ASUS Eee PC For Dummies

eee-pc-for-dummiesAbout a year after the launch of the first Asus Eee PC, we see the launch of the first widely available (although I have good reason to believe it won’t be the last) book about netbooks. ASUS Eee PC For Dummies is now available on Amazon for $16.49.

The book covers all the basics, with an introduction to Linux for people who aren’t familiar with the nuances of Linux and Xandros in particular. There’s also information about all the preloaded software, advice for extending your battery life, and tips for backing up and restoring data.

Honestly, a lot of this information is available online for free. But for $16.50, it might be nice to have it all in one place. The biggest problem with writing a book about a product that’s evolving as quickly as the Eee PC line of computers is that between the time you start writing and the time the book is release, the landscape changes dramatically. There are new models of Eee PCs and other netbooks on the market today, and there’s a ton of new software designed for the site. Fortunately, the publisher has put up a web site to accompany the book that features a few free bonus chapters including one on installing and using alternate Linux distributions.

via Eee PC.net

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Posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008, 1:13 pm by Brad Linder
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  • revoke
    Actually, this is the second book out on the Asus Eee PC. The first was "Using the Asus Eee PC" by Bill Lawrence. It was available back in September 2008 and focuses mainly on the original 701 and the 900/901 models. I only know of the book because one of my coworkers picked up the original 4GB Eee PC model for his son and got him the Lawrence book to go along with it. While the books do appear to cover much of the same ground, the Lawrence book does have some stranger inclusions -- such as, installing "Pupeee" or OpenSolaris on an Eee PC (which are certainly not the most common Linux distributions distro-hoppers have been loading on these things).
  • DougC3
    It's a little surprising that they started out with an EeePC-specific book rather than a general netbook book, since even the Acer Aspire One's single model has sold more units than all the dozens of EeePC models combined.

    But I'm not complaining--I really like EeePC's multi-model tactic and I think it's sappy for people to gripe about having too many things to choose from. Also I think owners of any netbook would profit from the general information in a book like this, and I'm old fashioned enough to still love to have my information in a book, even if it's mostly outdated when it hits the stands.

    It could be greatly enhanced if they use the web site to really offer updated material about new models and so forth.
  • Yeah, my guess is they started working on this book early this year,
    before it was clear that netbooks would really take off the way they
    did.

    Also, writing a more general netbook book is much more challenging. By
    the time you create chapters for the dozen most popular netbooks you
    have to wonder why anyone would buy a book with info on 11 machines
    they don't own... and of course the PC makers are just going to
    release updated versions in a few months and make your book obsolete.

    But it does look like this particular book does provide a decent
    overview of the Eee PC, and since it has a nice focus on the Asus
    version of Xandros, I could see it being useful for a lot of people
    who purchased various Eee PC models.
  • DougC3
    Yes, I guess a general book would need to be more of a buyer's guide, which would really be challenging with new models coming out all the time and old ones being dropped.
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