November 1st has come and gone, and that means that Asus has begun shipping the Eee PC, a $399 ultra-light laptop that could give both the OLPC and major laptop makers a run for their money.

We're going to focus primarily on the software side of things, but in a nutshell, the first widely available model packs a 900MHz processor, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of solid state memory. It weighs just 2.1 pounds, has a 3.5 hour battery, and a tiny power adapter, making it a perfect machine for stuffing in your bag whenever you leave the house. But it also has a tiny 7 inch 800 x 480 pixel display, which can cause some problems with certain web sites and applications.

For example, Google Reader is almost unreadable in Firefox unless you do a little tweaking. F11 is your friend. Other friends include fullscreen add-ons like FullerScreen and Autohide. We've posted a few photos after the jump to show what a big difference a little Firefox tweaking can make.

Asus has done an excellent job of designing software that makes the hardware as easy to use as possible. The Eee PC runs a custom version of Xandros Linux. The operating system and preloaded applications take up a good 62% of the unit's memory, but you probably weren't going to use the Eee PC for downloading and storing huge video files anyway.

The interface almost looks more like a PDA UI than a computer. There's no start menu. There are tabs with different categories. And you often don't even see an application's full name. For example, to bring up Firefox, you click "Web." But unlike a PDA, the Eee PC can run full desktop applications like Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and Amarok.

Make sure to check out part one of our video series on the Eee PC too.

Bowing into pressure from customers, Microsoft has decided to continue selling the Windows XP operating system in stores for another five months.

Previous versions of operating systems released by Microsoft have generally been available for up to two years after the shipment of a new OS. Microsoft had planned on cutting XP in stores just one year after the release of Vista, however, due to its slow sales and customer demand Microsoft has added a few more months and will let it stay on store shelves until mid 2008.

Many current customers have not been interested in switching to Vista, with computer giant Dell even going so far as to start up offering XP pre installed on new PC's instead of Vista early this year. Now what does that say about a new OS compared to a six year old one?

If you've switched to Vista, how is it working out for you? Do you recommend upgrading yet?