Moore's Law Is Microsoft's Latest Enemy

Glyn Moody writes "Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the achievements of the popular new Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a tab-based front end that hides the complexity. But maybe its real significance is that it has pushed down the price to the point where the extra cost of using Microsoft Windows over free software is so significant that ordinary users notice. As Moore's Law drives flash memory prices even lower, can ultraportables running Microsoft Windows compete?"

Comments

Pertains to density at a given price

[tepples]

Moore's law pertains to transistor density, not price. The quotation in the Wikipedia article implies that Moore's law pertains to density at a given price: "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year" (my emphasis).

Re:Pertains to density at a given price

[peragrin]

It's too bad we are talking about Gordon Moore, and not steve Moore.

it's called a corollary

[way2trivial]

an excerpt....
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=2
"WASTE AND WASTE AGAIN
Forty years ago, Caltech professor Carver Mead identified the corollary to Moore's law of ever-increasing computing power. Every 18 months, Mead observed, the price of a transistor would halve. And so it did, going from tens of dollars in the 1960s to approximately 0.000001 cent today for each of the transistors in Intel's latest quad-core. This, Mead realized, meant that we should start to "waste" transistors."

Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price

[caerwyn]

Moore's law does pertain to transistor density, but anyone who doesn't see the relationship between the two is just as silly. Increasing transistor densities invariably mean price drops for the previous generation of chips, and since the power/capacity of chips is growing more rapidly than the needs of devices, especially in the ultraportable segment, it is not at all surprising that the chip prices for those devices see a corresponding drop.

Moore's law may pertain to transistor density, but increasing transistor density indirectly affects the price of chips at lower transistor densities.

Re:And advertising/capitalism is Linux's enemy

[MightyYar]

You will see reams and reams of crapware installed on linux PCs too if it ever takes off. Even Apple can't resist pushing their .Mac at you and putting some trial applications on the machine.