EEEs were amazing! Not because of their performance or specs, but because they were a fully working compute for dirt cheap at only $199! Remember, these were released 5 years before the first Raspberry Pi. The original model of EEE with its 7" screen 512MB RAM and 4GB of slow SSD storage were plenty of compute for small tasks or portable applications. The cheapest fully functional laptop you could buy at retail those days would still cost you $800-$900 for a pretty horrible machine.

Linux was part of the secret sauce that made them successful because it meant they didn’t have to pay for an OEM Windows XP license.