Everex CloudBook with gOS released

The $399 Everex CloudBook ultra mobile PC is supposedly in stock at WalMart.com, but Linux hardware builders ZaReason say they won't have any until the 29th. Cloud computing is central to the design and marketing of the CloudBook. As Everex puts it:

9 Inches, 2 pounds, 5 hours of battery life. Surf, email, blog, IM, Skype, compute. Cloud computing makes it simple and easy for everyone.

The CloudBook hardware is based on VIA's Nanobook design which is also used for Packard Bell's EasyNote XS (which runs Windows XP.) So the CloudBook has some relatively beefy features for an ultra mobile PC, such as a 30 GB hard drive and DVI out, but local storage and big screens are not high priorities in cloud computing so these features are buried in the technical specs.

Instead the gOS operating system gets top billing - an Ubuntu distro which Everex also uses for their very low budget desktop PCs. Cloud computing is at the heart of gOS, which features Google search right on the desktop. gOS's Mac-like user interface is a testament both to Apple's contributions to cloud computing and to the experience-oriented computing giant's missed opportunities.

I'm a proud XO adopter and love to show off my UMPC's amazing physical transformations, but I envy the ergonomic innovations of the CloudBook/Nanobook/EasyNote XS form factor. The simpler clamshell design has a wide gap between the screen and the keyboard so you can hold the CloudBook in one hand and punch keys with the other while standing up. The touchpad and mouse buttons are on the left and right sides where they can be thumb-controlled GameBoy-style, again allowing you to operate the laptop while supporting it's weight with your hands.

In my experience these are the ways you instinctively want to hold a laptop when it is not resting on a table: with one hand directly under the center of gravity or with both hands on opposite sides. I have experienced significant discomfort trying to find ways to use my 15" laptop while sprawled on a couch or the smaller XO while standing at a bus stop. I even found myself automatically trying to grip the larger laptop like a CloudBook, feeling for a finger grip behind the hinge.

Watch the ergonomics of this design in action.

What IS cloud computing?

We are on the verge of the biggest technological paradigm shift since the world wide web. Instead of all the individual people having their own computers, we all share one big computer network. This is comparable to "what if everyone converting from using independent automobiles to using public transportation." The Ausus eeePC/Xandros, FreeGeek/Ubuntu, Everex/gOS, iPhone-iPod/OSX, OLPC/Red Hat, public library computer access and coffee-shop free Internet access are but a sign of things to come. On the horizon is the 50 Euro laptop and the gPhones (Android-linux devices that will take forms "beyond current imagination.") That "shared consciousness for all of humanity" hippies have been dreaming about for the last five decades? Well good news for these technophobes: we are on the verge of a universal shared consciousness through portable linux-based communication devices and a robust digital communication infrastructure. (That infrastructure being based on mega-web-servers made from thousands of computers integrated in single one-building facilities, like what is used by Yahoo and Google.) And remember, Microsoft has fought this every step of the way (which has me wondering: who's paying the bills over at the cloud-computing critic's club?): http://badvista.fsf.org/freesoftwarefreesociety/free-software-free-society/

Mottos by Lance

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Cloud computing. You can get a less powerful computer paradigm, but it will cost thousands more per year.

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The poor do not want cheap home computers. 

The poor need free interactive 
                                     text, 
                                     voice, 
                                     music, 
                                   and video networking,
blog and vlog pages to brand themselves,   
advertising that promotes things in their conversation, 

and all done on their free internet device.

As do the rich. 

Cloud computing is a new and truer equality.

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Go ahead, save that file locally. Confirm its unimportance.

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Operating systems and executables are for getting on the network.

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My planet is no longer solely bio and geological, it is a cyborg. It is also my computer.

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