Microsoft Decides To Take On Linux On Low-Cost PCs 349
e5rebel writes "Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs. It is an effort to stop Linux dominating this market but Microsoft is insisting on limiting the hardware specs of these devices."
crippled hardware = bad performance (Score:4, Interesting)
But are these devices that useful? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:crippled hardware = bad performance (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:If they want to limit specs... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Mac's smoked the PCs in pretty much everything, despite the PCs having more RAM. More telling was that the Macs ran Vista faster under Bootcamp than the PCs did.
The morale of the story is, Windows fails even in its native market. I think they're hoping that by getting into this market, they'll make the products so unattractive that no one will buy them (and clearly, if no one wants the EEE running Windows, then no one will want the EEE running Linux, right? *sigh*) at all anyway.
Note, I am not a Mac user -- I'm just saying that there are serious deficiencies in the Windows/PC platform from the get go, and they need to cover that up by making something even worse.
Microsoft abusing monopoly power again (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The pitch (Score:5, Interesting)
His pitch was a word for word copy of the MS FUD you get on their website.
Way Cool; now is time to start company (Score:5, Interesting)
And? (Score:1, Interesting)
I run XP on my first gen Eee PC because I wanted Windows. It runs just as quick as the default Xandros and other Linux distros I put on it. I didn't have to do anything special to get XP running on it either. I borrowed an external CD drive from a friend and installed XP. Installed the drivers and thats it. Same thing for Ubuntu.
People bash on about XP being slow and crappy on these low power systems but in reality it isn't. Vista is going to be another story and so I welcome Microsoft's efforts to make Vista run as well as XP does currently. Stripping extra services out which only 0.1% of Windows users actually use will help greatly. One thing I assume they will do is setup some kind of specification for what is and isn't a "lower powered ultra portable laptop" and then only license this "special version" to OEMs with a system that meets the specs. I also welcome this as it gives Linux a spec to aim at as well.
All in all I welcome Microsoft's decision. Competition is good for us (the consumers). Let's enjoy it and give them feedback on what you want/don't want.
Re:If they want to limit specs... (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't compete any more. They mandate. Their problem seems to be that OEMs are now following along by releasing systems under their mandate, but also building neat stuff outside the mandate. They can't do anything about the fact that their mandate subtracts value, making the new Linux gear immensely popular.
Re:crippled hardware = bad performance (Score:3, Interesting)
It smacks of anti-trust issues but that really isn't a big surprise anymore.
Re:The pitch (Score:5, Interesting)
(I base this on the near 300 dollars for Vista Ultimate and near 200 dollars for Home Basic.)
Fear and trembling in the PC industry (Score:5, Interesting)
The PC industry is terrified of low-cost laptops. They see $199 laptops in bubble packs at every WalMart, with a profit of about $1 per unit. Dell is in trouble; their custom-build business model is dying. So Microsoft's approach to driving up prices looks attractive.
It won't last, but it might be good for a few years.
Re:But are these devices that useful? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The pitch (Score:5, Interesting)
And just because the guy's a chump doesn't mean that he's wrong. If their cheap hires are *nix illiterate or they suck so badly as an employer that they can't retain staff; then the point-click-drool solution doubtlessly is "better" for them.
Re:crippled hardware = bad performance (Score:3, Interesting)
Any PC built from, say, year 2000 or later is at least 100 times faster, with equally improved memory, graphics and background storage. Does it feel slow? Then either:
- You're running the wrong software (like the wrong OS, too much spyware or other crap), or
- You're using the wrong tool for the job (like trying to run Crysis on a Pentium 3 with onboard video), or
- Your budget doesn't match your requirements.
Either way: complain all you want, but claiming such a computer is slow, is simply inaccurate.Re:The pitch (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a ton of respect for the guy, he has build a successful business, and is obviously good at what he does.
We had a frank discussion on the platform they use, and he has worked with Linux before. What I did notice was the aforementioned FUD reference. I'd expect more from a guy like this.
If the MS platforms were really that much superior to the Linux platforms why not have more specific and substantiated arguments? I smelled either a test, like an above poster mentioned, or he really believed the FUD, since he had no recent experience in a linux environment - by his own admission ten years ago at the newest.
Am I the only one to feel... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, there's a great alternative out there. Microsoft is, for the first time in a very long time, in a position not as the big bully, but as the kid trying to get popular. Let's see how they manage to cope with this...
That's a load of rubbish (Score:3, Interesting)
If this is true then people should complain to their governments. I'm sure we can count on the US gov doing nothing about it but hopefully the EU will put a stop to that at least happening over here.
A modest projection (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft OTOH is caught in a dead end. The only chance I can see for them to be relevant 20 years from now is a gamble and not at favorable odds. They need to loose WGA, meaningless product definition, and all the other annoying and ineffective marketing tricks and focus their considerable talents on building the best servers and desktop systems they possibly can. They have lost over a decade since their last user oriented release (Windows 95) and will already be playing catch up in many areas.
Yes, they will leave money on the table short term. But if they can get their act together, they may have an expanding base of happy and enthusiastic customers ten years from now. If they don't do that, they are doomed to lose out to Apple, Open Source, and Google who do have such a base.
BTW, I just had to deal with a series of hardware and software meltdowns that required getting both a Windows XP and a Linux PC up with just basic install software and a backup of the old applications. Neither operation was fun, but Windows was especially awful -- a sort of ongoing horror show of stupid and arbitrary constraints on what could be done and how it could be done. The only place where Windows was clearly superior was in installation of a network printer. And eventually CUPS will be usable by mere mortals, so Windows won't even have that to brag about.
To sum it up. Windows and Open Source both have a long way to go. Open Source looks to be chugging along. Windows is lost in a horrendous swamp. It isn't hard to see the eventual outcome.
Re:In business school... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If they want to limit specs... (Score:1, Interesting)
1st. I'm fed up with the fact that specialist PC-shops and service providers have witnessed declining margins for years and years. Due to impropper competition from retailers without history/knowledge and expertise on these markets for instance. I mean why are shops like ALDI with expertise in food retail nowadays selling PC's? They can't provide proper assistance, proper sevice nor have expertise at obtaining quality products to customers. Or impropper deals with OS-developpers or hardware developpers( e.g. Microsoft giving free rides to schools while consumers have to pay full premium prices in shops). It's impossible these days to maintain a profitable IT-business these days. While all other industries artificially keep their prices up to maintain high profits.
Look around. Fuels get more expensive (yet the actuall costs involved don't), foodprices have increased +20%, and this is with a lot of products and services EXCEPT computers. You get more PC power for significantly less money these days. It has now become at a level that to further decrease prices material-quality and durability is at stake. In that case I completely agree that low-priced PC's should NOT detoriate profits from other higher profile products. In fact I would like to see a price increase on all IT-equipment and use that money for better quality products with a better lifespan unlike the made-in-china-crap we buy these days. I think that there's NO NEED for these ULCPC's at all. Because they probably end up Ultra High Crap PC's anyway. We don't need more crap already.
2ndly. Why favouring those socalled "emerging markets" while WE had to pay full premium prices for these products? Has anyone thought of that? I think that those countries should improve their own social culture and lifestyle and hence improve life quality and associated wages without us favouring them with ultra-low prices. This is NOT fair to us. I don't want to pay premium prices so that some chinese guy can get it cheap! They already have the jobs that we used to do last year. Get wages up so that chinese ppl can pay the same prices as we do. Fair and square!
So I want ppl to complain and demand REFUNDS from M$ if they go through with this! I've paid 99 euro's for my XP home If M$ is gonna sell XP home now for 19 euro's then I want a refund of 80 euro's. Period! Fair play also to us!
Re:So... (Score:1, Interesting)
If the hardware manufacturers are extra-cautious that's because of the retaliatory power of MS. For any equivalent setup (market-segment wise) they'll always go for the MS solution because MS has the power to screw them on the Windows/Office segment. So they only go non-MS when they can tell the monopoly ogre "we really tried, but none of your solutions fit, and if we ignore this segment competitors will eat us".
Breaking the rules (Score:5, Interesting)
The rule was, never release a new platform that won't run the latest version of Microsoft's products. ASUS broke the rule and can't make their new product fast enough. Their new deal with Microsoft just highlights that if you break the rules and succeed, you get new rules.
Maybe ASUS will take the money and run, Maybe they'll deprecate their Linux offerings and move millions of XP Home eee machines and be happy. I don't think so, but that could happen.
It doesn't matter. If ASUS won't break the rules somebody else on their way up will. This whole scene will play out over and over. Marketing deals cannot halt innovation because it's the innovators that bring the interesting new products that catch our attention and gain the most enthusiastic early adopters.
Re:The pitch (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with much of the rest of what you've written, at least in so far as you acknowledge that it's your personal opinion rather than objective fact. Personally I find Linux has advantages of its own. Windows may well be "more integrated" when you only use Windows, but when you're working in a heterogenous environment, mixing x86 PCs with Solaris servers and other systems older and wilder still, trying to integrate Windows is a right pain, thanks to its sadly limited support for standards such as POSIX. As with most things in IT, it's a question of choosing the right tool for the right job... sometimes that's Microsoft, sometimes it isn't. I wish people on both sides of the divide would stop treating this as a religious issue and start applying braincells...
By the way, to the kneejerky anti-Microsoft zealot who modded the parent "overrated" (the coward's choice): please grow up. If you disagree with someone's opinion, then don't mod them down -- post a reply instead, explaining what they've got wrong.
Because that would zap the shares.. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's already hard enough work to keep shareholders from bolting after the Vista debacle, the EU fine (which IMHO will get worse as a problem) and the ISO farce which will come back to haunt them. The amount of BS that is required to drown out reality is enough work as it is without someone trying to be realistic about their prospects as well..
[yes, I'm being sarcastic, but MS *is* taking huge hits, whatever spin they put on it. To have to report a loss *after* they had several months to massage the figures with creative accounting is a *very* bad sign]
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow... [zdnet.com] I cannot [internetnews.com] believe [news.com] you said [itwire.com] that [slashdot.org] out loud. [neowin.net]
Re:The pitch (Score:5, Interesting)
Both have point and click build your own GUI programs. It's just that you use windows at home, work, etc so you build your programs to only work on that OS.
It's exactly the same as the Internet Explorer only websites from the 90s.
You seem very familiar with Microsoft's solutions but have you ever truly looked at other solutions? I think not otherwise you would have structured your comment differently.
When you say "solutions", are you talking about OS or development tools? With regards to OS, then no, I'm mostly familiar with Windows. As far as development tools, I've used products from Borland, Watcom, Microsoft, and SN Systems. Professionally, though, the game industry is currently dominated by Microsoft's tools. Every single game company I've worked at (five) have used Visual Studio.
It may sound strange, but most developers I know (including myself) are fans of Linux as a general principle. I've been hankering to install Linux on one of my old dev boxes and work on some freeware games. Maybe I'll actually make this happen in the near future. It might be fun to start another side project.
Re:The pitch (Score:1, Interesting)
I had the same experience just from shopping at Radio Shack. I go in for a USB thumbdrive, I happen to mention at the salesdrone that I run Linux. Suddenly the button was pushed, and for the next ten minutes I was treated to a pre-recorded response coming out of the guy's mouth, total cost of ownership this, 235 patents that, he even used the phrase "get the facts". Here we are at the mall with people milling all around us, and I thought for a minute he was going to blow a whistle and sic the thought police on me.
Re:They have to fight the camel's nose (Score:3, Interesting)
This dismissive attitude is one major reason that Linux isn't further along taking over the desktop.
Name me a good Linux alternative to the following software:
1) Microsoft flight simulator 2004 or FSX
No Flightgear doesn't even come close to cutting it. It's years behind.
2) Chessmaster X or XI or even Fritz
Don't start with GNUChess or XBoard, which only do very basic chess, don't have any coaching
3) Rollercoaster Tycoon 3
Yes it's a game. It's also a simulator of sorts. However name me a 3D environment in which I can design a running theme park.
4) Realflight G3 or G4
I'm not even aware of a remote control flight simulation package on Linux. Practice here stops me crashing planes which means I get to spend less time and money building and more time flying them.
So far it's games and entertainment, but they're important to me. Let's get broader
5) Photoshop
Yes I know it's a typical complaint but Gimp really doesn't do everything I want to do and really is more awkward to use. I'm still trying to use GIMP where practical since I hate Vista with a passion and XP is being killed off. I'd like to get some familiarity with an environment i may be forced onto in a year or two.
6) Omnipage pro
Solutions that only OCR single column text are useless to me. I got Omnipage SE "for free" when I bought a printer, Okay so I paid for it but I didn't have an option to get the printer without it since it came bundled. Anyway the OCR solutions aren't near as feature complete.
7) IE only websites.
I'm willing to admit that when it comes to web browsers and Office software, Linux isn't far behind. However if I'm doing my banking with someone whose only catering to IE am I suppose to drop every other consideration and move to a different bank at great expense just so I can go to Linux? Or do I have to use VMWare? Be reasonable.
I won't go on, and I could.
Re:The pitch (Score:3, Interesting)
We also haven't had many interop issues. We have our Linux machines authenticating against Active Directory for single sign on, our web services can talk to eachother, etc...
On the other side of the coin, we run EDA tools on those thousands of Linux compute servers. There was a (hairbrained) scheme several years ago to switch those over to run on Windows. It was a laughable disaster. EDA design on a large scale is best done on Linux - period. By all means pick the right tool for the job. For enterprise application development, many types of web development in fact, and a whole lot of other internally developed software Microsoft is usually the right tool.
Going back to the original post, the sad thing is that most MS bashers aren't qualified to know what the right tool for the job is because they don't really know anything about modern MS environments or development tools ("probably wr0t3 it in VB lolz").
Many UMPCs run XP (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The pitch (Score:2, Interesting)
"Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs ("WinFLP") is a thin client operating system from Microsoft, based on Windows XP Embedded, but optimized for older, less powerful hardware. It was released on July 8, 2006. Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs is not a full-fledged general purpose operating system. It includes only certain functionality for local workloads such as security, management, document viewing related tasks and the
It runs nicely with a ~600MB install footprint and only 64MB of ram for the base OS. However, the licensing for WinFLP might be a bit of an issue.
More info at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Fundamentals_for_Legacy_PCs [wikipedia.org]
Re:They have to fight the camel's nose (Score:3, Interesting)
Regarding your first point: X-Plane [x-plane.com] is an advanced commercial flight simulator package available for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It should compare favorably with MS Flight Simulator.
Re:Good ole joe (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, it is too simple of course, but I wholeheartedly I agree with your parent post. Everything is made difficult by fact that PHB are usually very incompetent in dealing with IT systems, and yet, they wanna a) dictate which product to use (as they have better "friendship" with salesman who pimps up lastest Microsoft solution than with technician which usually lacks good communication skills and which is smarter, therefore untrusted by leadership. Strangely, but it is how human mind works) and b) implement on their vision. Usually both of these points heavily conflict between each other.
So, again, I agree with parent - in such situation if I see no benefit with dealing with such company, I drop it. Life is too short and there are lot of other potential good companies, who really trust judgment of mine and are ready to say what they want and listen what offers I have.
And let's not forget - did good, open source and free software can really make your business fly. If someone don't get it after several good and clever presentations - well, their call.