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OLPC XO and Asus Eee Pictorial Comparison

There are at least two revolutionary new portable computers on the market, each of which has the potential to sell several million units, and because each ships with Linux and an open source software stack, together they may change the personal computing landscape more than we have seen in decades.

Groklaw provides a photo gallery comparing the XO and Asus Eee (and some other ordinary computers to give scale).

“One of the happy buyers of a One Laptop Per Child XO laptop is Groklaw member Jerry van Baren. He asked me if it would be useful to show a comparison between the screen sizes and keyboards of the XO and the Asus Eee PC. I thought that was a grand idea.”

The new form factor they share is ultra-portability, and along with it, their success can be attributed to their extremely affordable pricing (each machine is cheaper than Windows or Microsoft Office by itself). As predicted by the theory of The Innovator’s Dilemma, a traditional market is once again being upset by cheaper competition from below. These machines, and others that will follow, are providing a strong beachhead for open source on the normal end user’s personal computer. This trend is only going to accelerate from here.

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