'Twas The Day After Christmas

"'Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house
no computer was working, not even its mouse.
The disks were all scattered on the living room floor,
and parents were yelling, "Windows Vista?!!  No More!"

I'm sure you can imagine how the rest of this could go.  Rather  than warble on with a parody of "Twas the Night Before Christmas", I'd much prefer to show you your next Linux computer!

Here it is! The Asus EEE Box.  This is very similar to Asus' line of netbook computers. But the great thing is, regardless of whether you get the Linux or Windows verison, you'll still be running Linux.  This is because Asus installed a quickboot Operating system on the EEE Box called Express Gate (Also called Splashtop)


Express Gate is built on Linux and is intended to be an "Instant On" feature to get you up and running in about  7 seconds.  So, if you just want to check your email, visit a news website, etc., you can do so in a flash by booting Express Gate.  Then, if you need to do some word processing or other task, you can boot into your main operating system of Windows XP Home or Linux (depending on which version you buy).  But either will still come with Linux Express Gate.

The EEE Box is meant to be a small, yet powerful, computer that takes up little desk space.  You can even mount it on the back of your LCD monitor!  The EEE box runs on an 1.6 GHz Atom processor and comes with 1 gig of RAM. It also has USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks and card reader. there is no optical drive.  It does come with a keyboard and mouse and is Wi-Fi enabled.

Although the system is still quite new to the market and few reviews are available, I'd still put my money on the Linux version of the EEE box.  It's a Xandros Linux distribution and has proven itself to be stable and secure on the EEE line of Netbooks.  And, of course, it's Linux so you won't have all those Windows problems with viruses, spy ware, and crashes. 

The price advertised is $350.00.  I've already seen it for less on sites like newegg.com.

For a terrific introductory review, check out thestreet.com's quick look here.

So if Santa brought you a Windows computer that's already giving you problems, take it back to the North Pole and swap it out for the Linux version of the EEE Box!

Get Linux.