Aaron raised a good point in a post comment that I wanted to highlight and expand upon. Many folks are interested in the simple, custom environment that the Asus Eee PC offers and rightly so. The target audience for this device is well served by the one-click shortcuts with plain descriptive names. For example: your web-based activities are on the Internet tab; in fact to open Firefox and surf the web, you just click the shortcut called “Web”. It’s really that simple in terms of logical design and layout.However, more advanced users would be well served by using the standard K Desktop Environment (KDE) in Xandros: you have more options and ways to customize the experience.

This entry over at the EeeUser Wiki details three ways to enable Full Desktop mode. I did this just yesterday afternoon and have the best of both worlds: a simple interface for the kids but a quick way to switch to an advanced mode when I want to play. I now have an extra option in my shut down menu to switch over to Full Desktop mode and of course, in that mode, there’s an option to switch to the out-of-box interface by choosing Easy Mode.As Aaron correctly stated, if you’re wondering about the capabilities of the Eee from the software side of the house, it can pretty much do anything out of the box that’s supported in the Xandros Linux distro. While it’s nice to have a smart UI for the target audience, it’s also useful to have a more robust environment as well. I still think the simple UI would be nice on a touchscreen UMPC. You just can’t miss those big shortcuts with your finger!