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Microsoft Extends XP For Low-Cost Laptops
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft says it will extend the sales of Windows XP Home to OEMs by several years, but it's not in response to the SaveXP petition. Microsoft is supposedly making the move in part to ensure that Linux doesn't dominate the market for certain types of 'ultra-low-cost' laptops. XP will be available for OEMs until June 30, 2010, or one year after the availability of the next client version of Windows, whichever date comes later. This greatly extends the earlier XP deadline of June 30 of this year (which was an extension itself), and means XP will potentially be installed on new computers nearly a decade after its original release. The author of the article suggests that the post-June 2008 release of Atom-based laptops encouraged Microsoft to extend XP, even though Intel says Atom can support Vista. Intel also claims that 'Moblin' Linux will be available on Atom-equipped mobile devices starting this summer."
"Can support Vista" and "Can support Vista for 5 minutes" are the same!
... to see a 7 years old OS making the news because it will be extended to 10 years! It's like saying Ford extending the life of their 1965 sedan into the 2010. I mean it works, but I wouldn't define it as an achievement of human progress.
It seems that Microsoft made the decision to extend XP based on an attempt to prevent manufacturers switching, after previously ignoring pleas from the end-users to extend XP. The issue seems to be that they're more interested in selling software (such as Vista) even to people who don't want it than they are in selling software to people who do want it; Vista helps to drive the upgrade train, and XP doesn't, so until the low-cost laptops came off the ground continuing XP would presumably have been seen as a huge evil from Microsoft's point of view. It's the manufacturers that Microsoft are trying to please, not the manufacturer's customers (note that retail versions of XP will no longer be available), and only because they had a real alternative (Linux in this case); this strategy may end up backfiring in the long term, because if retailers are prevented from listening to their customers as long as they stay with Microsoft, they may eventually have enough incentive to change, so as not to lose revenue.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
As hardware progresses does this mean in a way that Windows XP could become the new Windows CE??
Shh.
So when are they going to put out SP3 (and maybe SP4)?
I for one am happy about this.
Vista was not rushed out the door and still has issues, even after SP1.
WinXP is "good enough" (though not necessarily secure enough) in ways that previous version of Windows haven't been and Vista doesn't do much to change that.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Is keeping their product in front of the customer.
This is going to make a lot of people unhappy. Lots of OEMs are going to have a little chat with Microsoft about this whole death-of-XP thing I think.
If Vista runs well on a MID I will be shocked. If it ran well, the things would ship with Vista and we wouldn't be having this 8-year-old OS discussion at all since these devices weren't even announced until Vista had been out for a year.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
several, a- Consisting of a number more than two, but not very many.
How did 2008 to 2010 become "several" ?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Is this a self admission that Vista didn't do what they thought it would? What happens when Windows 7 doesn't ship on time? Will they come out with XP SP5?/>
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
wow. this is good news!
-I only code in BASIC.-
I was looking seriously at buying a new laptop before the June cutoff, so I wouldn't have to manually install XP over Vista. Now I can wait just a bit longer.
Hopefully Microsoft will get things right with Windows 7. So this won't have to happen with Vista. Microsoft has screwed up enough with Vista. It's time to learn some things from Linux. lol
Microsoft sees a need to maintain a presence in the low-cost hardware market.
Vista isn't going to do it and Windows Mobile is less than satisfying. XP is Microsofts only offering that can be squeezed onto machines that otherwise might have been exclusively Linux powered. I think this sucks for developers more than anything in that effectively Microsoft is asking them to support two platforms.
load "$",8,1
XP has become increasingly tedious to INSTALL due to the raft of patches needed afterwards. No hope for a re-spin call it SP3 it seems.
They are keeping an OS alive because it runs on less powerful computers. Nothing new. They developed Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs to do the same thing. But, in the case of WinFLP, it was to ensure that people that buy Software Assurance on a computer can continue to pay for that assurance even after their hardware reaches "Legacy" standing.
They didn't release it to the public because it wasn't as effective as a full desktop version of Windows (although if you've used it you'll see it's more user friendly than Starter Edition) and because not enough people were buying new computers that couldn't run what they saw as the current OS.
Now with a shift towards lower powered ultra mobiles, people are buying computers that aren't really suited to run what they see as the current OS.
They are already maintaining a way to run a supported version of Windows on PCs going back to P233 with 64MB RAM because they saw a market driven reason for it. Extending the availability of XP Home just means they are recognizing a similar market in consumer space now.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Please tell me OLPC isn't going over to the dark side. It's what I think of when I hear "ultra-low-cost laptops".
I know that MS already had some team bring up WinXP on the XO with help from OLPC.
I don't understand the rush for change to begin with...I mean, let's use the term EXTREMELY loosely here, just for a moment...but why is there always such a rush to put out new iterations of an old system? making changes and forcing people to relearn everything....Now for that phrase I referred to earlier
why fix what isn't broken?
Sure, XP wasn't PERFECT, but Vista is such a major departure from previous iterations of Windows, and its been met with such negative response from the general public...Obviously Microsoft sees this and is slowly admitting it by constantly slipping in more and more of these extensions. A lot of people don't want to switch over and Microsoft has been losing a lot of customers to Apple and Linux as a result of its push for change in its customers.
When you come out and tell people that you're eventually going to cease support on a product they love, and only support a product they don't want, and tell them "Upgrade or die", they're going to jump ship. Computers have moved into a generation of people that don't like change, and aren't willing to change.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Mainstream support for XP is set to expire on April 14, 2009 according to http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&x=16&y=12&C2=1173 Which is obviously before June 30, 2010. Does that mean they'll extend Mainstream support as well (I'd assume so). If so, it'd be the second time they've extended support (originally 5 years after release, or Dec 31, 2006).
AccountKiller
In 2010, every vendor will be selling machines, regardless the of latest and greatest gear at the time will be as "Low-Cost Laptops", just to avoid Vista!
What about XP's current TCP/IP stack limitations? Do Microsoft intend to add IPv6 in a service pack (which would, if i understand correctly) require the replacement of the whole networking system?
seems like the kind of thing they've 'accidentally' messed up in the past..
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
I think it needs to be made clear the following: XP Home will be available for budget laptops, such as the EEE PC, OLPC, Cloudbook, and Intel's Classmate PC. XP Home and Pro for standard vendors is still being taken off the market as of June 30. This is only for budget laptops; Dell and the other OEM's won't be carrying XP after June 30. Some of the AP stories and writeups on other websites are making it sound like they've gone back on their statement, and XP will be available again. This is to prevent Linux from getting a foothold in the budget laptop game.
It is important to note, that this does not mention the fate of WinXP PRO.
So if you're the average user petitioning MS to save XP, you basically get told to suck it. But if you're an OEM and threaten to carry low-cost Linux laptops, MS rolls over for them.
Gives you a warm fuzzy feeling as a user, doesn't it? A warm fuzzy feeling in your a--. If there was any residual doubt that MS prizes sales over users, now you know.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That's a long way of setting some background; what I'm trying to say is that when a company that's enjoyed success for years decides that their success is due to some special insight or knowledge - the market corrects them. IBM thought they were the leaders in PC technology and made a turn and marched off into the distance. They didn't realize that nobody followed them until much later.
For IBM, this was the thing that changed them from being the leaders in PCs to an also-ran PC company in just a few short years. In their pride, they dictated how the future of PCs should be and ignored their market. Too bad for them; they're completely out of the PC business now.
For Microsoft, Vista is their "Microchannel" moment. They lost sight of the need to satisfy their customer's needs and decided to make some fundamental changes (baked in DRM) on their own. Now they're enjoying the result of that decision; sales of Vista are far, far lower than they expected. And those sales figures don't include all the new machines that came with Vista that have since been upgraded to XP. I know that Vista will never touch any PC I own or control.
Since there's a few smart people at Microsoft they've extended XP's life a few more years. A decent choice; better to sell the obsolete OS than lose more customers to Linux. This won't fix the real problem, though - Microsoft needs to decide which customers they're actually serving. If it's the end user then the next version of Windows is critical; another DRM infested release will spell the end. If they're actually serving corporate interests then it doesn't matter; they've failed already and we're just watching the death throes.
While Microsoft plays their games, Linux continues to evolve and improve. This is a golden opportunity for Linux on the desktop...
That's how long it takes Microsoft to get an operating system into usable shape!
People are still waiting for another service pack or two before going to vista.
They have to keep XP going for the low cost laptop market otherwise Linux will dominate that market, but if they keep XP they're not making any money from Vista.
Sounds like their chess pieces are going to get taken whatever move they make.
They are ditching a successful product like Xp (most successful among the big selling ms stuff at least) for failing vista, but also playing dirty to prevent linux from getting low cost market.
get a load of that.
in which business school they teach students to ditch successful products and to only use them to prevent competitors from getting a slice of some low cost market ?
leave that aside, what kind of logic can justify this ? if you have something successful, you stick by it and make a pillar out of it.
no sir. ms doesnt do that. because they are much involved in their years long legacy of playing dirty, screwing customers AND partners alike and that. in recent years, they have also shifted much attention to 'preventing competitors from being successful' rather than trying to be successful themselves.
excuse me, microsoft lovers in slashdot, im no fanboy of anything, but this picture isnt a neat picture and there is nothing about it to even try defending against any criticism.
Read radical news here
We've been using WinXP or Win2K on dual-boot machines (I have one of the few single-boot WinXP machines) due to problems with excessive CPU cycle usage by WinVista - and had to request WinXP "downgrades" for a number of new PCs with dual and quad core CPUs for our statistical genetic analyses we run.
If they only do this for "low-cost" PCs, then we'll have to completely move away from the Office suite and go to OpenOffice instead. Be a shame, but if they don't want us to use Windows, that's their problem.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm buying one (or two - must think of mom) Asus eee PCs. I've never felt so good about buying a computer in many years. I was very close to buying it online the past week but finally I decided I'll buy it locally in Helsinki.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the problems I had with formulas in Word for Mac on my brother-in-law's iBook. Nice machine but OO.o works much better for me - and since it runs on Linux, and I always wanted a LIGHT notebook... eee PC just won out as the logical option for my on-the-move needs. If I could run a Matlab equivalent on it (and I will definitely look into that) this little gem might replace one of my desktops as well.
By the way, this is my first experiment with Linux as a desktop OS. I have a router with CentOS at home, but as my WinXP-running desktops die out, I'll be replacing them with Linux. Sorry MS, no Vista for me.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
...Linux will continue its steady progress. It's already better than Vista by most measures, and they're selling their old OS to compete. By the time that they stop offering XP, I think (hope) that the choices for OEM's between XP and linux will clearly favor linux.
They released either too soon, or too late.
If we assume that business customers are where MS's real profits come from, then Vista is a fuck-up of epic proportions. I don't know of ANY business that plans to "upgrade" to Vista. Why would they? A five-year-old PC will run XP and basic office-type appliations at full-speed (especially if those machines have 1GB of RAM or more). What does Vista offer as an improvement? Yeah, the security is better, but in a corporate setting, those machines are (hopefully) locked down via Group Policies and permissions anyway.
It's just impossible to justify in a corporate setting. Upgrade all the machines, to get performance rougly equal to what you already have. Oh, and lets not forget that quite a few peripherals don't and WON'T have Vista drivers.
Now, the next version of Windows will come on a hardware-upgrade cycle for a lot of companies, so it will probably sell better. But even then, I imagine that many companies are planning to stick with XP until it's just no longer possible to run it on new machines. And that could be a long time.
What made Linux good was not that it competed with Windows (quite successfully despite the press and the critics of both OS's). Windows techs did learn to start community websites to help each other, so Linux user mindsets have permeated the Windows side of things.
Be happy, Microsoft might be an evil entity or a tool of evil men, but at the very least, many of its users found Linux or BSD or even Darwin because of this. By the same token, competition has been good for the Linux geeks. If the arena full of evil tyrants wasn't there, they would've never received the same press they got now. Had it not been for gaming, some geeks might have never discovered they were geeks.
Microsoft was a stage in evolution, if one seeks to see it as such. They put lots of cheap computers into the homes of those who would've been too inept to make use of the various Unices. Be happy for it, is what I say. Competition has been great for Linux, and would you truly wish to have the OS that is the world's biggest target?
If those in the community decide to fight against Microsoft, they will become what they kill. Microsoft became what they killed (IBM in 87 anyone?). Don't strive to kill Microsoft's joy. Microsoft is sinking themselves. Just keep doing what we've all been doing. It works far more than aggressively fighting for ground. Remember Sun Tzu: "Any warrior can fight a battle and win, but a master wins the war before the battle is fought." Try it. Microsoft is doing admirably at shoving their own foot in their own mouth. All the rest of us have to do is just help the "lusers" in our lives learn to use something else, and make that transition less painful than it would've been for them when many of us got into Unix.
You don't have to be a "guru" or a "wizard" or "3l33t" to help someone less technically inclined. Who knows, they might be able to help elsewhere.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
no great shock here.
Eee Pc opened the floodgates - the future looks to be low power, SSD, minimal RAM long battery "laptop" style devices that will never run Vista in a million years.
This is about containment of Linux - as this is the OS of choice for this new breed.
I bet MS is shitting bricks over this, I have an Eee and the Linux flavor on it is very nice indeed. I still have not put Ubuntu on it.
I keep hearing that 70% of PCs in a year or so will be laptops, if 50% of them are low power devices then that 1/4 to 1/3 of PC in a few years that will not run Vista - you can kinda see why they are doing it.
However, when customers are told that they can only have Vista on their desktop or XP on their laptop they will be annoyed. Even more when XP is being phased out but new SPs are available for the "laptop" version of XP. I can understand what MS is doing, but I think it can (and will) go wrong for them in many ways. Interesting times ahead.
What if I have purchased system with Linux installed, and later want to install XP on the machine.
Will I be able to buy a copy of XP for this system?
I think there is an interesting issue of bundling here. XP may have to continue to be available at retail also.
This is all well and good, perhaps. And yet, despite it all, Microsoft is doing extremely well both in selling Vista and as an organization, with Q1 '08 profits up more than 20% over Q1 '07- client sales alone up 25%. Vista is selling, and selling well, although perhaps not as well as marketing 'droids would like, but so what- it is selling well. Neither Microsoft, nor Vista is dying, Slashdot commentary to the contrary. If you think Vista is a failure in any sense of the word, you really need to reexamine the realities of the situation.
I wouldn't call a celeron 2.4Gz "ultra-low-budget," exactly.
Most people are more than happy with XP and have no desire for Vista.
Then there's also the emerging market of the Eee PC style lower end devices. XP can run on these, but not Vista.
If I was an MS shareholder I'd be asking HTF MS marketing got so out of step with the market.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As prices fall you'd expect to see cheapo laptops with dual core processors coming pretty soon (easily in the next two years). Last I head (which, I'll admit, was several years ago) XP Home only supports one proc/core. I wonder if this is intentional... "switch to vista and double your low end cpu with no expensive hardware swaps!" etc.
Linux's success most likely is entirely due to the way windows ran itself as a business... there have been lots of geek spawned projects to make homebrew software for their computers etc, but none of them took off the way Linux did. why? IMO the predatory practices of Microsoft of promising every feature under the sun in some version of OS software from them for less, than the other companies could provide killed off real commercial competition for windows (except apple, but apple has sold 150 million ipods, which arguably has kept the company not only afloat but with plans to expand their technology offerings for perhaps decades to come(eg: iphone etc))
because companies trying to compete with Microsoft tanked, and because windows took decades to deliver a fraction of the feature sets they promised, and often wound up making various OSes they sold to be very buggy, and very unstable..
well, that's why I started using open source, because windows was horribly horribly broken on the network side, and 'fixes' from say novel cost way too much, and at the time FreeBSD was a more straightforward installer than Linux (1996/1997)
Now Microsoft has pathetic security, because they never designed windows to be secure, so I don't even dare put my windows machines on the net anymore(nasty problem with a rootkit that I'm still cleaning up)... Vista is supposedly better with security, but the hardware requirements are heavy... the only way they could have made it worse is to render the entire desktop with Ray Tracing (perhaps windows 7 will 'offer' that feature, or windows 8)
but yeah with Intel pushing new power saving chips, for portable computing, it's either stick with xp or put windows mobile on it, and since the atom goes to 1.8 ghz, its kind of a waste to use windows mobile.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
It might also be a recognition that the upgrade treadmill is no longer providing much in the way of new value for the end users, compared to the nineties and early this century.
Recognition? It's a downright admission to market failure. This is not something that can be said for free software though.
The last seven years have provided all sorts of great things for free software users that were stuffed into the same modest hardware requirements. Interfaces that were functional and stable have become beautiful without excessive bloat. There are all sorts of productivity increasing features. Printer support has gone from decent to phenomenal. Media playing and transcoding was very hard to come by seven years ago, now it's common and very good. Network integration in both KDE and Gnome is astonishing and this feature alone would make it impossible for me to consider running XP outside of Parallels or some other Virtual Box. Then there are all the specialty applications. The exponentially growing Debian tree has applications for just about any purpose you can think of and it reflects an even larger body of free code.
Free software is not standing still either. People have new itches and they are scratching them so things are not going to slow down anytime soon. Besides better interfaces and specialty applications there are basic communications and sharing needs that people have. I imagine greater speech recognition, better wireless communication in general, better automation of wireless file transfer and synchronization based on location and a host of other digital life uses. Better and cheaper displays will create all sorts of information surfaces and free computing will be the first to really fill the smart house. People have made a good start with X10 type stuff but the ease of porting to ever smaller and more powerful platforms finally will make these things common.
No calls now, I'm
Think about it, some of these low power devices are easily in the power/performance range of ARM and PowerPC chips and a couple already run them on the very low end. The Nokia N800 for example. There's no way Windows XP can run on these and Windows CE is not up to competing against a full OS like GNU/Linux. So what could Micrsoft do and why for instance don't these vendors like Asus bring out ARM and/or PowerPC versions of devices like Eeee PC? They both have MMU's now-adays and are clocking up to the GHz range and GNU/Linux and OSS port pretty easily to these platforms. Getting drivers might be alittle more of a push but isn't the ball for Linux drivers rolling along nicely already?
IMO, it would shut Microsoft out of this market and give the hardware vendors the profit margins they can build a business on. Bulking up the devices so Windows XP will fit on them and taking money from Microsoft to put Windows on them is not a sustainable business. Microsoft will pull the plug when they've limited choice to Windows and Windows only and then pull the plug on the payola for being a Microsoft supporter.
Microsoft is not a hardware vendors friend and they should know this and be doing something about keeping control of their own destiny. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Boot time does not count!
My own reasons for moving to the Unices was because I had more control. The tools were more available to tinker. In windows, short of working in assembler, I had little choice in messing around with things.
Linux has evolved a lot since the simple tools that it was once comprised off... but as many who tool around with Linux From scratch can tell you, it is still a relatively simple system, if only a sort of tank which is carrying a train's worth of bells and whistles.
Whereas Microsoft Windows is more like a small Trabant dragging along the same bells and whistles. Eventually the Trabant breaks down, regardless of the fact that it might be rugged as a simple vehicle. It is incapable of dragging the extra weight for very long.
Also don't forget that Microsoft went and fucked up the network stack in windows (Service Pack 2 for XP anyone?) to deny libpcap (or winpcap as it is known to windows users) for the various and sundry network analysis tools out there. Until the rework was available, most tools (starting with nmap) were severely hampered on Windows rigs.
Remember the ICMP port 139 "win nuke" ? Yeah, remember how the repeated "fixes" only actually fixed "some of the time" attacks? Every time MS fixed them, someone running the patch would complain that "it still works"? As in, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I found that if I had a firewall that dropped the packets, it stayed alive, but anytime it actually "processed" the packets the system dropped.
I STILL don't understand how that stuff worked (and no, i'm not about to hex edit my way through an entire windows core dump to try to figure out what happened, not worth my time)... but thankfully ever since I dumped Windows98 as a browsing environment, I haven't had to figure it out.
Remember those so called "tear drop" privilege escalation attacks in Windows NT, 2000 and XP? Each time they said they were fixed, and yet each time they resurfaced on patched systems? Before I quit working on Windows for a living (my last IT "job") I was given a system to 'clean' that had a virus (the name of which I forget) which utilized a privilege escalation (tear drop, yeah, the one MS said it patched a dozen different times) in order to create an account which it somehow ran as a nested parent account to that of the user. As a result it was able to capture all input and output and forward them to gods only know where. Curiously, it also slagged the system, and thus seems that it wasn't exactly what one would call an "elegant surveillance hack", not anywhere like "Sub 7" used to be.
The only logic I can get, is that Microsoft was simply trying to keep its "licensed professionals" in business. I am willing to even stand by that remark, as I am (until it expires) a Microsoft Licensed Professional, thanks to a company I worked for that paid for all of us to be "certified".
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I'm glad about this...it shows that MS is scared enough of Linux to actually NOT try to force vista onto a certain part of the market.
Just free market forces at work, nothing to see here...
The best thing about the EeePc is that it is directly software compatible with mainstream desktops and laptops.
I wouldn't ever look at one if I had to recompile everything make it work. Being that I don't code, I wouldn't even know how.
Gone!
It's total EEE panic. Asus is selling better than either Microsoft or Asus imagined. It's reaching into Microsoft's core market and teaching them that free software is just as easy to use as any other if it has vendor support. It's also teaching makers that there's a pot of gold waiting for them outside of Microsoft control.
It won't work because XP can't really compete against free software on the same hardware. Compare Works to Open Office, then imagine trying to make the whole Microsoft Office thing work in 8GB of flash memory. IE 7 or IE 8 or Firefox and Konqueror? Outlook Express or Kmail or the whole KDE PIM package? The choice is obvious and the difference is going to grow. The price of hardware that will run free software will continue to fall but the utility of the device won't.
That makes a continuously building profit potential for hardware makers that has nothing but avoidance to do with Microsoft. Microsoft won't be able to get licensing fees from those computers and will have to raise the price on others to keep their revenue flat, say nothing of growing. All of this leads to less control of users and vendors and that will be a very good thing.
No calls now, I'm
People seem to forget that Windows is the basis for a suite of applications--including office. The OS is much much much more important than its cost or even to ensure brand/market control on laptops--windows has massive upsell. The OS is essential for Office productivity domination (including MS office, outlook, etc)as well (and there's a lot of $$ to be made or lost there). Hell, if MS really wanted to, they could _pay_ for their OS to be on laptops and still make up the loss on average sales of other products (not that they need to or that it makes good business sense).
To be sure, MS probably doesn't have anything to worry about
They're telling the world, "We're so incompetent, even after 5 years we can't come out with an operating system that's better than our last one."
That's MS Arrogance(tm) for you. They showed it when they first set the extension of their MS Word documents to *.doc (rather than name it after their actual program, like *.wpr for WordPerfect), and they will ride it all the way into their grave of irrelevance.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Whoa! cool! the next version of the Eee PC is going to be ARM.
No wait for the Eeeee PC when things get stable. Or keep this secret, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are plans for the EeEeEeEe PC which is just going to be too much fun to handle (optimized for web browsing skinnable multimedia).
I wouldn't expect users to have to compile their applications, that's what a distro maintainer is supposed to do. If you use Ubuntu, you don't compile your apps, you just open your package manager( Synaptic ) which is already pointing to the distro's repositories of pre-compiled applications, and pick apps you want to install. Same for RedHat, Suse, PCLinux, etc.
But maybe you hit on something. Anyone doing a PPC or Arm UMP will have to work harder to get a distro to back their product if not start their own version of a distro. They have to make a choice between x86 and playing with Microsoft by enabling their device to run Windows and get easy Linux distro support or go off x86 and roll their own distro and leave Microsoft out of their market.
Still, it is probably a lot of work getting all those apps cross compiled and verified since probably more than 80% have only ever been compiled on x86 except for the kernel. Drivers should be the only things really needing much attention but still not a no effort task.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Try to remember that the road for these Atom procs has just begun. The roadmap calls for dual cores with hyperthreading, and another process shrink will bring the watts down or the clocks up (your choice).
Add some improvements to SSD density and speed; some GPU enhancements. They can already access 3.5GB of RAM. In three or four years these things might be Vista capable after all.
People don't really care too much if their tool is the ideal solution. They just want a tool good enough to do what they want to do.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Microsoft has realized there is still more juice it can squeeze out of XP without affecting Vista sales, so they're going for it. Out of all the OSes out there, Vista would obviously be the worst choice to run on these laptops, even if only because of power consumption issues (though that's just the start of their woes).
Anyway, let's say the ultra-cheap laptop idea really takes off (there's still a big IF on it), it would be one of the best opportunities yet for Linux to stay neck-to-neck with the competition (in the said hardware class).
That, my friend, is a failure.
5468652047616D65
There are existing Linux distributions for non x86 hardware. I've used Yellow Dog and Debian on PPC Mac hardware. There's a PPC flavour of Ubuntu, though it's now community maintained presumably because Apple stopped manufacturing PPC hardware. I've seen Ubuntu running on a PS3 recently. The Cell processor isn't x86. I assume there are binary distros for ARM too though I'd have to Google for that and that would involve opening another browser tab and I just can't be bothered.
You know what the real obstacle is? Flash for Linux is only available as a binary compiled for x86. Since a lot of pr0n sites use Flash video now I don't see anybody selling hardware without Flash support.
Now wash your hands.
Haven't you heard of "Windows XP Embedded" It's a componentized version of Win XP Pro and is based on the same binaries as XP Professional. It's is marketed towards developers for OEMs, ISVs and IHVs that want the full Win32 API support of Windows but without the overhead of Professional. It runs existing Windows applications and device drivers off-the-shelf on devices with at least 32MB Compact Flash, 32MB RAM and a P-200 microprocessor. "XPe" was released on November 28, 2001. As of February 2007, the newest release is Windows XP Embedded SP2 Feature Pack 2007.
XPe is not related to Windows CE. They target different devices and they each have their pros and cons which make them attractive to different OEMs for different types of devices. For instance, XPe will never get down to the small footprint that CE works in. However, CE does not have the Win32 APIs XPe has (although CE has an API that is similar to the Win32 API), nor can it run the tens of thousands of drivers and applications that already exist.
The devices targeted for XPe have included ATMs, arcade games, slot machines, cash registers, industrial robotics, thin clients, set-top boxes, network attached storage (NAS), time clocks, navigation devices, etc. Custom versions of the OS can be deployed onto anything but a full-fledged PC; even though XPe supports the same hardware that XP Professional supports (x86 architecture), licensing restrictions prevent it from being deployed on to standard PCs :-(
I was just thinking as I was reading this topic of how I would love to be able to load only the components I want. I'm a great fan of XP Pro and use it daily in my work. I hope I will never have to downgrade to Vista. These days I am developing software for Adobe Flex & Action Script 3. If I stay at this, I may just switch to Linux when full support for that comes out next year.
The above is directly quoted from Wikipedia.
so it is smart of Microsoft to extend XP Home for low end laptops. Most of those low end laptops got Vista certification for upgrades but were only able to run Vista Home Basic due to lack of graphics power, CPU power, low memory, etc.
College students, for example, cannot afford $700+ laptops that run Vista Home Premium, and would go for a $200 or $300 laptop running XP Home instead.
I installed an OEM copy of XP Home SP1a that I bought from Pricewatch.com (My bet is that Pricewatch.com will have web vendors still selling OEM copies of XP for the next ten years as I can find old OEM copies of 95, 98, ME, 2000 on them already really cheap) on a 330Mhz Pentium II Laptop that I upgraded with a 40Gig hard drive and 192M of RAM that met the minimum requirements for XP Home for my brother-in-law after getting the laptop for $30 from a friend who got it from a storage locker she bid on that someone didn't pay their rent on. Total cost was like $230, including the XP Home OEM install CD (which cost like $89 plus shipping and the rest were the price of hardware to upgrade the laptop so it could run XP). Sure it constantly swaps virtual RAM on the hard drive, but it runs modern XP software like the video player he uses to buy and watch videos on the Internet. Windows 98 couldn't run the video player as it needed Media Player 10 or higher plus integration with IE 6 or 7 and Media Player to allow the DRM to work.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Large IT departments are on Software Assurance or a similar program- they pay whether or not they move to Windows Vista or remain on XP. Their remaining on XP rather than moving to Vista is no failure, so long as they're still purchasing licenses- and they are.
In the long term, you can only determine failure rates in the enterprise market by charting the growth or lack thereof in Software Assurance sales by cost, and yet those appear to be increasing as well.
Moreover, it seems, in my opinion, to be somewhat fallacious when people bring out the old Windows-98-ME-XP saw, like you did. People stay with what works. There is no necessity to move to a new operating system for the hell of it, and neither consumers nor enterprise users do.
Given that Windows 2000 was not marketed toward the consumer and Windows ME was released in late 2000 compared to the late 2001 release date for Windows XP (only 13 months apart) It's not at all surprising that the vast majority of consumer PCs missed Windows ME entirely.
Arguably, if Windows 7 were released tomorrow with only fourteen months or so between it and Windows Vista, it would not be unsurprising that Vista PCs did not constitute a large portion of the market.
As it is, Windows Vista constitutes approximately 9% of the PC installed base. (Source with all of the accompanying disclaimers about UA strings.)
Moreover, your final comparison is odd; you talk about enterprise IT departments being the hallmark of failure and then turn to the example of Windows 98-ME-XP- despite those being consumer operating systems.
That is actually quite interesting. If this does indeed happen, it would spell bad news for Microsoft. Once people get used to the idea that they can do most of the things they need to with a $200 laptop, they will not want to buy the expensive versions again. As a side effect consoles for gaming will become more popular, and Microsoft will see their profit margin take a hit since they can no longer charge $200 per system.
Simply put, when the cost of hardware drops the impact of a windows license as a percentage of the system increases. If the only way to get XP is to buy a cheap computer, then Microsoft are effectively teaching people to use cheaper hardware, which in turn will hurt them since more people will start to feel the impact of the windows license. Their only recourse will be to reduce their profit margin.
Sweet!
Those were significant improvements for a single company back in the 90s, but free software has completely blown them away. Most people also associate the porting of browsers and other programs to Windows with the general progress of the 90s. Since 2000, besides UI, free software hardware abstraction and device support has finally caught up to the non free world for practical purposes.
Free software portability and architecture support had already eclipsed Microsoft's ability by 2000 and totally dominates now. Slashdot started it's life on a 64 bit DEC Alpha while Microsoft was struggling with everything Intel had to offer. Today, you only have to look at BSD and Debian architecture support pages to see just how far you can port free software. There's hardly anything free software won't run on and that makes Microsoft's 32 bit accomplishments look petty.
Stability? My software is more reliable than my hardware. Now that I have a few good UPSs and drastically lower power requirements, my computers just about never go down unless I'm putting in a new part or kernel. Having used Microsoft from the DOS 3.2 days, I can say that Microsoft stability has remained about the same. It's better to just turn the old box off.
No calls now, I'm
You're looking at it sideways. Microsoft's overbearing presence will now create a completely new market of out-of-the-box-little-old PCs that are quite adequate to run XP. This is actually a major market opportunity for makers such as Lenovo who are already interested in low-end machines.
The way things are going, I'm hoping to leapfrog completely over Vista... If my employer makes it possible, I'll land in Linux Land and perhaps never have to use Microsoft products at all. (Dream on, Mr. Adequate.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Meaning... 2013 or 2014? Just an (un)educated guess based off what their previous initial "planned release dates" translate into on the real world calendar.
...one day I would love to see what sort of calendar MS uses for when they first announce a planned release date...
It's funny how reality can often be so humorous.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
there are a lot of advantages to being on PC architecture, your machine can run windows if the user wishes, your machine can run wine, your machine can run flash without having to come to a special arrangement with adobe for a port. You can use a regular desktop linux distro with no (or only minor) modifications.
Yes MS has been abusive to it's OEMs in the past but afaict various court judgements have made it much harder for them to get away with that.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
No one is going to wait a whole decade. Three or four years is a long time for hardware makers who have waited patiently for the treadmill to kick out Vista. They have been seven long years without a sales bump. They are not going to wait a whole decade for Microsoft to have a winner on hardware they have to sell. They see those Asus sales now and want a chunk. They also know that chunk is going to cut into whatever they might make instead.
Just look what free software can do with this equipment now. Especially, check out Compiz Fusion clips, which looks as good or better than you can get with Vista on much heavier hardware. Is that "good enough" yet?
It took Microsoft seven years to ruin Windows with digital restrictions and other user hostile stuff. Do you think they can fix it in three or four? Will anyone care by then? I don't think so. You might be right if you think "ideal" and "freedom" mean nothing to people but brand loyalty means far less. The world is tipping quickly towards free software.
No calls now, I'm
If only Sonny Bono were here, and XP could be extended for another 50 years!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
To be honest, I like XP. Sure, it is a little more bloated than 2000, maybe I just got used to it. I have tried and tried and tried to like vista but I just cant do it. It is a piece of shit. They didnt need a new OS to begin with. XP was just fine. All they needed was to do updates, maybe make windows something like a rolling release like so many linux distros are. Maybe give the user the option to control the OS and not the other way around. Thats just how I think tho..
g0t b33r?
XP after months of tweaks and making it behave is just fine. And with this new economy we are in, low end laptops are affordable. I was thinking about picking up a pair of laptops one for debian, and one for XP, using the XP for video editing / photo dumping and the debian for communications / blogging and publishing. Yeah one XP box can do it, but a pair has the benefit of spare parts in an emergency. Plus linux is just plain FUN to use. XP takes agonizing harassment to finally get it to behave proper. And then still weird shit can happen.
So my message to the world (or just Microsoft) is go ahead and keep figuring out what your going to do with Vista, but plan to keep XP (and support it) no matter what until you quit selling software that doesn't work. You want me to PAY for more years of XP security updates after it's termination date comes. I would be willing to discuss that. If there's something else that kicks your butt by then (specifically video editing in linux, or a way to run my lexicons) then you better look out. That's my promise to you. And dear dear adobe don't even think about "vista only."
I will *NEVER* buy Vista.
Stick with a CLASSIC start menu forever.
I want all ram available for MY PROGRAMS not some other fuckin bullshit I have to find and track down modify and turn off, I want to manage MY FILES in Ztree not Explorer. I don't want a fucking folder full of video previews (KDE/GNOME listen up mc kicks your ass), I know what my videos are already. And not with all the garbage fucking directories. At least let me turn that shit off! A little check box. I don't need myvideos mydocuments myaudio My CodeSMART Files
My Data Sources My Games My IMS Projects My Music My Pictures My Videos My Virtual Machines mythis mythat myshit myfuck mygod I wan't to put my files where I want to, and classify all my shit my way. Remember WordPerfect? Xtree? God that folder for everything shit is so unproductive.
I will keep buying Linux magazines.
(unless this wonderful fucking Bush economy makes us all stand in food stamp lines, and fight and kill each other.)
I will keep patching the XP boxes until the end.
And at the end (if it actually comes) I will keep XP hidden behind dedicated linux firewalls and only use linux online. Or I will just quit.
Yes it's that fucking bad.
So, let me get this straight. XP Pro will no longer be available after June. But, the nerfed XP Home version will still be sold? If I can't legally purchase XP Pro, will I still be prosecuted for pirating it? It seems that will be the only way for me to obtain my OS of choice for gaming.
MS will FORCE me to become a criminal pirate! Arrrggg.....
Where from?
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
The MS Fanboys take joy in stating that Windows scales much better than Linux. Yet I see Linux everywhere from tiny handhelds to supercomputers, and apparently MS can't figure out how to run on modern low-end laptops? Please explain what y'all mean be "scaling better."
-a.d.-
I'm Erwin Schrodinger and I approve of this message, and I do not approve of this message!
Windows 2000 is the best operating system Microsoft ever made. She is a dependable woman.
... to see a 7 years old OS making the news because it will be extended to 10 years!
The really sad thing is that even Windows XP was already old technology when it first came on the market. XP was little more than a compilation of operating system technologies from the 1970's and 1980's, with some OOP and web technologies that Microsoft pilfered from other systems from the 1990's.
Asus commercial web site runs on Windows back-end. Note the use of ASPX pages - [http://www.asus.com/products.aspx]
Since there's a few smart people at Microsoft they've extended XP's life a few more years. A decent choice; better to sell the obsolete OS than lose more customers to Linux.
The only reason XP is obsolete is because Microsoft want it to be.
This won't fix the real problem, though - Microsoft needs to decide which customers they're actually serving. If it's the end user then the next version of Windows is critical; another DRM infested release will spell the end.
Maybe instead they should be working on improving XP or ensuring that they produce something which is 100% XP compatable.
It makes sense to keep XP for low-powered machines, especially in light of the inroads Linux has been making, but what people here don't seem to realise is Vista is designed for a different class of machine that XP was; one with 2Gb of memory (SuperFetch), one with competent 3d capability (Areo + composite 3d/2d GUI), and one with a tonne of disk-space (indexing).
I mean, Vista's just not designed for slow machines, as many of you have so politely have pointed out. But then, all machines sold now have 2Gb of RAM as standard, decent 3d graphics, and a hard-disc that could've hosted the entire internet 10 years ago.
I fail to see the surprise?
Add some misconceptions that you're memory is supposed to be as free as possible (instead of say, using it to speed up the system), actual security checks are irritating (I for one want to know when stuff wants to make system-wide changes), and you have yourself plenty of fuel for the Vista FUD fires.
Microsoft extending XP's life is obvious when you think about it; Vista was never designed for anything seriously low-powered, despite what the marketing people may tell you.
Vista is progression at least because it will make better use of new hardware that XP cannot. For example:
I have a stack of RAM, I want it used to speed up loading-times.
I have a ninja 3d card, I want it used to render the desktop faster (tasks being offloaded to the GPU as they are)
I have a tonne of data, I want to find it quicker.
If the above don't apply to you, use XP.
throw new NoSignatureException();
whicheverdatecomeslater
if some logged in non-coward would have the kindness
5468652047616D65
-SP4 and the patches since then slipstreamed into the installation CD
-the latest DirectX 9 also slipstreamed into the installation CD
-LBA 48 enabled by default (currently you have to edit the registry if you want to use harddisks > 128 GByte)
-and as you wrote, up-to-date drivers for common hardware.
With these upgrades, I bet it would look pretty good compared to Vista. As it is, I find it a bit annoying to set up a Windows 2000 machine. But I'm still using it, and it might be my last Windows version. Linux looks nicer with every new version of Ubuntu...
C - the footgun of programming languages
Did MSFT make one of the biggest business mistakes ever? Anybody with a brain knows that Vista is not popular and it will not be widely accepted. People have been installing XP over their new Vista computers. Some have resorted to dual booting with XP, or...some have even gone dual booting with Linux. So who is going to win in this latest (how do they put this???) er... "marketing miscalculation" (yes that sounds better).
Is anyone even aware that there are more and more mandates from around the world to go open source? Without Linux even trying to take on the world the mandates has put Linux in a unique situation to fill that gap. MSFT probably has the best minds money can buy, and yet no one in Redmond saw a trend for "small tiny EePc laptops" before Vista was released? Even last year when they announced the first extension for XP, no mention of the need to extend XP for those newer lower end laptops? Now there are more and more mandates for open source, again MSFT didn't see this coming?
Linux, despite the many naysayers saying it is not ready for desktop. Has been quietly growing every day being used for everyday applications from email, video, mp3, instant messaging all without the bloat or the cost.
See, Linux is boring,.. it does what it says it will do without bombastic pitchmen trying to "WOW" the public.
While MSFT decides to dump their extremely popular XP (leaving XP Home to low cost laptops until 2010). Linux is on the heels of releasing another version of Ubuntu 8.04 in about 20 days.
While MSFT is still working on the Vista issues, the French Police have adopted Linux and MSFT is not in their plans.
While MSFT is trying to deal with the latest EU fine, The City of Munich is now all open source, just like South America is heading to.
While MSFT has lowered prices on Vista, It was announced that WINE 1.0 (free program runs Windows under Linux) will be released in early June 2008.
While MSFT has fanboys praising Vista and slamming open source, 23,000 school computers in the Philippines are all going to Linux.
While MSFT released SP1 for Vista, Russia announced it is going to all open source by 2010.
While there is buzz about Windows 7 even though it is not scheduled for release until 2010. A few thousand more EePC laptops with Linux has been sold.
While MSFT Server 2008 was being worked on, the NYSE ( New York Stock Exchange) has announced that they will be using Linux servers.
MSFT has just put the final nail in their coffin by deciding to discontinue its most popular and stable operating system to date in favor of a bloated, buggy, ill received Vista that only maybe runs properly on maybe 20% of the worlds computers...if that. Amazing.
Linux and Apple are the clear winners for MSFT's recent decisions about XP. Is Linux is ready for primetime? It is, and it got there with little fan fare or outrageous hype.
Will Linux ever be the number one operating system? No . But if they get the 17% share of the OS market, like Firefox got 17% of the browser share in 3 1/2 years. Then expect more than chairs being thrown in Redmond.
I believe the current consensus is that Windows XP SP3 is due the latter half of this month. Think this was posted to /. a couple of weeks ago.
F_T
ARM processors rock for embedded stuff but they are a bit underpowered for a desktop machine. Even the fastest ARM is significantly slower than a Intel Atom. Of course, they have a much smaller die and use less power too. But 1-2W and an Atom sized die should still make a cheap machine with a long battery life.
And ARM are aiming at the embedded market, not at desktops, so they won't expend effort in designing chips to take it over.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
There's a flaw in your reasoning there, doctor. Let's assume that MS gets the next version of Windows out the door with 40% of its intended function missing, 18 months late. This is the norm for MS. Clearly they're not going to abandon their most successful OS ever and present an 18 month gap where they sell nothing.
That post would have made a lot more sense before Intel's Atom release. It's not a cell phone competitor (yet) but it's a kick-ass x86 processor delivering very high performance at a power cost far less than the typical x86 chip.
The full system solution won't really be ready until the move to Moorestown, which will consist of a low-power CPU/GPU/memory-controller, a low-power south bridge, a low-power communication (cellphone+wifi) chip and fully integrated power management. I think it's the ARM/PPC processor manufacturers that should be worried that Intel will invade their market space, not the other way around.
Don't forget that Intel could license some sort of extermely low-power ARM processor to do the "phone in standby" mode and wake the Atom chip only on demand when "smartphone" features are required. That way, they could invade that space much faster without trying to design the ultra-ultra-low mode.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I currently have a 3000 megahertz machine.
I want a new 3000 megahertz dual-processing machine. But I want XP. I guess I'm just outta luck?
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
I stuck XP on my EEE. Darn thing runs good especially after I stick in the extra 16gig SD card and upgraded the RAM to 2gigs.
:P If I could put Diablo or Diablo2 on there w/out the CD requirement I'd do that as well.
:/
Stripping XP down as per the instructions in the EEE manual made it's footprint workable and the extra SD card makes a great place for documents, music, and some application/game installs.
YES I said games too. Doom 1, 2, and Quake 1, 2, and 3 run good on this thing.
Open Office fits nicely on here. I actually installed it to the SD card so the primary drive would have more breathing room. I also put a few other apps over there, darn thing is nearly perfect. I only wish it had a full 800x600 screen though.
Hehe... my "gameboy" not only lets me take notes at meetings an such but lets me frag while I wait for my car to get serviced on at the shop. ^_^
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Ultimately, this move also says a lot about Microsoft. Massive consumer requests for the continuance of XP... sorry, none for you. Massive corporate requests for the continuance of XP... sorry, none for you. Hefty vendor requests for the continuance of XP... sorry, none for you.
Oh, wait a moment, a competing product is increasing in popularity... here's a continuance of the XP licensing and support for that!
After all the time stating that they not only wouldn't, but "couldn't" support XP much longer, I wonder if how much this will do to hinder rather than help MS in their PR-mobile, as well as to possibly bring about some accountability for all the bullshit they've been spewing.
Besides, I'd expect that machines such as Eee would perform much better using Linux over windows, because of the adjustable/customizable/scalable nature of 'nix.
Quite frankly I am tired of this rather immature and dumb founded Operating System War. I am sick of the Linux Distro vs Linux Distro Wars, The BSD Wars, and the all other Operating System vs Microsoft Wars.
I have used a variety of operating systems, and find it better to use them instead of bash them to build up experience that is required in the Information Systems Community for jobs and what not. I am the type of guy that just wants to sit down at a computer and have things work without much tweaking or configuring. Each operating system has their place in the IT world even if you are a consumer you are still resident in the IT World.
When people ask me "Which is the best Linux Distro?" I answer them by saying "Download various LiveCD's and try them, and find out which one best suits your needs instead of blabbering off touting Ubuntu this Gentoo that and what not".
I use windows for gaming and office type stuff, but I also use *nix for hosting and serving.
So please stop it with your immature and baseless rants.
Now granted, adding certain features definitely does put a bit of drag on your CPU, but one of the great things about 'nix is that most of such things are *optional*. That being said, by not using things I don't need, Linux has - even on much of my older/slower hardware - become faster over time, from the Desktop right down to the kernel level. That's not to say that I'm sacrificing a lot of functionality either... the GUI itself has definitely getting more featureful and advanced over time.
The re-release of XP is a sign that Linux really is starting to move in on MS's turf, and that it's becoming a real worry to MS in terms of becoming a viable alternative to regular users. I ran into a guy with an Eee in the subway just awhile ago. He's wasn't a coder. He wasn't a hacker. He was just a regular guy who wanted a cheap but useful laptop that he could surf the net and do regular day-to-day stuff on. Now that is what's going to scare Microsoft.
So why do so many major publishers of commercial software[1] have a habit of not providing non-cutting-edge software? And is a gap of four years between graduation and finding a job strange or unreasonable? I'd have a new computer, but I still have loans to pay off first.
[1] Including commercial distributions of free software.
I know it would never happen, but if MS wanted to pretty much annihilate linux all it has to do is make a service pack 4 for XP to provide enhanced security and functionality and most importantly efficiency for XP and then release XP as open source (or more likely 'shared source'), accept user patches and work with the community just like an enterprise Linux distribution. With OpenXP, why would anyone need linux? (Note: I don't use windows. I'm a linux-only user, and the above is my sincere opinion. For the love of god, don't mod me troll because you think I'm an MS fanboy, an OSS zealot, or a /. troll. I'm being quite serious.)
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
(If anyone has a spare copy of windows 2000 RC1 for alpha, I'd greatly appreciate it).
I am trolling
You're kidding right? If Ford made a car that ran for more than 10 years without becoming a pile of rust that would be progress.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I would not consider UMPs as desktops.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
sorry but I was commenting on what was available today and therefore could be designed with known results. Intel just announced this Atom chip 2 days ago so I think we'll have to keep the barn door closed on that changing life as we know it.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I've been trying to explain this two people for quite some time. Dual Core Processors does not mean if you have a dualcore 2.4ghz system that processor works at 4.8ghz, thats what a dual processor system works at. Since its two cores on one die they share resources so a 2.4 is comparable to 1 processor working at 3.6ghz. So no, your 3ghz core duo is not 3000 x2 x2 its more like 3 x 1.5 x 1.5 (if its 64bit running 64bit software using hyper threading and SMP) and thats still not accurate.
However - big distros like Ubuntu and Fedora in particular already support PowerPC, with Debian and Gentoo covering even more. I'm running Ubuntu on a G3 series iMac, it comes with all the useful gadgets and great usability of Ubuntu but feels a bit sluggish compared to my normal workstation.
Take into account that a great many drivers that Linux supports are largely platform & system independent, releasing a mico-laptop like the Eee but based on a PPC chip wouldn't take much effort - Apple have been doing this for years, with one of the only differences being that the primary OS was MacOS or OS X.
Regardless of the chip - adding more laptops to the sub $400 market running Linux would be amazing, you'll capture a huge number of people who cannot afford more expensive wintel or apple laptops and Linux will become less and less of a barrier. Compared to the cost of a university education, you could almost give these away at the start of a computing course...
Probably because of Java, Flash, Wine, Mplayer codecs and all that small stuff that isn't free.
At least that is what stoped me from trying to put such architectures on the desktop.
Rethinking email
it does seem like the PPC would be the better choice over ARM for these low end systems. I'm just wondering why so much interest in keeping x86 compatible when we all know that Microsoft constantly stomps its foot when there's something x86 which does not have Windows on it. Because of this and the fact that there are other architectures which fit the platform and cut Microsoft out of the picture, why are they not doing this? ARM on Nokia's N800 is an easy choice but why for instance did Asus go with x86 instead of PPC for the Eeee?
Was there a partnership with Intel or something like that? I've seen Asus was there at the Intel Atom release party so maybe they get "perks" for going x86 instead of PPC. Did you know that Microsoft has plans to grow WinCE/Windows Mobile up to help compete on these non-x86 platforms?
Seems to me that GNU/Linux really helps these hardware vendors own their future and also realize some extra profits by fitting the OS to their hardware without MS license fees or strings. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
... i wouldnt be here to post anything due to head concussions i suffered
Read radical news here
A good sign is VISTA ONLY software aimed at the enterprise. Time will tell if a program is Vista Only if the prior version outsells it. Or people just move on to some software that will still run on XP.
What I can't figure out for the life of me. Is why more software was not written correctly for XP. There is NO GOOD REASON that Quickbooks does not run properly on a locked down account. If an account is locked down. That is an indicator you are in a corporate environment. Perhaps the only time the program gets run as an administrator is when IT decides to install updates and patches. Otherwise anything out side of %USER% or HKCU should not be written to. There is no excuse for that. Intuit deserves to be kicked in the nards just like Apple did to Adobe (remains to be seen if that was a good idea or not). Seven years is enough time to get their act together and program things properly. It ain't Windows 98 any more.
vi +
It isn't linux they are worried about it is the 60% growth per quarter Apple shows since the entry of Vista into the world. They'd rather keep people on XP than risk people finding out how blissfully happy they'd be on a mac instead