Last week I bought an Asus eee laptop. It’s a tiny machine, weighing less than 2 pounds with a 7 inch screen, and it runs Linux as its operating system.
The experience so far has been really good. The machine works well, the software’s great, and for £250 I’ve got a machine that’s faster and more enjoyable to use than my very expensive work laptop. But what’s really impressive is the way that support, enhancement, improvement, has been taken up by the users of these machines.
Asus themselves provide some support, but the really good stuff is on blogs and wikis that have been set up by people who have bought the machines themselves.
If you compare http://vip.asus.com/ with http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ it’s obvious that the open source offering is better, more up to date, and more responsive than the manufacturer’s. This is a very interesting trend. Actually, I’m happier that there is this community developing and that so much open information is out there than if I was reliant on a secretive, commercially sensitive company. Probably it’s so noticeable here because the eee is a Linux (i.e. open source) machine. You don’t see wikis cropping up for all products, so what makes one more or less likely to be a community hit?
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