Right off the bat, as I am reviewing a loaner unit for the Zonbu Notebook, I must be clear that I cannot get too deep into my impressions just yet. At the same time, I am looking forward to submitting the review, destined for another writing gig elsewhere — will share the links of course. In the past, both Chris and I had been sent review units of the Zonbu “box” or mini unit. Completely solid state, it was a lot of fun; I am using it to this day as an extra box for day-to-day tasks. Like the mini, the notebook uses low impact power consumption hardware and perhaps most interestingly, the Xfce desktop. Not going to get too detailed as I am doing a review on it elsewhere, but I will tell you this much — it had the cleanest wireless setup experience I have ever seen on a PC platform (XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Freespire, etc.) — comparable to the Mac in this area; it is THAT good. WPA, all auto detected, no fuss, very cool.

There are other things to be aware of however, so please do not take this as a recommendation to buy one as I am still reviewing it and the review has not been released yet. Moving on.

So how does this compare to the ASUS Eee? No idea, as the Eee runs Xandros, that and ASUS has not contacted me about a review… yet. What I can tell you is that the Zonbu notebook is large (Dell big) and the Eee is very, very small. Either way, I’d love to see these devices against an entry level Dell running Home Basic – the difference in overall value is painfully apparent thus far with these Linux machines. Dell notebooks are fine and are certainly more powerful. However the entry level market is odd in that it prefers useful applications over ‘power.’ Crazy idea, this concept of value for your money!