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HP Sells Cheap FreeDOS PC in China
Johan writes "HP has started selling a Yuan 3,999 ($483) PC in China. The cool part is that it runs FreeDOS! Not sure why FreeDOS was chosen, but I suspect they expect it to be replaced with Linux or Windows by the user. By not having to pay for Windows, they are able to include better hardware. They probably didn't want the support burden of bundling the PC with a Linux distribution." And while we're on China, Cringely has some prognostication and speculation about IBM's sale of their PC division to a Chinese company.
Is $483US really cheap in China?
I am having a hard time imagining FreeDOS with the chinese character set, if thats what is used.
I think the reporter has never used FreeDOS, nor knows what it is (surprise surprise).
FreeDOS is very useful, but for the vast majority of users, it's not an "alternative" to Windows. It's an alternative to MS-DOS!
Why include it with anything if you expect them to replace it anyway?
There is no sig
I suspect they expect it to be replaced with Linux or Windows by the user....They probably didn't want the support burden of bundling the PC with a Linux distribution.
Oh, come on. Don't be such a zealot. Lets get real. How hard is it for a vendor to install linux? They are going to replace it with a pirated copy of windows. Yeah, so slashdot is a site for (open source) geeks, but this is just going too far. This is just plain lying. BTW, I live in a developing and there already a LOT of PCs by compaq which have freedos or some other DOS. I KNOW what these PCs are used for. They are just replaced with a pirated copy of Windows. Trust me. I know.
The next thing you know, slashdot will be reporting in a few days that the Linux desktop share has exceeded that of Windows desktop share.
pirating is rampant in China. Is HP thinking the PC will probably get a pirated copy of Win-XP, but it is not their fault if it does?
Oh, c'mon, he has a point. FreeDOS is a nice OS, but for a modern computer sold to "normal" people it's simply unusable. Like i said in an earlier post, IMHO they bundle FreeDOS instead of "HP-Linux" because it spares themselves of offering support.
Breaking ties with Microsoft and OEM bundled Windows (which, realistically, will end up installed in most of those machines one way or another) might also have something to do with it.
Any site linked from Slashdot is bound to get a free DOS.
Now to be more on-topic: Does it have FreeDOS installed or does it just come with a FreeDOS disc? I remember a while back that someone used that as a loophole against an MS contract that mandated the company not to sell machines without an OS. They responded by shipping the machine with a copy of FreeDOS. (was it dell?)
As I'm sure it'll be tough to get online, download Linux iso's, and burn them to cd-r using FreeDOS, are there any provisions made by the Linux community to make sure folks who need distros there can get them? I'm thinking Ubuntu-esque.
Then there's the pessimist in me that's thinking the machines will have a pirated version of windows instead of a perfectly legal Linux distro. Oh well.
is what cringley had to say. the whole cheap PC china thing should have been the side note.
As mentioned in other posts, this sounds exactly like what Dell did. In order to satisfy a contract with Microsoft that requires every PC to be sold with an OS, if you bought an "OS-less" PC, it included FreeDOS on a CD. Of course, nobody is going to actually use FreeDOS, but it satisfies the contract.
but FreeDOS won't be replaced by Linux. 99.99 % will install Windows on them. I have been there. You can go into any shop (almost all carry them) and get a CD for about a buck containing Windows XP, Office, Photoshop and Dreamweaver in a printed cardboard cover.
Nobody, not even the largest businesses will get bothered if they only install pirated versions. Considering the fact that all large Software makers dont't do discounts in countries with a lower average income I have a hard time imagening anyone paying for Windows in China.
So Windows is basically free (as in beer) for everyone in China. So Linux and Windows are on par considering price. On how many desktops do You see FreeDOS getting replaced by Linux again?
It is an extra $200 for the additional 20MB of memory.
100%? No. The kernel and core utilities are fully open source, which Apple has superb relations with the projects. The browser is based on KHTML, etc.
The hardware is open standards, which Apple leads the way in (USB, Firewire, bluetooth, rondevous, pci-x) and is first to adopt. PowerPC, ram, video cards, monitors, keyboards, peripherals, drives, disk drives, etc... All open(though not necesarily the most abundant) standards.
get off your high horse. Apple is consistantly giving back to the open source community, rely on open standards, and join open groups.
They are a company, they can do what they want. But give them some slack.
So HP has only to ship the computer from the manufacturing facility in Taiwan to China instead of to the U.S. or other market and probably saves on Windows tax and the computer sells for more than a low end machine where costs are higher?
What would be the opposite of 'dumping'? Is there no end to HP's efforts to destroy their entire business?