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Is There An OS On My Hard Drive?
stm2 writes "Thanks to an agreement between Lindows and Seagate, from October you will be able to choose a hard drive with or without Lindows. Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water", because now you get for free something you used to need to go after (people used to go to dentist to get their Fluoride). According to the PR, the OS can autodetect and configure itself on the host machine."
The question isn't what but when. When will Microsoft money come into play. Sooner or later Microsoft will be knocking on Seagate's door with a fruit basked full of goodies.
This a good start but I'm afraid money talks and we all know Microsoft money talks the loudest of them all.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
What they gain is the attention of another press release, and a few dozen new users who happen to have the boot order of their BIOSes wrong, and will boot from the new drive instead of CD and see Lindows for the first time completely by accident.
There will also be a ton of literature in the box, more inexpensive advertising. A lot of people have heard of Linux, but think it can be hard to install. If it's sitting there waiting for them, and they've heard of it but are afraid to try to install it, there's a chance a few might let it go ahead and boot... what is there to lose, right?
Most people won't care. Lindows isn't going for "most people." Their target audience is the group of people who aren't afraid of Linux, but are technically curious. It's a small market, and this might actually let them make a little headroom.
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Use Vobbo for Video Blogs
It will now be possible to go to a store, buy pieces and have a working computer when you get home with no other work necessary. That's a good thing!! Segate sells a lot of retail drives. If it works out even a little bit for them maybe others will follow suit. I've heard ATI has MMC for Linux in-house somewhere...but that's a big step to sell linux in the retail box. Most mice & keyboards work in linux. Most networking equipment works with linux [heck most home routers RUN linux!] This is a perfect path to getting Linux market share
It's too bad BeOS didn't think of this first! After all, Robertson is making an end-run around the infamous MS bootloader license. Shops can sell pre-tested barebones systems...then conveniantly slip you a pre-formated Linux drive. They are just selling "upgrade" pieces. And they aren't selling Linux at all...the Manufacture just adds that as a "test" feature. Very, very clever.
They had a nice selection of scantily clad ladies in Lindows outfits, who were giving out snackfood. On the snackfood package was a picture of an octopus punching Bill Gates in the nads with 8 arms. No I am not kidding. It tasted quite good. I picked up my Lindows show-bag as well.
In the booth they had Lindows on everything with "Lindows approved" stickers pasted over the "Made for Windows XP" ones.
Everyone was trying to rm -rf / the PCs, but were failing quite miserably.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Is this a sneaky way to get a machine with Linux preinstalled? Can I now get a Dell box with a Seagate harddrive in it that has Lindows preinstalled? If so, this is pure genius.. it really makes you wish that Be had figured out this strategy instead of banging their head up against the OEM brick wall.
How we know is more important than what we know.
While the element Fluorine is highly toxic, I seriously doubt that Fluoride is is toxic or millions of people would be dying of fluoride poisoning. This is like saying table salt is poisonous because it contains Chlorine. While Chlorine on its own is a deadly gas, sodium chloride (table salt) is not poisonous and is in fact necessary for human survival.
Smeghead every day of the week.