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Falling Hardware Prices Favor Linux

Posted by kdawson on from the days-when-vista-walked-the-earth dept.

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?"

6 of 459 comments (clear)

  1. Serving the diners or the cooks? by shanen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linux will never 'take off' until the Linux people stop answering almost every question with the equivalent of "Go in the kitchen and cook it yourself." Most people just want to at a tasty Linux sandwich, and they have no aspirations to be master chefs.

    As far as I know, Ubuntu is the only distro that mostly understands this. Just a coincidence that it's the most popular desktop?

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    1. Re:Serving the diners or the cooks? by Odiumjunkie · · Score: 5, Funny

      > and they have no aspirations to be master chefs. That's just as well, Halo 3 won't run on linu... oh.

    2. Re:Serving the diners or the cooks? by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just for time comparisons, I'll let you take a brand new HP Vista laptop, Power it up, make a set of recovery disks, connect wireless, and create a couple user accounts.


      You are either making up a good story are just full of crap.

      1) HP Vista laptops ship with recovery DVDs, there is no reason to create one.

      2) Connecting to wireless is as easy as clicking on the freaking ballon that says, networks are available, click to connect to one, and even if it is WPA or WEP, you type in the freaking number or insert the USB drive with the key.

      3) Setting up accounts is hard on Vista? Wow, then you better run from any *nix. Control Panel -> User accounts -> Create new account (Type Name and Password, select security level) Done...

      4) Product activation is automatic if you tell it to just activate when you are online, or one click in the control panel.

      5) AV Software? Wow, that is tough, download AVG, and you are done.

      So again tell us how this took you ALL DAY?

      I'll call you out on this, as I just delivered several new HP laptops to family and friends that don't even understand the difference between the left and right mouse buttons, and they ALL completed the tasks you describe by themselves in under 5 minutes...

      So which is it, are you really that stupid or lying to get positive SlashDot points?

  2. MS Tax? by El+Lobo · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is one of thos cliche phrases that are, oh boy, so stupid, it's not funny anymore. i don't pay any MS tax! I GLADLY pay to use their products. Even if there are free ones. I like Windows (and am VERY PROUD of being a Windows user), I like programming for Windows, I love Visual studia and .NET. So I am a custommer not a tax payer. End of the story.

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  3. Perspective flip by fyoder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As hardware prices fall below OS cost, it will be possible for Microsoft to 'bundle' the hardware with the OS. Perhaps the next Windows family will be 'Windows Laptop', 'Windows Home Computer', 'Windows Server', each coming with the hardware pre-installed. The current situation only appears to be something of a conundrum because we are accustomed to thinking that the hardware should be the most expensive part.

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  4. Yes, and I know why it didn't work out that way by ESR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's right, I did make this claim.

    And I know why the effect didn't bite. It's because the big OEMs get their cost of Windows installation offset by the fees that crapware manufacturers play to get their demo versions and adware and spyware bundled into the distro. For an outfit like Dell, those fees are probably large enough to make installing Windows a net profit generator.

    This would also explain why Linux configurations generally cost more that Windows configurations with identical hardware. It's not conspiracy, they're just trying to maintain margin in the absence of the crapware fees.

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