14 DAY TRIAL // The Eee PC is not only a nice accessory to replace ladies' purses on a party, but it is also a toy for worldwide modding enthusiasts. More experienced users unleashed the power of the soldering iron, while others were just pleased to port other operating systems the tiny Eee was not supposed to be able to run.
There are plenty of reports claiming that users managed to install Windows XP on the machine - and this is by far the dullest one, since now the Eees ship with XP. Other users claim to have 'convinced' the Vista powerhog to fit into the 4GB of solid-state drive and run on the austere 667 MHz Celeron M. This time, you'll hear something totally new and almost unbelievable: the Eee is running gOS, the operating system adopted by Arch-rival Everex Cloudbook UMPC.
Those of you who are impatiently waiting for Cloudbook's arrival may experience its look-and-feel ahead of its launch. You don't need the Cloudbook to do this, you just need to have an Eee PC and the latest build of the gOS with the latest Ubuntu drivers for your machine. The rest of the installation process should (and will) run smoothly.
One thing I like about copycats: the two notebooks are sold under distinct brands by different manufacturers, yet they both share the same hardware configuration. It's obvious that the operating system won't tell the difference between the two machines and would obediently install on the Eee as if it were the Cloudbook.
Of course, it's useless to switch between two Linux distributions that basically promise the same functionality, but if you're curious about how the Cloudbook feels, then go ahead. I must however, tell you that there's really no additional functionality to achieve once the gOS is set up.
There still are some problems that you will surely encounter during the installation process, such as the fact that the installation screen is larger than the Eee's display, but you can always scroll the screen if you keep the Alt key pressed.