re:Well "Works With Linux" is a feature to me

[TheModelEskimo]

>I decided to revitilize my grandparent's old Celeron 500 w/ 128MB of RAM with Xubuntu.

Ouch. I have a machine with those exact specs here, and there's no way on earth I would try Xubuntu on it. In my experience, Xubuntu is faster and lighter than the "normal" Ubuntu desktop, but it's not really a "legacy PC" distro to me. My normal choice for legacy PCs has been Puppy Linux, and it has *never,* *ever* let me down in that capacity. It's always fast, does a wonderful job supporting dialup modems, old video cards, and has "wizards" included that help you do common setup tasks.

It works well on modern machines, too; When I couldn't get Renoise working without JACK on my Ubuntu laptop due to high CPU use, I booted into Puppy and it ran fine.

In my experience, Xubuntu gets mentioned here a lot by people who have just heard of it, and not tried it.

With that said, the web is a different place now, with high demands. An afternoon's worth of footwork should net you a *much* better used machine for grandma and grandpa, for free or $10. Try Craigslist, local mailing lists, doctor's offices, etc.

Xubuntu requirements

[quenda]

"Once installed, Xubuntu can run with 192 MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 256 MB RAM."

http://www.xubuntu.org/get

ie wrong distro. Xubuntu is a medium-weight desktop. Not quite as bloated as gnome/KDE/Vista. Try DSL?

Not a stunt; easy to use

[Frankenbuffer]

Disclaimer: I'm the product marketing manager for the Xandros desktop that runs on the Eee PC.

I can assure you that this is not an MS stunt. At Xandros we've worked hard with Asus to make the Eee PC easy to use by non-techies. The simplified interface is easy to navigate on a small screen, apps downloaded through the Eee Download capability "just work" in a few clicks without enduring long download times or frequent updates, and there's good interop with Windows. Kids especially find the Eee PC fun and intuitive to use.

Obviously there's a strong techie interest in the platform as well, so I'm interested in the discussion here. Got some constructive suggestions about how you'd like to use your netbook? I'd love to hear them. You can email me at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com.

Thanks!

Jordan

Re:Well "Works With Linux" is a feature to me

[OSDever]

Just as a note for the future, your Ubuntu installation problem could well have been caused by the fact that flash media uses 1000 megabyte gigabytes, as opposed to the standard 1024 used by traditional hard drives. So, your 2GB was really 48MB short. Now, personally, if I was told that I could install an OS in 2GB, I would get a 3GB+ drive; if you have a 2GB drive and install 2GB of operating system on it, that doesn't leave you much room to actually use the OS...

Re:Well "Works With Linux" is a feature to me

[manekineko2]

There's a very large gap in usability between:
1. Googling on how to install language support, the most pertinent results all being forum posts, and having to enter in incantations on the command line to do it, and after spending several hours, still having it not work.
2. Going to Control Panel, selecting locality, add language and choosing my languages.

That is not "isn't Windows" that's "god this sucks". I understand this may be only a problem with the distro that came with the EeePC. That also doesn't change the fact that I'm not going to deal with this BS to use a tool and returned my EeePC.

Re:XP outsells Linux because...

[notknown86]

Umm, I live in Melbourne too, and I'm trying to buy one of the 901 EEE's. The Linux version is being re-ordered by the retailers. What you are saying is correct, but proverbial "signs in the store" actually are there.

The problem here is supply - not demand. Which is why I could buy an XP version today (where the supply exceeds the demand), but have to wait for the Linux version (where the demand exceeds the supply).

Re:REALLY lightweight Linux

[crwl]

No, 500 MHz is plenty for GNOME or KDE. You just want to have a lot more than 128 MB of memory. 512 MB would be ok.

The real bottom line

[j_w_d]

Setting the locale should be effectively all you have to do in any major Linux distro. The "control panel" isn't named that and isn't where it would be in XP. You set locality and languages. My daughter does this in linux with no difficulty, and has introduced me to some really good Russian rock music and musicians such as DDT and Zemfira. The real bottom line to running linux is simple willingness to spend time learning. I use XP at work, and linux primarily and XP secondarily at home. Ten years ago patience was not an option and linux was somewhat more arcane than Windows 98. At this time, IF you have equivalent experience with both OS's, any major linux distro is arguably going to be a quicker basic install and easier to maintain than XP. For one thing as far as maintenance goes there is no registry to get futzed up every month or so - my experience is that the registry getting gummed up is XP's chief reason for sluggishness. The sole upside that Windows has presently is the few really useful software pieces - such as Adobe Photoshop - that run natively in XP. I've heard the complaint that hardware support is a problem in linux, and again, ten years ago it was a pretty esoteric issue, what with editing printer drivers and such - but it often was something that could be dealt with using a text editor - I wrote a little access script for a usb microscope that worked for as long as I had the 'scope. These days, there is little to chose between linux and XP. In fact, for USB hardware that can be accessed as mass storage, linux is far easier. I don't need to add drivers to download photographs for instance, or to use a thumb drive. XP still seems to flinch and blink rapidly when ever new hardware appears and needs a driver before the hardware can be accessed. So, don't confuse the weight of your experience with Windows with 'ease of use,' it's an illusion. Your knowledge makes Windows easier and also makes linux _appear_ more difficult.