Let me introduce you to the greatest clone ever. The Everex Cloudbook, while totally ripping off Asus’ idea, is on the other side cursed by the Hackintosh curse. Even the bloody Everex site seems to have an Apple font on the front which doesn’t work on my Debian box. Come on!
Back to basics: The Cloud(hm…Mac)Book is supposed to have more power than the poor old Asus Eee. I don’t know why it runs so slow. Is it the operating system? Because according to this review and another one at Youtube, it needs at least two minutes to boot! The Eee team has done a far better job at tweaking their laptop. I never saw Ubuntu (gOS is a modified Ubuntu Linux OS) run so slow. Maybe because of all the Apple tweaks (you can see an Awn-like Dock in the video, not sure if it’s the default desktop, but looks like it is.). I still don’t know why they used Ubuntu. And where’s the purpose in putting a Meebo or Wikipedia icon on the desktop and NOT running it in FireFox, but a retarded browser(according to teh Linux Action Show)? It’s as if I stored my favorites on my Desktop. No wait, that’s better.
Any thoughts on this, guys?
March 10th, 2008 at 14:56
Isn’t most of the slowdown due to gOS jumping off the original choice of an E17 based desktop and onto Gnome which has slowed things down somewhat on the cloudbook specification.
March 10th, 2008 at 15:37
I’m not sure.. it would be internesting to hear it from someone who uses it…
Although, like a review said: gOS is a JOKE.
March 10th, 2008 at 16:06
Hi Greg-I think gOS have to be applauded for trying to be a web applications OS aimed at casual users (In the same way that Asus originally shipped a modified Xandros on the 1st EEPC’s)and blagging themselves onto Everex hardware to be sold in Walmart. I tried version 1.1 and the 2.0 beta of gOS and they were both quite usable for what it was intended for.I believe the rushed modified Gnome based version on the cloudbook was done to solve some problems they originally had on the cloudbook hardware. Opengeu and others a better attempt at marrying Ubuntu, E17 and Gnome without the memory required for a full Gnome desktop.I’m interested to see if users can get a better performance with other distros on the cloudbook.
March 31st, 2008 at 13:57
The Cloudbook was around first, in various formats, based upon the NanoBook reference design from VIA technologies - long before the Asus EEE. So, rip-off? Not quite.
While the Cloudbook may have a few issues, it seems most negative reviews are based upon reference to a first-use PC like a Mac or Windows machine, which this is NOT supposed to be. It is an UMPC, which would not be anyone’s only computer - just a travel companion or sort-of a “really advanced PDA”.
Even with it’s issues, the Cloudbook still works well for its intended purpose. Most, if not all, of its issues would be resolved if they would load it with the real Ubuntu distro instead of this Gnome hybrid hack of gOS. And loading Windows on one of these is unecessary and would only tend to overload its resources - and for what purpose?
Yes, installing more RAM would be a good idea, and Everex has made this difficult to do. However, aside from the startup time, why does it need to go faster? It’s for checking your email, writing memos and playing the occasional game of solitaire. I think we’re so used to super fast PCs now, that many of us are looking at this through the wrong pair of glasses.
And many reviewers seem to know only about one of the “popular” brands of OS and are not necessarily familiar with the various Linux distributions. But when you’ve got one of “everything” sitting in your home or office, then you might be qualified to speak. But most of you don’t.
May 18th, 2008 at 00:07
I am running win2003 server r2 for me this system is the fastest. Gos was really slow but i would like to put another linux in there. Unfortunatelly whatever i put in there pc just stuck like with knoppix, suse, ubuntu. with other distribution x windows are not starting you can have “fun” in bash. Please advise.
May 18th, 2008 at 00:37
Maybe you could give PuppyLinux a shot