Before I start, thanks for the Diggs, guys. Two articles on the front page of Digg in just two days is a dream come true. Thank you.

The OpenMoko is certainly an impressive piece of hardware, it is hackable, open and runs Linux. But unfortunately, people probably wont buy it…

Marketing

Apple has got a genius marketing team. OpenMoko has the community. We love OpenMoko, but we do not have the finances or the drive or the reasons to pull a full scale marketing campaign off such as the iPhone one. So, the only way it will spread is by word of mouth, more or less. There is no Red Hat or Novell to save us here, guys.

Software

The FreeRunner is much better I hear, but still unreliable. Getting support, additional functions, an online store. OpenMoko is not Nokia, they are not a big name. You have to do something revolutionary, not sell a product that function-wise cannot really compare to the iPhone, but still has a way better operating system. It is a shame with all the confusion about which libraries to use et cetera et cetera. Learn from Asus. They did it in a market where they are not well known - as a laptop manufacturer.

Users

Yeah of course Linux is awesome, but who -except for you- ever told your grandmother that this suspicious looking phone is better than the -revolutionary, -good-looking -gay iPhone? The potential converts do not trust you and they do not care.

It will be a hard fight, but eventually Linux will will in the hand-held devices market, just like it is winning in the ultra portable PC market. We just need time. And this is not the time for it, but let us still cheer the OpenMoko team on for making a brave step forward. Do not rush it people, not even the year of the Linux Desktop is anywhere near, why wait for the Year of the Linux Phone…

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?

When I first found out about e-ink technology, all I could say is: awesome. We web productivity freaks don’t have time for a lot of reading. And ever since I heard about Sony’s e-reader, I couldn’t get my eyes off one of these babies.

There’s a new kid in town, though: the Bookeen Cybook Gen3, and this device is what I want to talk about today.

Unlike Sony’s device, which is pretty expensive and still has ‘coming soon’ status (no changes since summer 2006), including huge limitations, the Cybook is available now.

E-ink enables this gadget to economize in a much larger scale than other palm devices of the same size - with a fully charged battery the Cybook can endure 8000 page-turns (the e-ink monitor, in contrast to other monitors, does not need electricity to show a statical image). Not bad, huh?

It is much smaller and lighter than the Kindle, but the real treat lies inside: The Cybook uses Linux! It has also got a 6″ screen with an 800×600 resolution, you can read PDF, TXTs, HTML Mobipocket and lots of other formats, and not only that, you can listen to music, too (mp3 support) and use the device as a picture viewer. You get 200 Mhz and 16 mb RAM, with an SD card reader and 64 megabytes internal space.

The price is currently revolving around 350 euros… pretty good for new technology, I’d say.

Let’s be clear, the Eee does look neat. It uses GNU/Linux, too (although Xandros). But let’s face it, it’s not that great. It’s more of a marketing thing, much like the gOS computers. And since many people are literally going crazy (thus annoying me in the process) and buying all those laptops, I want to, as a tech savvy person, explain a few things which people wanting to purchase one of them often forget.

I’ve just been in our local tech store,  to check out a small black Asus Eee PC. After playing around with it for a little while I noticed the keyboard wasn’t configured correctly (a Slovenian keyboard has a very different layout), actually it wasn’t configured at all. It was really hard to find a friggin’ terminal, and when I finally found it, I successfully set up my new keyboard layout.

I cannot imagine how a non-nerd could possibly manage to do that. It’s not ready for prime time. That’s why I prefer the XO to the Eee. It’s a disgrace. I’d rather buy one with XP preinstalled.

Now secondly, the monitor is way too small. For the price of an EeePC, you can buy an iPhone. And what the hell are 512 megabytes of RAM doing there? You don’t need that much on Linux, plus what kind of powerhouse app are you going to run on a 7 inch screen? I hate the iPhone, but come on, compare them. The EeePC just isn’t your ultimate portable solution, it’s ‘the little portable device that could’.

What are your views on the subject?