Karma – what goes around comes around

After my previous outlook of ‘everything’s great’ and my theory that there was a genie sat behind me, it seems that karma has come back to get me. It is true that good luck must be followed by bad luck, and my bad luck has come in the form of an Asus eeePC.

The Asus eeePC IS a revolution. Screw all the media and rave reviews about this device, just go out and buy one right now. It is so simplistic that my nan could operate it without being told what to do, and yet it really packs a punch with the power and streamlined Linux distro combination. I love it. There’s just one problem though – Asus didn’t deem it important enough to make the little Xandros distro compatible with WPA PEAP encryption.

Asus’s target audience with this device is simply anyone that wants a great little machine for on-the-go work, play, and most importantly quick internet access. They won’t tell you this (and for some reason neither will 3) but the 3g usb dongle that you can get for just £10 per month works out of the box, which surely makes this device the best completely mobile device out there at the moment, especially as you can do all that for under £300. I spent £250 on my black 4g 701 eee at PC World because I was impatient, but online retailers are dispensing them at an alarming rate for just £220. The 2g version is going at £190, but I’m struggling to see why anyone would get one as you lose out – no space for any documents and no inbuilt webcam.

To me, the natural audience fit for this device is students of literally any age. It’s cheap, the solid state disk makes it more robust, it does everything that a windows laptop does and it is TINY. The massive downside for this demographic is that most of them frequent educational establishments during office hours, most of which have some kind of wifi (good thing) with WPA PEAP encryption (bad thing if you’re an eee user). The UK rolled out a fantastic project called JANET eduroam, which means that any student from any university can go to any (not just their own) university and use their login and password to access the wifi. To protect this, eduroam employs the use of WPA PEAP, which is admirable as universities have always been a real sore spot in terms of infrastructure security.

So WHY then does the eee not have the ability out of the box to connect to WPA PEAP? That’s just nuts. I’ve done much trawling of the awesome forums and wiki run at eeeuser.com and no one seems to have hit a solution for Xandros. The only answer is to install Windows or Ubuntu.

Kudos to Ubuntu BIG TIME, as I’ve now entirely switched from Windows XP to Gutsy on my main desktop; and I’m astounded at its customisation tools, general out of the box compatibility and speed. The only two things I’ll say is that no one should try this at home without a nVidia graphics card, and if you invest in a printer have a good check on the Ubuntu site for which printers work out of the box. I now have dual screening working all lovely and I’m really impressed.

But I shouldn’t have to install XP or Ubuntu onto my eee. WPA PEAP wifi should just work. So wake up Asus, start shipping with this feature out of the box, and release a patch for those already purchased! It’s frustrating to the extent that the iPhone is. I watched the latest episode of Diggnation last night, and Alex Albrecht pointed out that the iPhone is SO close to being the perfect mobile handset, but there’s really silly details missing like MMS. The same goes here with the eee, it is amazing, and I love my new eee and find it hard to put down, but it’s still a couple of features short of being the dream ultra mobile SSD laptop.