Latest from the Bizarre Cathedral

The EeePC started as a niche product aimed at children. It was a huge hit, which surprised everybody — even Asus. Microsoft noticed it, and started putting pressure on Asus . While reading around, I came across this interview with Benson Lin, which proces once more that Microsoft is tying up Asus and effectively killing the GNU/Linux version of the EeePC.

Businesses are not philanthropists. They are not, intentionally, educators or evangelists for ideologies. However, from time to time their business models just happen to coincide with their more idealistic customers own interests. Asus is one such company.

When they launched the little EeePC they could scarcely have imagined the extraordinary reaction it would cause. They say that any publicity is good publicity but the reaction to the two pound wonder was almost universally favourable. It was hot. I mean nuclear hot. And it was GNU/Linux.

Since the first three parts of this series came out, (One, Two and Three) the beginning of May has seen the launch of the new EeePC 900 series; it’s slightly larger and heavier, with a nine-inch screen and higher resolution.