We already knew Asus was planning on releasing a new Eee PC, but today Digitimes is reporting on a few more rather important details of the upcoming Eee PC - it will have a touchscreen and possibly GPS support too. (The price is supposed to be $500 with 1GB of RAM and probably around an 8GB SSD.) Apart from this being a cool feature, though, how is this really important?

In the past, the Eee PC has mostly been about the hardware. Yes it is cool that it runs Linux, but there is nothing amazing about the software. Now that there is going to be a touchscreen on the Eee PC, software will be much more important.

If the touchscreen is only used as an alternative mouse, it may well become the kind of feature that gets old after 10 minutes. On the other hand, if Asus creates software the fully takes advantage of the touchscreen, it could make the touchscreen the main selling point of the device. I don’t think Asus will pass up an opportunity like this. Chances are there will be much more attention put into the software in the second generation Eee PC, which is good.

This increased attention to the software could be a way for Linux to stay the main operating system on the Eee PC, not just a secondary choice for geeks, when Windows is added as an option. Because Linux, and most of the applications that run on it, are open-source, Asus can modify them to work really well with the touchscreen, whereas with Windows, Asus will not be able to modify the software as easily. In this way, the Linux version of the Eee PC could have a significant advantage over the Windows version.

If you have been watching the Linux UMPC space, you may have noticed a new trend: style. Asus said fashion would be more important in future Eee PCs, HP has a rumored Linux UMPC that is very sleek, and, most recently, ECS announced a Linux UMPC that is designed to be very sleek. Apart from, obviously, just making Linux UMPCs look cooler, this new trend could also expand the market for Linux UMPCs.

Before the Eee PC, the few Eee PC-ish laptops were generally very high end, very expensive, and targeted at business executives. Although the Eee PC is a similar form factor and it is only $400, compared to over $2000, the Eee PC was not targeted at business executives at all. Now with the increasing attention being paid to making Linux UMPCs sleek, a Linux UMPC might be a reasonable consideration for business executives, not only expanding the Linux UMPC market, but also potentially making people more comfortable with using Linux in the office.

Although there are, of course, many other factors involved, Linux UMPCs with attention paid to style seem likely to expand the market considerably, not just for Linux UMPCs, but potentially for Linux in general.

A recent Computer World article suggested that the iPhone’s biggest competition might be the Eee PC. While I disagree that a device the size of an Eee PC could ever compete with a cell phone, it turns out there is a way that in the future a Linux UMPC could become a serious iPhone (or <insert name of smartphone>) competitor.

A company called Miu has created a concept phone/UMPC that would mix the two groups into one smartphone-sized device, according to Linux Devices. With many smartphones already moving towards being a small computer, it seems almost obvious that UMPCs will mix with smart phones to create serious competitors to devices like the iPhone. You could even argue that the iPhone itself is already a UMPCphone, but with it’s limited productivity features, it does not quite seem to be a full UMPC.

So how is this related to Linux? Linux already has a hold in the UMPC market and it is starting to become more important in smartphones, so Linux may well be the first choice for a UMPCphone. Apple’s OS X has very little hold in the UMPC world, if you even consider the Air a UMPC. Microsoft has had little success so far in the UMPC market and their smartphones have not be, lets just say, great. Although Linux’s smartphone territory is not yet established, Linux has a solid position in UMPCs and a growing presence in smartphones, making a likely choice for a UMPCphone.

Everex is bringing the CloudBook to Japan with one interesting addition - a touchscreen (and bluetooth,) according to Engadget and Impress. While this version does run XP, I see this as a minor thing. If you look at the history of the CloudBook hardware, it was originally running Windows. I suspect that when the touchscreen CloudBook is brought to other countries, it will more than likely run Linux again.

Adding a touchscreen will give the CloudBook a significant differentiating factor between it and the Eee PC. Although I am not convinced the touchscreen will offset the increased price (personally I do not see the appeal of a touchscreen on a UMPC), it will at least be interesting to see a real competitor to the Eee PC that stands a chance.

Just like with the Eee PC, ever since the gPC started the low-cost Linux desktop market (yeah, yeah I am sure there is some cheap Linux PC that came before it), many, many companies have rushed to essentially copy the design and call it their own. This is understandable in the case of the Eee PC, since it has done so well, but it makes a lot less sense in the case of the gPC, since the gPC and all the copies so far have basically failed. I can even understand some early rip-offs thinking they could do better, but after every product in the market flops, you would think the flow of these cheap Linux PCs would stop, but it has not. Shuttle just set a launch date of mid-April for their “KPC.” (Even the name is a rip-off.)

While I am saying that companies should stop copying a tried and failed idea, I am not saying that no one should try to enter this cheap Linux PC market. Just don’t do the same thing as everyone else. To figure out how to make a better cheap Linux PC, look at the Eee PC. One major factor, at least in my opinion, in the Eee PC’s success is that it has appeal to both geeks and regular people. On the other hand, the gPC has almost no appeal to a geek (why would they want another underpowered computer even if it were free?)

There are plenty of ways to increase the geek appeal of a cheap Linux PC, you just have to think of it as a little more than your average Dell PC. As one commenter named Robert Pogson pointed out in a comment on “Will Asus’s UMPC Success Carry into Linux Desktops?,” Asus could make their new cheap Linux desktop PC a “base station for the eee (backup, software repository, home files, printing…).” Or how about an inexpensive media center/home server computer? All of this could be done.

The cheap Linux desktop PC market is not hopeless, it just needs some products that are not copies of failed ideas.

Instead of buying OLPCs or Classmate PCs, one community in Brazil is looking at their own solution to bring technology into their schools (using Linux of course). Their solution is a touchscreen desktop computer, according to CNet. At around $550 and lacking the mobility of the OLPC, it is not, however, clear if this new solution is really better.

The only real advantage this solution has over the OLPC (or similar inexpensive UMPCs) is the screen, which is both bigger and a touch screen. On the other hand, the OLPC is much cheaper and is very mobile, so children can take it home and use it there, allowing a student to continue to learn, explore, and figure out how the technology works. Given the benefits and disadvantages of each, which one is the best?

First of all, in some situations the touchscreen solution may not be an option at all, due to the price. If you have over a million kids to provide with a computer, spending $350 more per kid is a big deal.

Even if the touchscreen solution is an option, is it really the best option? At first the touchscreen seems like a real advantage, but what can a touchscreen do that a regular mouse and keyboard cannot (other than look cool?) (It appears there is also a keyboard, so typing is not an issue.)

Overall, allowing students to continue their learning and exploration at home at their own pace seems to be more important than providing a touchscreen at school and saving $350 just makes UMPCs like the OLPC even more attractive.

To be fair, the CNet article does make it clear that the people behind the touchscreen idea do not think this would work anywhere and there is also the advantage that most of the money goes into the Brazilian economy. Still, I am a little skeptical of this idea.

Apparently in all the coverage of Windows on the Eee PC, one Asus announcement was almost missed: the EP20, Asus’s entrance into the cheap Linux desktop market, according to Eeextra. Although the (very few) details about it that are known do not seem to indicate there’s much here to get excited about, one thing does make it note-worthy.

So far, despite all the companies who’ve tried, no one has created a successful inexpensive desktop computer running Linux. The same is true of the Linux UMPC market, with the exception of Asus’s incredibly successful Eee PC. So what makes the EP20 notable is simply that it is Asus’s first attempt at the inexpensive Linux desktop market.

As I said, there is no indication that the EP20 itself is anything more than another variation on the same design for a cheap Linux PC that so many others have tried. However, at the same time, I am not sure I would have been able to tell that the Eee PC was any better than the CloudBook, or any other Linux UMPC.  Of course, Asus was first into the UMPC market,  which is an advantage that it will not have in the desktop market.

The real question with the EP20 is will Asus succeed again as they did with the Eee PC, or will the EP20 go nowhere and die, as so many similar cheap Linux PCs have?

Brilliant Brainstorms will be a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

There are many automated tasks that people have their computers doing all the time such as downloading a big file, doing a backup, installing updates, and other similar tasks.  But when a task like this starts while you are working on something, especially on older computers, it can bog down the computer and make it hard for you to do anything. If this idea were implemented, these sorts of tasks would take place while the screensaver was running, so your work would never be interrupted.

If you have ever been to a Linux support forum, you have seen the numerous threads asking “why does my <name of hardware> not work?” This idea would make it so that users would be told up front before installation that some of their hardware would not work, or that it would all work, which is much better than having them waste their time installing Linux, only to find it does not work. At least if they are told up front that their hardware is incompatible they will not come away thinking Linux does not work at all.

While guides for people interested in getting involved in open-source projects exist, they are usually not as newbie-friendly as they should be and often link to multiple long tutorials, leaving the possible volunteer confused as to what they should do. Improving a new developer’s experience could dramatically increase the number of people willing to help out with Ubuntu. This would be particularly helpful for non-professional programmers, such as high school and collage students who have taken courses, but never programmed professionally.

After around 5 months of stocking the gPC in stores, Wal-Mart has decided to stop stocking Linux-based computers in their stores, although they will continue to sell them on their website, according to the AP. Although I can see how a decision like this would be made, if you ask me, they jumped out too early and did not really give Linux a fair chance.

The Linux-based computer Wal-Mart experimented with was the gPC. Although the gPC was one of the first Linux computers to receive a lot of attention, it was not, by far, the best received. Many negative reviews were written and, although the price was low, the hardware was somewhat lacking in many people’s opinion. While based on this I can see choosing to stop selling the gPC in stores, I think it is too soon for Wal-Mart to give up on Linux. Look at how well the Eee PC is already doing, and Asus’s CEO just said they could sell 300,000 to 400,000 per month if battery shortages were resolved.

While Wal-Marts decision is somewhat justified in that not all Linux-based PCs have done well at all, giving up on Linux before even trying to sell what is almost certainly the most popular Linux computer, the Eee PC, seems like giving up on something good without trying it.

Laptop Mag recently posted an interview with Asus’s CEO about the Eee PC. Although they already did a list of the interesting parts they found, I found that they missed a few interesting points, so here is my list of the interesting points from the interview they posted:

• According to Asus, if battery supply problems were fixed, they could sell 300,000 to 400,000 Eee PCs each month!
• As pointed out by many other places, the Eee PC with Linux will have a 12GB to 20GB SSD, while the XP version will only have 8GB. (I have no clue why.) Additionally, the XP version will have 1GB of RAM, but no mention was made of the RAM size for the Linux version.
• Hard drives (not flash) could be available in May or sometime later.
• $500 will be the US pricing on this new model. (No distinction was made between Linux and XP. Could they be equal price, but the Linux version would have more storage space?)
• Fashion will become a big part of the Eee PC.
• Sometime in May, Asus may introduce web storage as part of the Eee PC (to supplement the local storage, presumably.)
• New Eee PCs will have much shorter charging time and, possibly around May, Asus is aiming to get 8 hours of battery life out of the Eee PC.

This looks like a sneak peak into the coming months and it certainly looks like some very cool features will be coming to the Eee PC. I would hold off until June or July before buying an Eee PC, if I were planning on getting one, based on what was said in this interview.