A French Asus Eee PC user decided to see just how sturdy his little laptop is. So he dropped it from a variety of locations, performed a few tests guaranteed to overheat his device, and did his darndest to kill the little guy. Well, maybe not his darndest. I'm sure we could think of a few tests that he didn't try (a microwave test, perhaps?). But the video shows that the Eee PC is pretty capable of withstanding everyday use and abuse including the occasional drop.

[via Asus Eee Hacks]

In case you were wondering what the Everex Cloudbook looks like when you pan a shaky camera over it, Everex has gone and posted a short promotional video on YouTube. There's really nothing new to see here, but you can check out the Cloudbook from a few different angles and see how pretty the gOS dock looks when you scroll your mouse over program icons.

The most interesting part of the video is the very end when Everex writes "Coming Feb. 15th." Sure, that's the same date that's listed on the company's website right now, but considering the release date has already been pushed back once, it's nice to see that they're at least confident enough in the new date to include it on a promo video. Even a really cheap looking one.

[via Cloudbooker]

Update: As one reader has kindly pointed out, Everex seems to have realized that this poorly produced video might not be the best way to promote their upcoming video and has pulled it. Fortunately you can still find the video online if you know where to look.

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• Everex is planning a Cloudbook with a 9 inch screen
• Everex announces its Eee PC competitor

The Eee PC ships with Skype installed, but one of the first complaints many users had was that you couldn't use Skype to make video calls. There was a pretty good reason for this at the time: Skype hadn't added video support to its Linux client yet. But late last year, Skype released a beta version of Skype 2.0 with support for video, and while it bears the beta label, it's pretty stable.

I kind of figured it would take a long time for Asus to offer the update through the add/remove programs feature because it was still beta software, and because Xandros generally doesn't add early beta versions of software to its repositories. But Asus must have realized there was strong demand for video calls, because according to this Eee User forum post, Asus has added a Skype update to the add/remove programs dialog.

Of course, if that doesn't work for you, you can always just download the update from Skype's website, but if you're not used to Linux, you'll probably find it easier to use the Eee PC dialog. It will also make it easier to uninstall the update if you decide you don't need it.