So Asus is calling the Eee PC it's most successful product ever and is building on that success by releasing new models of the Eee PC at a rapid fire pace. That's great, right? I mean, the more choices the better. And right now you can get the Eee PC in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB models, with or without a webcam. Soon you'll be able to get units with an 8 inch or 8.9 inch screen, higher resolution displays, and even WiMax.

But there's a downside to all of this innovation happening so quickly. While the Eee PC ships with an extraordinarily easy to use version of Xandros Linux, many early adopters are computer hackers (or wannabe hacker) who want to install alternative operating systems and cram extra software and hardware into their stock units. And a healthy community of Eee hackers has developed, congregating at places like the Eee User forum.

One of the things that's helped these hackers build on one another's work is the fact that we're all pretty much using identical devices with identical hardware. If someone wants to create a custom Linux operating system for the Eee PC, there's no need to even create a LiveCD. You can just create a disk image that any user can flash onto their solid state disk. But as Asus releases more and more variations of the Eee PC, it gets harder to do this.

Of course, where there's a will, there's a way. And in the long run, the more people that have an Eee PC in their hands, the better it will be for the hacker community. But I can't help but think at least part of the reason we've seen such quick development of tools like eeeXubuntu and the Ubuntu Script Pack for the Eee PC is because of the uniform hardware that everybody's been using up until now.