The Asus EEE and Psion’s Influence
Two little things around my Asus EEE PC show why it’s obvious that I really like this machine. The first is the solitary sticker on the case of the machine – the Moo Stickers along the battery spine don’t count. It’s the metallic badge of the Psion Series 3mx, probably the finest British PDA ever made, that sits proudly on the lid.
The second is the case that I carry the EE around in. It’s an old, battered, mix of hard ABS plastic covered in felt and canvas, and held my Psion Netbook for many a year, starting in early 2000 (I picked up the machine very early in the production run). It has always amused me that the ‘micro laptops’ that have sprung up in the last year have acquired the ‘netbook’ moniker. Psion machines were always far ahead of their time, and can still hold their own today in many respects. I remember my first O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference, where I went through the entire gig using just the Psion Netbook and a Buffalo PCMCIA Wifi card for connectivity. Everyone loved the look of the little machine, and even though at that point it was a few years old, it still turned heads.
Just call me Mr Trend Setter…
Placing the 8 year old Netbook alongside the EEE 901 does show a much improved spec sheet (233mHz processor, 64Mb Ram, 640×480 256 colour screen, compared to 1.6gHz, 20Gb and 1024×600 16 million colour screen), but functionality there is little difference. The devices are doing the same job, a mix of email, online interaction, and word processings, and while there are many years between them, Yes, modern technology has more advantages (screen size, battery life and 3G connectivity spring to mind), and there is a certain march of progress, but the goals and aims of these devices have changed little.
The biggest change is that the modern netbooks are fully blow consumer operating systems. I’m running Ubuntu on the Asus (with the Netbook Remix) but it would be a simple matter to place Windows XP on board, Windows 7 was demoed to be running on them, and many a hardy soul has got Mac OS X running as well. Unlike the dedicated OS the Psion had, what we have now is a solution that does everything, that leverages thousands of developers, has tens of thousands of applications available, and puts real computing power in a mobile package.
Yes there will be times you need a laptop with grunt (eg video editing), but for most trips, the one or two nights away for a conference, or just something to sling in your bag when nipping out for a business coffee, the netbook genre is perfect.
December 3, 2008; Mobile Computing, Wi-Fi and the Psion Netbook;
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