Additional details of the new Eee PCs with larger screens have surfaced. It seems that Asus did one thing right and one thing wrong. First, what they did right:

The new larger screen Eee PCs will still have the same size case, according to Gizmodo. One of the Eee PCs main advantages is size. If the new Eee PC’s cases were significantly larger than they are now, that advantage would be lost to more mainstream laptops and larger UMPC. Unfortunately, Asus didn’t do everything right.

The new Eee PCs with larger screens will not have a higher resolution (again, according to Gizmodo.) That’s right, the resolution will not change, you will just get a blown-up picture of what you would get on a 7″ Eee PC. I can’t claim to know how much more it would cost to get a higher resolution screen, but it cannot be that much. Just making the picture larger will satisfy anyone who thought the text was too small, but I highly doubt just making the text bigger is going to satisfy the majority of users buying the Eee PC.

The press conference started and Asus wasted no time. The WiMAX enabled Eee PC that I talked about earlier is real! (According to Engadget, who is/was live blogging the event.) Here are the big announcements

• There will be an Eee PC with WiMAX (Sorry, just had to say that again.)
• WiMAX will be rolled out this year and roll out will continue in future years.
• Base price for WiMAX enabled notebooks is going to be $999, but thats not what the Eee with WiMAX will cost (does that mean that the Eee will cost more than other WiMAX notebooks???)
• New Eee PC models will be introduced with 8 and 9 (well, 8.9 technically) inch screens

Thats all we know so far, but thats still a lot of news for one press conference.

Of course, WiMAX is a perfect companion for the Eee PC because of the Eee’s portability, but the pricing is yet to be announced, which could seriously hurt the appeal of a WiMAX Eee PC. On the other hand, with the new models with bigger screen sizes, many people may be willing to pay more for an Eee PC, since they can use it for more standard laptop tasks. In fact, the bigger screens might even be the more important part of this announcement.

Right now, the news looks great for Linux, but there was one worry-some slide that Engadget posted. One of the bullet points suggests that Asus may start to offer Windows on the Eee. Still, the disadvantages of Windows on the Eee PC that I have discussed before (cost, limited resources) should deter consumers from choosing Windows over Linux. In the end, as long as offering Windows has no effect on the Linux side of the Eee, I really can’t complain.

An interesting piece of news from Asus’s press conference is that the Eee PC is their “most successful product ever,” according to Engadget. This is potentially huge news for Linux on two levels.

First, Asus is no small company. While they may not be well known to many people, if you have ever been in the market for a new motherboard, you know the name Asus. For a company of this size, saying a product is the most successful product ever is no small statement. Granted, motherboards are rarely “successful,” but they sell other products too. Hopefully, the huge success of the Eee PC will cause Asus to try using Linux on more devices. It already appears that they are open to this, since they have put a technology called Splashtop (or ExpressGate), which is a fast-booting Linux system, on some of their motherboards, but this success should make them even more anxious to try out Linux on more devices.

(Note: I am sure someone is going to say “but it was the hardware that made the Eee PC sell.” That may be true, but do you think that Windows would run as well as Linux on a device with such limited resources? Also, without Linux, the price would have been higher.)

Second, the buzz the Asus Eee PC will (or at least should) get for announcing a WiMAX equipped model and being called the most successful product ever by Asus should help it to sell even more units. See the first point again.

CES is almost certainly the biggest tech show of the year for most people. Places like CNet provide so much coverage that it makes you wonder if there is anything there they did not cover. If you want to know the Linux news from CES, though, it becomes a little more complicated. While CES is not focused on Linux, at such a big show, there is going to be plenty of Linux news, so the question is, how do you get the up-to-the-minute Linux news from CES?

After a lot of searching, I found three Linux news sites that have said they will be covering CES this year or have covered it in past years.

• Phoronix has said they will be covering CES
• Linux Today covered CES previously
• Linux World also covered CES before
• Linux Journal covered CES last year and looks like they will be doing so again

Although it is often hard to know what to expect at CES, this year we know that a few Linux-related things will be happening:

• Asus, Intel, and Sprint will make a WiMAX announcement related to the Eee PC
• OpenMoko will be showing off their new Neo FreeRunner
• Everex will launch gOS 2.0
• E-Lead will have an Eee PC competitor with a unique input device

If all that still is not enough or you just want to know what is going on in the rest of the tech world at CES, CNet and Engadget will both be covering CES from a more general perspective.

And of course, I am sure there will be plenty of CES news right here at Linux Loop.

Everex will be launching the next version of the gOS, called gOS 2.0 or Rocket, at CES, according to Phoronix. Later, in Febuary, Everex will introduce new products with gOS 2.0 as their OS.

The new version will incorporate Google Gears, a technology to improve integration of Google applications with desktop applications, integration with Box.net, an online storage service, and an SDK to enable easy development of applications for gOS.

Although new features are great, based on a review by PC Magazine, it appears that whatever bug fixes gOS 2.0 brings may be even more important. This review, which gave the gPC a 1 1/2 out of 5, complained a lot about various bugs in the software, which could be fixed in this new version.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the pre-CES Everex news, though, is a hint at new hardware. Here is a quote from the Phoronix article:

“In February, Everex will be launching their low-cost CloudBook, gPC, gPC mini, and gBook with gOS 2.0.”

We know what the gPC is, we know what the CloudBook is, but we don’t know what the gPC mini or gBook is. Of course, there could be a lot more mystery around them. Based on Apple’s product line and common sense, I think it is fair to say that the gBook is a laptop and gPC mini is a small desktop. The interesting part is the gBook, though. If the CloudBook is a UMPC, it would make sense if the gBook was a larger, more standard laptop.

Right now, it is hard to tell if Everex has anything incredible in the works, but they are certainly a company worth watching.

OpenMoko has announced their next phone, the Neo FreeRunner, according to Gizmodo. The new phone will include a better processor, WiFi, 3D graphics, new applications, and other improvements based on the feedback they received from developers who purchased the Neo 1973. The Neo FreeRunner will be at CES and available later in the year. Although the FreeRunner is intended to make it all the way to users, it will only be available to developers at first.

The unusual thing about OpenMoko phones is that they are fully open-source and very hackable. There is nothing to prevent you from installing a new OS and application development is encouraged. Even the hardware was specifically chosen to make the phones open. All of the hardware has detailed specifications available for anyone who wants to take advantage of it.

Although the Neo 1973 has been out for a long time, until now, it was not clear that a consumer phone would arrive any time soon. Now that the phone they plan to bring to the market is nearly ready, the idea of bringing a fully open phone to the market seems a lot more plausible. I am sure we will learn a lot more as soon as people get to play with it at CES.

Asus has an interesting notice on their CES 2008 page. The notice is titled “WiMAX Today. WiMAX Tomorrow.” and says the following:

“Join ASUS, Intel and Sprint to learn about the state of WiMAX technology, preview next-generation mobile solutions (including the next generation EeePC) and immerse yourself in tomorrow’s wireless protocol. “

It seems clear that Asus and Sprint plan to build WiMAX, a long-range wireless data transfer technology, into the Eee PC. An Eee PC that includes a wireless connection to the internet anywhere would be cool, but this poses a few issues. First, WiMAX is not even rolled out yet. Sprint plans to roll it out in some major cities in 2008, but if you don’t happen to live in one of these cities, the WiMAX would be useless until Sprint rolls out more cities. Second, one of the main appeals of the Eee PC is the low price point. Similar services with current cellular technologies cost around $50-$60, which sort of ruins the point of an inexpensive laptop. Asus and Sprint could go for a Kindle-like approach where there is no monthly service and the cost is built into the cost of the hardware. Again, though, that would put the Eee PC at a much higher price point. Since I am sure Asus has considered this issue, they may surprise us with a much better solution than anything I have mentioned here.

The launch event is set for January 7th, so the details should be clear soon enough, although I dobut that there will be a real product avaliable for several months if not a year or more. Still, when the product finally comes out, it could be one of the coolest laptops ever.

LinuxWorld has a video of a Novell developer talking about the Linux Driver Project, a project that is making drivers for hardware makers that want to have Linux support for free, at FreedomHEC 07. The video is a little long and gets very technical near the end, but I recommend you watch the first part, if you are interested.

Yesterday openSUSE 10.3 was released. I have it downloaded and was running it in a virtual machine. I was planning on doing a review, but things sort of messed up when I got it installed and started up the control center. I started getting errors about my graphics card. I can be just about certain that the virtual machine is the problem here. I don’t know if I will get a full review out or not.

Yesterday, September 2, was the ending date for countries to vote on ISO approval of Microsoft’s proposed OOXML open document standard. But the controversy surrounding this process is almost certain to continue, regardless of how the vote comes out. (See Computer World article.)

As I see it, ISO approval of OOXML would just about guarantee that Microsoft will ignore the existing ISO approved ODF open document standard, and instead devote its immense resources to supporting its own OOXML open document standard. Microsoft is on record with its Open Specification Promise, saying that anyone will be able to use the proprietary elements of the OOXML standard without royalty to Microsoft. But even if that promise is sincerely honored, it seems certain that the OOXML standard will be more difficult to work with than the ODF standard, and especially so for non-Microsoft developers.

Update: Websites are beginning to tally up the votes. See this website.