[thatoneguy @ Mar 9th 2006 3:25PM]

I smile whenever I read "1 Ghz is way too slow!"

What I'm reading is: "What! This can't play teh Counter-strike!!? What a useless pile of junk!"

1 Ghz, is plenty fast for almost every single day to day task you'll participate in. And with millions of applications which can run on it right now, plus an almost inifite number which could be written, the question should be what can't this thing do? People always cheer when they get linux booted on a toaster, well here you go, a full functional x86 pc ready to boot linux out of the box. With a 1ghz processor and 512 MBs of RAM, make it do whatever you want.

I've been sort of shopping around for a laptop, but there is never any that I want. If I bought a laptop, it would be essentially a desktop replacement for me. However, if that's the case I need a laptop which offers me the punch of my desktop for my 3D and Video workstation apps. Maybe a boxx laptop coming in at 3,000 would fill that role, but I don't want to carry around something that heavy, but still underpowered in comparison to my desktop.

These aren't designed as desktop replacements for people who use high performance applications (3d modeling, video editing, number crunching, games.) This is something different all together, a little computer which can do 99% of the day to day tasks I do on the computer, only now, anywhere. If they can eventually bring down the price point to about $800, it'll be the missing link in computing, what do you do on the street when you want to run "XYZ application".

The brilliance of this little device is people don't have to develop new applications for it. "What you want to run that old dos application which has never let you down? No problem. What you want to use some piece of freeware which you use every day? No problem."

Microsoft has always built its reputation (for better or for worse) on building platforms for developers. They recognize that the strength of the platform is in the available content, and with windows XP installed, and linux optional, that available content comprises almost the entire library of software known to man. All in the palm of your hand. Now that's a cool gadget.