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Falling Hardware Prices Favor Linux
An anonymous reader sends us to a blog posting arguing that, as hardware prices fall below $250 for laptops and desktops, Linux should gain as the Microsoft tax stands out in sharper relief. "In previous years, if you were spending US$1500 and up on a laptop, the Microsoft tax you were paying didn't seem like such a big deal. XP or Vista was pre-installed, fairly convenient... But as the price of hardware for small basic machines comes down, (think under US$250 by the end of next year), then software price starts to become a big issue. Why would you pay the price of your new laptop again just for the software, when all you want to do is really basic things?"
People aren't so much buying With Linux at it's current state, I wouldn't be too optimistic about that. While the idea is sound, the implementation that makes it works is far from perfect. If my mother were to walk into best buy and buy a Pavilion dv9000 with Ubuntu preinstalled, she's going to have to go through what would have to be hell for her and back to get it running: boot options like "nokvm noapic noacpi", blacklisting bcm43xx, installing ndiswrapper over a wired connection, manually installing flash for their 64-bit system.. These are not things that your average non-geek is capable of doing. Until they don't need to do those things to go on facebook, download music and watch movies on youtube, Linux on the laptop is simply not going to happen.
...at least then you could do something with it (ie make phone calls).
A $250 laptop might have about as much capability as a blackberry or half-decent cellphone (but lacking the ability to phone anyone) so why the fuck would anyone who has REAL-WORLD computing needs buy one?!
A barely useful laptop (insofar as actually trying to use it like a laptop) costs ~$750 plus tax and warrantee including ~$150 or so for OEM XP Pro, or (theoretically) ~$600+ without an OS. I gotta tell ya, for 25% of the base cost of the machine, having an Operating System that's actually useful and doesn't ever require me to recompile ANYTHING (or, more importantly, doesn't require my users to do so) is money WELL SPENT.
-AC
No. A tax is an obligatory payment to some higher powers. You don't want Windows? Good , buy a Mac, use Linuzzzz, Amiga, BeOS or write your own OS. Nobody actually is putting a gun in in your mouth. Maybe your employer, but that is your employer's choise. You can always find another employer. The problem is: this is often a VOLUNTARY "tax". I know this is slashdot and it's cool to use cliches like "M$", "MS tax", "flying chairs" and it's cool to say that I love "insert exotic Linuzzz distro here". Saying that you actually love Windows is definitly not cool here (because you are not part of the cool minority) It's like saying you love Pavarotti to Opera snobs: What Pavarotti, that traitor" Or saying you love Metallica to a real metal lover (What , those sell outs!) Guess what, a lot of people really love Pavarotti with all his defects. A love of people are proud of everything metallica done (even Load and Reload). And a lot of people love Windows (and have tried other systems as well). Yes, it's not cool to say so, but I am a proud Windows user and have not the minimal desire to change that at this moment. In the future? Who knows.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Who tagged this article "Math"?!?? Give me your damn geek card RIGHT NOW because this article has nothing to do with math. I'm not fucking majoring in fucking mathematics to figure out what fucking percentage of a fucking computer's price goes to fucking Microsoft. Arithmetic, sure. But MATH? Of all the places I'd think would appreciate mathematics... Slashdot! You have forsaken me!
so microsoft is gonna "innovate" what apple has been doing since the 80's? that sounds about right
do not read this line twice.