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HP Dumps Linux for Windows XP MCE in New Media Player
An anonymous reader writes "There hasn't been much said about this, but HP's new z545 Digital Entertainment Center appears to be a Windows-based re-spin of an earlier Linux-based model that HP unveiled three years ago at the Tech X NY trade show in New York, and which was sold for some time as the de100c Digital Entertainment Center. Seems like the joint's gone downhill ever since Perens left."
Microsoft has had this recent trend to push a stripped down version of Windows XP on all "Media Devices." I was at the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology were M$ launched the Windows Media Center or what ever its called for devices like this. While linux might do it better M$ has done all the hard work for these companies and made it intigrated into Win XP so its "easier for users." Ive played with a few of these and found it anything but easy. This is just M$s way of competing with the iPod.
Is it possible that HP used the earlier iteration of the device to push home it's economies of scale message with Microsoft?
There has been a few stories recently where local governments, schools and SMBs have used Linux as leverage to get MS to drop their prices.
HP is just as much a customer of MS in the OEM market as anybody else...They would have to negotiate what they pay for their OEM licenses that they include with their consumer PCs. Any drop in what they pay MS for the OEM licenses translates into pure profit for HP without changing the sticker price.
Granted that these media centre devices have a reasonable chance of providing market penetration where PCs will not go (I'm thinking the poorer end of the socioeconomic demographic), and the aforementioned "linux as leverage" strategy, MS may have been prepared to give up some percentage on their OEM license fees for ALL of HPs product range to get MS MCE onto these devices.
Actually what I think is much more likely is the new generation of DRM products that will come out soon to lock in customers.
Microsoft is pushing DRM-enabled products and the mass media makers mostly agree. So since it would be easier to buy compatable products then try to recreate compatable ones in Linux while facing legal hurdles and patent problems.
Embedded Linux is very mature nowadays, their is nothing that is more expensive when it comes to developing linux platform then windows, it's all already been done by other companies.
The future or DRM media seems much more likely, considuring that this sort of thing is microsoft's and the mass media's baby and they are making a media player after all.
Don't worry. It'll be a flop. There is no advatage of this device over a Laptop towards the high-end, or a tablet pc towards the retarded end, or a pocket-pc type device on the low/small end. (after all a decent NEW laptop can be had for around 600 bucks nowadays, and it'll only get cheaper) They are aiming for a market niche that either doesn't exist or is so small they will fail even if they reach full market saturation.
Through my job it telecoms, I've been to a number of IBM sites in my travels and the Linux presence is openly on show at all of the sites I've visited whereas the missus says she's never heard Linux mentioned at HP, even though she's involved in their internal IT support.
This shouldn't really come as a great shock to anyone - having worked for Lucent in the good old Carly Fiorina days, that woman typifies the role of "corporate whore" and will name drop just about any cool and emerging technology she can just to make her empty speeches sound more impressive.
Digital is no more, Tru64 is dead and HP simply never were and never will be a true Linux player - they're basically just a hardware arm of Microsoft these days.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
HP is dead. It used to be a scientific/technical company on the cutting edge of science and technology. It has ceased to be anything of any importance. Instead of hardware that people will never part with (I'll give up my 48G when I'm *dead*), Carly Fiorina has turned that company into a "Brand" that markets a commodity. Brands are a dime a dozen. The HP brand trades on its history and when people realize that HP is not the HP of history, the Brand of HP will be worth exactly what Carly has turned it into:
Nothing.
HP symbolizes to me what happens when MBAs and Accountants run businesses. When your goal is merely meeting the numbers at the end of the quarter, you do not see the long view of the future. You simply go with the lowest common denominator, stagnate, and lose customers in the long run. The death of such a company does not take long. Witness the Race to the Bottom between Compaq and Packard Bell. Both are gone, and it only took a year or two to happen.
Thanks, Carly, for killing one of my favorite companies.
--
BMO
That is besides the fact that if it wants to sell any to "Joe Average Consumer" it will have to support some DRM. As apple does not want to license its own, the choice boils down to Microsoft and Microsoft.
The EU comission was bloody right to start investigating MSFT DRM ambitions. Unfortunately the next commissioner is almost as rabid in Bill-arse-licking as Tony Bliar so we may see this one going down the drain. Bummer...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
that's a lot of power. depending on the price point on this it may be cheaper to buy this and use it as an internal webserver/fileserver
suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
This company isn't really HP, it became something else when Carly Fiorina took over running the company. In any case, Carly Fiorina said at the beginning of this year, that she aimed to put rigorously enforced DRM on all HP's devices. Meanwhile MS is busting a gut trying to sell its new DRM technologies to everyone. It's easy to see how Linux just doesn't fit into that strategy particulary well, and Microsoft does.
do this anouncement means the hype of "linux everywhere" is over ?
let's face it, guys. all products/technologies goes though an over-hype period during its life where it's sold as fix-all do-all solution for all mankind's problems. then people realize that it's not quite like that, the product/technology is loathed because it didn't deliver, the it gets to the point we all hope linux gets to: it becomes a mature technology.
maybe it's already mature enough for the server and some embeded appliances, it's maturing quickly in the handhelds and maybe now it's time to tackle the media-center maturing proccess. maybe not from greedy brands like HP, but maybe from some unexpected source. after the media center is taken, maybe the hype of "linux on desktop" will be already fading, which will means the start of the maturing proccess in this field too, but i'm digressing here.
let's give time for linux to mature as a media-player and wait. a breakthrough in this area will certainly come from a really inovative comapny. i'm just certain it wont be HP.
What ? Me, worry ?
Where will the next generation of middle managers come from? The ranks of outsourcing engineerings in China & India. Where will the next generation after that of executives come from? The ranks of successive middle managers overseas. Where will the following generation of entrepeneurs come from? The ranks of all three overseas. Business people make a big deal about "supply chains" but apparently don't see when their own children's "job supply chain" is being destroyed by their own actions.
Strictly speaking HP was far more "money grubbing" during previous periods than they are now - now they simply are in a race to the bottom and to the end-of-life for the HP brand and corporation.
During the previous era, HP lived on mind-bogglingly large margins (as most techology companies do) which in turn funded a healthy R&D: HP essentially invented whole classes of products (R&d) or was the first to make whole classes of product finanical viable (r&D). HP "lived" on the upper leading edge of the Technology Adoption Curve usually entering markets at the inflection after the "Chasm" or 'C' and exiting markets on the trailing edge. Take the integral of the area under the curve and you get the product technology market capitalization and HP's previous strategy was to take most of it!
The "New HP" is now consciously dedicated itself to entering markets on the trailing edge of this curve and exiting on the trailing edge. Basically they are taking table scraps left by others, letting others control their destiny and limiting their own growth potential. Pretty much a recipe for death. HP is already a walking dead company and the current executive team have slandered and debased Bill's & Dave's legacy and triumph! We just waiting for the HP brand to be bled away.