Aleutia E1, a small, portable computer which consumes just 8W of power (4% of what a typical (200W) desktop uses) during peak performance. Runs off a car battery or a cheap solar panel.

Powered with 200MHz x86 CPU, 128MB SDRAM and 1GB (included Compact Flash card). Its pre-loaded with Puppy Linux. For more details, visit ALEUTIA website. Watch the You tube video.

Asus launching Eee PC on 29-Jan-2008 at Mumbai.

What is Eee PC and what it can do for you?

Share photos of your travels without waiting till you get home. Shop the world wide web without attaching any lines or wires. Learn through the latest technology without a technical manual. Play, relax, and entertain on the go with shock-proof design. Connect with friends and family with just a few clicks. More specification details about Eee PC are available here.

People interested in purchasing Eee PC should directly contact Asus Mumbai Headquarters. You can book your PC at Asus Website. Asus does not hold the responsibility of sending across the product, customers will manually have to come and collect the Eee PC.

While I would post the instructions to activate, settings, and connection details later, here is a summary of my experience.

Speed
I get a decent browsing speed when in Chennai. Way better than a dial-up.
However, in other parts of Tamilnadu, the speed is quite low. I guess the reason is EDGE support in Chennai, which is only available in select cities.

Download speed is typically 50 kbps to 100 kbps (Kilobits per second) – transfer 6 to 14 KBps ( KiloBytes per second )

Downloading this document took 18 seconds. It’s hosted on a server in India.

Plans
Airtel postpaid plans ARE costly for GPRS. Like GPRS plans of most
providers, they are data usage based.
There are three plans with postpaid.

1. Rs. 399 /month – 100 MB free – Rs. 5 for every MB beyond free usage
   • This plan is completely suitable only if you’re going to do occasional mail checking.
2. Rs. 599 /month – 1 GB free – Rs. 3 for every MB beyond free usage
   • Costly. But worth using for most business purposes
3. Rs. 799 /month – 1.5 GB free – Rs. 3 for every MB beyond free usage
   • Just a number play. I think Rs. 599 is more worthy, compared to this plan.

I used Mobile Office – Rs. 599 plan

Usage
I got it working with Linux. Here is what I used as of this writing.

• the excellent HP dv6000 series laptop.
• Kubuntu 7.10 (beta)
• kdebluetooth ( and pppd )
• Sony
  Ericsson W300i
• Airtel mobile office Rs. 599 plan ( post paid )

When you’re connected to the internet, you would seem “Unreachable” to other people trying to call you. However, if your internet connection is idle, or you’re not transmitting lot of data, you might receive a call.
If you receive a call your internet connection stops. It resumes internet connection once you hang-up.

Summary
If you need internet connectivity when mobile – traveling , to use in the car (assuming someone else is driving) you could very well consider Airtel GPRS. You would need a EDGE compatible cell phone. If you can’t get EDGE support in your city, I don’t think it’s worth using this plan.

The laptops come preloaded with SUSE Linux. Apart from the default software applications that come with most standard linux distrubutions today, they also have

• NetBeans IDE
• Nero Linux ( though KDE native K3b is also bundled )
• Postgres database
• JasperReports ( an excellent report rendering software based on Java )

Based on the list of bundled softwares I guess it might have KDE graphical desktop environment.

On the hardware side, they ship two brands. Though the brand name is not mentioned, From the specifications and sample picture, one model seems to be HP dvNNNN series. These laptops are quite featureful. I use dv6000 series and most features work out of the box with Kubuntu 7.04.

It is to be noted that ELCOT is pro-open source, and is pushing Linux across the government offices in Tamilnadu. If I remember right, It is also the “purchase” department of IT hardware / software for most government functions in Tamilnadu.

Tags: linux, laptop, kubuntu