As its ship date nears, the price is rising and the specs dropping on Asus's ultra-low-cost, flash-based Linux notebook, according to reports.

By sheer chance and very good fortune, I now own an ASUS N10J netbook. Or notebook. The N10J came preloaded with Windows Vistaster Business, it should be no surprise to anyone that it runs like a terminally ill DOG. I have installed a variety of Linux distributions on it.

For at least the third time in recent weeks, prominent Dell newspaper advertisements feature the Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook running Canonical’s Ubuntu 8.04 (that’s a small Linux notebook, folks). The VAR Guy hears Microsoft “has gone postal” over the Linux notebook ads. You might even say this is Microsoft’s nightmare before Christmas. Here’s the complete scoop.

I'm a notebook kind of guy and haven't used a traditional desktop machine in the last 13 years.I do occasionally hook my notebook or Netbook up to an external monitor or projector."

The $279 Zonbu Notebook is the latest offering from the Open Source computer company—following up on the $99 Zonbu Desktop released earlier this year. The software is the same OS seen on the desktop, updated with a few new features such as real time data syncing. But the question remains: Does Zonbu find the sweet spot between solid performance and an entry level price?

Bright and early this morning some guys came into our shop with a newish notebook with a major problem: they'd killed Vista and their rescue partition. They came armed with a legitimate Windows XP Home CD and key but said they weren't able to get XP on the notebook. It may sound odd, but Linux was the solution to getting XP working on the machine.

TuxCards provides a hierarical notebook similar to CueCards under Windows. Every kind of note and idea may be managed and sorted within a tree structure.TuxCards is the notebook for TuxFreaks and for everyone who likes to use it or finds it useful during his or her work and play.

3K Computer is shipping a $300 ultra-mini PC notebook that runs "Genuine CE" Linux distribution from a 4GB SSD (solid-state disk). 3K's RazorBook 400-Mini-Notebook uses a 32-bit RISC-based processor from Chinese processor start-up Ingenic.

The number of companies coming out with tiny affordable notebook PC’s is on the increase every day, thanks to the huge success of the Asus Eee, we have an every increasing choice of small affordable notebooks. The latest company on the bandwagon is HP with the Mini Note micro notebook.