For $299 you can get what is sure to become a collector's item -- like the Model T Ford, which "put the world on wheels." The hype and buzz are justified. It's big for computers the way the Ford Mustang was the biggest new car intro ever. SEE THE PHOTOS, WHICH MAY BE AT THE END IN SOME VERSIONS OF THIS ARTICLE.

 http://eeepc.asus.com/en/news101812007.htm

The Lixux version will reach the U.S. in about 2 weeks. Best Buy will soon be selling it, online -- but it's too R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y to put in their stores. There's too little profit in it for Best Buy -- or for Microsoft, HP, or Dell. Microsoft will practically give its XP system to Asus to get on board by the end of the year -- but where's the profit in a $30 XP copy, and what happens to Vista? Meanwhile, grab (or try to) the Linux version for a whole new experience.

[Microsoft will sell XP licenses to Asus for $1000 (Taiwanese dollars), or $30.65 in US dollars. Note I am not talking about the One Laptop Per Child. The Asus is for you and me -- at least me.]

1. PHOTO OF "EASY" SCREEN

2. PHOTO OF JAPANESE ZERO PLANE ATTACKING PEARL HARBOR

As the photo of the Japanese carrier fighter suggests, this has military implications. The Shock and Awe shown in the US attack on Iraq depended on precision-guided bombs and missiles. Military and economic hegemony depend on electronics leadership, control of the most advanced chip designs and manufacturing processes. The Chinese know us.

Am I being a Chicken Little ("The sky is falling!") or socialistic? I am merely predicting a Taiwanese/Chinese Pearl Harbor attack on the US IT industry similar to the Pearl Harbor II attack of the Japanese on US electronics in the 1960s. Remember when Asians last drove us out of consumer electronics? Maybe its time to reconsider your stock portfolio, if it includes MSFT, DELL, or HPQ.

See the photo of the Eee? Think you won't be impressed when you see one or try to use one? The Easy ... Easy ... Easy ... (Eee) interface is not exactly Linux and it's sure not Windows. "You ain't seen nothing yet!" There's a 1-click Easy interface, swichable to a regular desktop. Nothing like it.  http://www.hothardware.com/articles/Hands_on_with_the_ASUS_Eee/?page=2

The Asus EEE is Instant-On (as TVs became 40 years ago!) because it uses a flash drive instead of a disk drive and because it uses a reasonable OS, not Microsoft: The system boots in 15 sec.

If Best Buy is too chicken or self-serving, who should sell these? Starbucks, for one. It is the ideal coffee house computer. Rugged (no old-fashioned disk), disposable (today $250, tomorrow much less), and ultracompact: a pocket PC. You could see a $50 knockoff in Walgreen's or some of the dollar stores like Arabs run, in a few years. I just bought a $2 scientific calculator with all of the functionality of an HP-35 that had cost $400 in 1972. From 1972 to 1976, four-function calculator (+, -, x, /) prices fell 95 percent - plummeting from an average of $195 to just $9.95. Falling prices unseated a number of calculator brands. Hear that, Dell, HP, Sony?

Already the "Curtis" and "Coby" brands are planning less-than-$100 ultraportables for sale in closeout/discount stores. Even Asus will be hard-pressed to compete.


THE KEY TO MINIATURIZATION -- "IT'S THE SYSTEM, STUPID" (not the components)

3. PHOTO COMPARISON OF ASUS Eee AND OLD-FASHIONED LAPTOP

This is something the Asians always understood explicitly: Less is more, smaller is better. Let Intel spend billions driving down the size of transistors on CPUs, we'll MAKE billions selling small computers -- that's what the Asians are saying.

Also, they say, no more of this "We sweat, they think" stuff: Let's make our own brands. Chances are you already have an Asus-made computer if its a Mac or Sony. More likely they made your motherboard, as they are largest maker of these.

THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO MAKE THE "END PRODUCT" SMALL (the system, computer, radio, or whatever), NOT JUST THE PARTS INSIDE THE CASE. The heck with Moore's Law, cram the parts in!

A SMALL PRODUCT SIZE GIVES YOU --

--- A low price. Materials cost money. Shipping laptops from the other side of the world costs money.

--- Ease of use. Present laptops are modeled on Thomas Jefferson's (yes, that Thomas Jefferson) laptop desk, which he designed in 1775. It was the same size as laptop computers and had a folding lid, but inside were pencils and papers. Laptops are a little out of date and not very portable. The Asus Eee is easy to carry, even in a (coat) pocket.

In the early 1970s, Bill Hewett ordered his engineers to shrink down HP’s first electronic desktop calculator - the 40-pound HP 9100A -- to make a S-C-E (small, cheap, easy) one, and they came up with the 1.8 pound HP-35. This, 1.8 pounds, is about the weight of the Asus Eee. A "modern" Dell XPS M2010 laptop is more like the old, old HP calculator, or Jefferson's wooden "laptop," about 20 pounds. This is not the future, folks.

A SMALL, CHEAP COMPUTER HAS TO BE EASY TO USE. This is a low-low-price computer for the masses, same group the Model T Ford was aimed at. It has to be easy to use, because it has to be simple (easy to produce), being so cheap. And, remember, the automobile market wasn't for everybody until Kettering's self-starter made cars easy to use.


THE ELECTRONICS EQUIVALENT OF THE JAPANESE ZEROS

4. PHOTO OF WORLD'S FIRST TRANSISTOR SET, AMERICAN (1954)

5. PHOTO OF SONY TR-63 THAT STOLE THE SHOW, JAPANESE (1957)

The Zero was a Japanese fighter plane used in the Pearl Harbor attack. The Sony TR-63 (SEE PHOTO) hit the US market in late 1957. Here's what happened next.

The Japanese sold, in the USA,

1957: 100,000 transistor radios (number similar to Eee PC for 2007)

1959: 6 million transistor radios (plans for Eee PC in 2008)

1960: 54% of US market

1965: 67%

1969: 94% -- US companies were driven out of their home market.

S-C-E: THAT'S WHAT WON AND WHAT WINS

The US invented the transistor (AT&T, 1947). Americans also invented the transistor radio, Regency TR-1 (SEE PHOTO), in 1954. The Japanese showed how to use it: MINIATURIZATION -- but of the product, the case -- not just the components. (Sony did design a spectacularly innovative and small tuning capacitor.) American companies, except for the tiny startup Regency, resisted shrinking the radio case itself until it was too late. Like today's PC makers, they felt that a truly small set would have too low performance. However, it turned out that people could do without high performance/high-fidelity in many situations.

The Japanese couldn't get into the conventional sales channels at first (the Best Buy's of the day), so they sold in novelty stores (like Ma and Pa dollar stores of today), jewelry stores, drug stores (like Walgreen's), department stores, discount stores, hardware stores. They sold over 75 different brand names -- all not famous and some quite silly.

Can you see the day when you will buy a computer like the Asus Eee for $50 at Walgreen's under the "Playmate" or "Amico" brand name? Don't laugh: No-name brands drove Zenith and RCA, the old US mainstays, out of the radio and TV markets (or out of their own country, i.e., USA).

Americans invented the transistor portable TV (Philco, 1959).

Americans introduced the color TV in 1954 (RCA).

Americans introduced video tape recording (1968, Cartrivision). Sony countered with Betamax in 1972, but JVC (Japanese Victor Company) won with the VHS recorder introduced in 1976 BECAUSE IT WAS SMALLER AND SIMPLER MECHANICALLY. Do you see the market advantage of the small, simple Asus Eee now?

All of these markets were later lost to Asian manufacturers by 1990. They beat us on miniaturization and price. We insisted on high performance and high price.

Same thing with conputers: S-C-E (Small-Cheap-Easy) is unstoppable. I have tried to show you how it will play out for computers. Get a handle on the future; get your hands on an Asus Eee.

6. DOLLAR STORE PHOTO -- WHERE COMPUTERS ARE HEADED

A US COMEBACK IN ELECTRONICS

The US has made a comeback in electronics in the digital era -- especially since the 1981 introduction of the IBM PC (the original model 5150).

In the 1990s digital products marketed by US brands largely compensated, in dollar volume, for the above markets in consumer electronics products that had been lost. US brands (esp., Intel) controlled the microprocessor market. They controlled the market for computers, which became consumer products themselves. And US brands controlled the markets for many of the consumer products spawned by microprocessors and PCs.

However, the Asus Eee demonstrates that the Chinese companies that are manufacturing for the US brands are turning on the Americans as the Japanese did 40 years ago. They will prove invincable as they market their own PCs to compete with HP and Dell, and their processors to compete with Intel and AMD. Already, Taiwan-based companies like Asustek make almost all computers, of whatever make, in mainland China factories.

The Chinese will have no use for Microsoft, and later none for Intel, as computers get much cheaper than even the Asus Eee.