Asus really are stupid. They gain a massive advantage of being first to market with a decent Small Cheap Computer. They then start to think that it is the Eee brand that is doing all this rather than the price point + usablility, and proceed to plaster it over every stupid more and more expensive variant they come up with, diluting the value of it and even its raison d'etre - to be small and cheap. They cosy up to Microsoft to ensure that the XP variants are priced the same as Linux versions by artificially screwing with the specs, thus increasing the entry level price point.

Stupid Stupid Stupid.

I'm not a Mac fan (I own nothing Apple), but at least they know how to launch a product.

Surely Asus's main mistake was to listen to Techno journalists and technology fans - like us.

It was the average - don't give a damn how it works as long as it does - consumer who made the Eee PC a sucess. Then Tech Journalists and us came along with our usual sucking of teeth and said "well, it's very nice, but imagine if that screen was just a tiny bit bigger. You'd be able to get a decent sized keyboard in and run windows on it. Oh, but you'll need just a bit more RAM and one of those fancy Atom processors for that. Oh, and a bigger hard drive..."

We talked them into ruining it!