HP Pushes Open Source For Small Businesses 118
ruphus13 writes "HP finally begins to actively push open source in its products. From the post, 'HP has been quirky over the years when it comes to open source. It has been, traditionally, a company that supports open source — especially in larger enterprises... Wednesday, it announced two new open source products, geared to small businesses and educational institutions. HP plans on including its 'Mozilla Firefox for HP Virtual Solution' on more of its business class desktop PCs (to a total of seven models between the HP Compaq dc/dx lines in the US, eight models worldwide). Come December 15th, HP will also offer Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on its HP Compaq dc5850 model. The base SLED-equipped model will cost $519, and features the usual open source suspects for the small business setting — OpenOffice, and mail clients such as Evolution.'"
The fear is gone (Score:5, Insightful)
At long last vendors have gotten over their fear of Microsoft. There was a time HP and Dell would never consider preloading an alternative operating system. Now they're both doing it, and it's good for the customer, good for Linux and -- surprise -- good for HP and Dell.
The complete marketing failure that is Windows Vista made this possible. (Note that I didn't say the failure of Vista. Microsoft is on the road to salvaging the OS itself, but customer perception of its quality is a lost cause.)
Re:The fear is gone (Score:5, Insightful)
There, all of my Apple complaints are off my chest. Man, I feel better now!!
Ok, A/C, I'll bite:
a) Frankly, I don't know many people buying new Windows PCs. They're mostly buying Macs and half are migrating from Windows PCs. The ones buying Windows PCs always give a sad excuse like "my wife needs it for her work".
b) Apple was using the term "Personal Computer" for six or seven years before the IBM PC, which simply co-opted the term from others. Apple probably has more rights to "PC" than anyone.
c) It sounds like you should be worrying more about how obsolete your knowledge base will be in the next decade than ranting against whatever is displacing it. Step into the light. More individuals and companies are realizing that it's irresponsible to put a Windows machine where something else will do the same job. Everything is a threat only if you stay in a box and galvanize yourself against technological change.
Re:The fear is gone (Score:3, Insightful)
HP is shipping Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop linux.
Novell is Microsoft's trained 150 pound gorilla.
Re:The fear is gone (Score:4, Insightful)
You have more confidence in Windows 7 than I do. Do you have some reason for such confidendce? Vista was similarly advertised as a wonderful upgrade, but its promised features (such as WinFS) somehow managed to fail, miserably, when actually tried and many of them were pulled from the final product. The new user interface is pretty silly, its intrusive DRM and security features are painful for users and encourage similar stupidities of always hitting 'yes', and the policy games played with releasing 'Vista-only' drivers and products are awful.
There seems no reason to think that the policies that led to Vista have changed, even if its preliminary tests are promising. Preliminary tests of Vista were also misleading in their performance tests.
Re:Always supported Open Source?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
They all work in GNU/Linux without any proprietary components, so what are you complaining about exactly?
Re:The fear is gone (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh... then you'll have to add $200 to the cost of the PC. Better to leave the Windows off and push Linux as a "lower cost alternative".