Here are a few interesting tidbits found on the web today:

OS X 10.6.2 probably will work on Atom-powered netbooks

The other day the blogosphere was aflutter with the news that OS X 10.6.2 seemed to kill support for the Intel Atom processor, which would mean that virtually every netbook on the market would be unable to run the upcoming version of Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system. Well, it turns out that the latest developer build brings back Atom support, so the crisis appears to be averted… or maybe it never really existed. Either way, this is good news.

via Gizmodo

Laptop Magazine celebrates the Eee PC’s 2nd birthday

I probably would have missed this one if Laptop Magazine didn’t remind me, but it was just over two years ago that Asus introduce the Eee PC 701, which was the first consumer-oriented netbook. I picked one up on day one and have never looked back.

At the time nobody was calling it a netbook. It was just a little computer with a 7 inch screen and a sub-$400 price tag. Two years later there are literally hundreds of tiny computers with 7 to 12 inch displays and low price tags that are in many ways direct descendants.

Those crazy kids at Laptop Magazine decided to throw a birthday party, complete with cake and party hates, just like they did last year.

And just for nostalgia’s sake, I’ll post my original unboxing video of the Eee PC 701 after the break. It’s the first unboxing video I ever posted to YouTube, and it also features the first cameo appearance from Laney the cat.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned yesterday, it was one year ago today that the first Eee PC was released in Taiwan. So the folks at Laptop Magazine (okay, really it was all Joanna’s idea, but she somehow convinced her coworkers to go along with it), decided to throw a birthday party. Complete with hats and cake. Seriously. You totally have to check out Laptop Mag’s page to see the video and pictures of netbooks in various poses… theres even one image of a netbook slicing the cake.

Now personally, I still think of November 1st as the anniversary of the Eee PC launch. That’s the day the netbook went on sale in the US. I was living in New York at the time and rushed out to grab one from J&R, and posted the unboxing video online as soon as I could. A year later, the video’s been viewed over 125,000 times, making it by far the most popular video I’ve ever posted on YouTube. I think it’s my cat Laney’s cameo that really makes the video shine though, not the netbook itself. The response was overwhelming, and shortly after picking up my first Eee PC, I decided to start eeesite.net.

Netbooks have come a long way in a year. While I was enamored with the Eee PC 701, it didn’t take me long to realize that what I really wanted was a device with a sligthly larger, higher resolution display and a bigger keyboard. In April I bought my second netbook, an HP 2133 Mini-Note and decided to broaden the scope of my blogging a bit by launching Liliputing. Today I’m back to using an Eee PC, but now my netbook of choice is the Eee PC 1000H, which has a larger screen and larger keyboard than the Eee PC 701 that started it all, as well as a faster processor, higher capacity battery, additional RAM, and storage space. I paid $550 for my Eee PC 1000H, but if you shop around, it’s not unusual to see them going for about $450 — or just $50 more than the Eee PC 701 4G sold for a year ago.

We’ve come a long way in a year. And I’m glad someone had the foresight to order a cake. Thanks Joanna!

Eee PC News.de has snagged some images of an upcoming Eee PC that may be the $307 netbook Asus CEO Jerry Shen hinted at a few days ago.

Aside from the fact that it will be called the Eee PC 701SDX and look a lot like the Eee PC 701, there’s not much known about this model yet. It appears to have a 7 inch display, a large bezel around the screen, and no webcam. So it certainly seems like this could be a cheap new Eee PC model.

But I’m not really that impressed. After all, you can find an Eee PC 701 2G Surf for under $300 today. In fact, you can even pick up an Eee PC 900A for $299.99 from Best Buy. The 900A has a 4GB solid state disk, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, and an 8.9 inch display. So I just can’t get that excited about the prospect of a $300 netbook with a 7 inch screen anymore. It’s about a year too late for that.

Wait, no… it’s actually exactly a year too late for that. It was on October 16th, 2007 that Asus released the first Eee PC. The Eee PC 701 launched the netbook revolution. The OLPC project howed that it was possible to make ultraportable laptops that didn’t cost an arm and a leg if you didn’t need to run Crysis on them. And Asus showed that you could actually sell these netbooks to consumers.

A lot can happen in a year. Now practically every major notebook manufacturer with the exception of Apple and Sony have announced or released a netbook, loosely defined as 10 inch or smaller notebook with a price tag of $600 or less (usually closer to $400 or $500). And Asus has gone to town, releasing well over a dozen different Eee PC models, as well as the Eee Box mini-dekstop, and the Eee Top all-in-one PC/iMac clone. Asus even plans to release an Eee-branded motherboard and to push an LCD TV with the Eee PC name as well as the custom Linux interface Asus designed for some of the company’s netbooks.

While Asus and the netbook market in general have come a long way in a year, there are two trends that have been particularly notable. First, the prices of entry level models have continued to drop. And second, we’re seeing low cost netbooks with more powerful spec.

A year ago, $400 was about as good a price as you could find for a cheap subnotebook. And you’d take your seven inch screen and 900MHz Intel Celeron processor and be happy with it. Today, you can get a machine with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 8.9 inch display, and 6-cell battery for that price. For about $50 more, you can find another netbook that adds Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi, and a mult-touch trackpad.

So while I would have been excited to see the Asus Eee PC 701SDX sell for $300 in October, 2007, this year all I can do is shrug and wonder if there’s something marvelous hidden behind that big bezel around the screen that will help set the 701SDX apart from existing cheap Eee PC models like the 2G and 4G Surf.