Game-changer: Asus Eee PC a win for Intel and Linux, at Microsoft's expense

Insightful review by Jon Stokes in Ars Technica regarding the impact of the Asus Eee PC on the mobile PC landscape. Highlights of the review follow -

Asus appears to have gotten so many things right with the Eee PC that it could be a game-changer in the mobile market, in terms of both hardware and software. To sum it up: Intel wins, and Microsoft loses.

Thanks to its combination of Intel hardware and a non-bloated Linux install, reviewers found the Eee PC performs just as well as much larger and more expensive Windows notebooks. It does support Windows XP, but Linux seems to be the OS of choice for all of the reviewers for performance and ease-of-use reasons. In this respect, Microsoft has well and truly blown it, because this device is poised to introduce a few million Best Buy shoppers to a pleasantly usable, non-embedded Linux distro. Even more ominous is the fact that the Eee PC is just one of a breaking wave of Linux-powered portable devices that will reach consumers soon, and that it's the hardware makers that are driving the Linux push.

Linux is now the popular quarterback at the new mobile party, and Microsoft is the kid who used to be cool way back in grade school.

For the Eee PC, its main selling point is its form factor. It is small and light enough to attain a truly new level of portability and convenience, while still having just enough screen and keyboard space to be comfortably usable. The result is that reviewers have compared this device's form factor to the UMPC and found the latter wanting.

The balance between size and usability that it has struck could well be one that marks a threshold in form factor design. It's likely that the keyboard + WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) paradigm may not be able to shrink any further due to the limits of human ergonomics. Anything smaller will have to be built on a fundamentally different interface paradigm. If this turns out to be the case, then there will be a permanent gap in the market between the Eee PC and the Nokia N810.

If nothing else, the Eee PC could demonstrate there's a whole device category waiting to be tapped: a wireless laptop that's about the dimensions and weight of a trade paperback, with only solid state storage. If Asus finds the kind of success that the reviews would seem to indicate, then the market will spit out many more of its kind in the coming year, more so when Silverthorne and WiMax become available and allow such devices even more connectivity.

The complete article can be read here.