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Microsoft Decides To Take On Linux On Low-Cost PCs
e5rebel writes "Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs. It is an effort to stop Linux dominating this market but Microsoft is insisting on limiting the hardware specs of these devices."
"For just a little extra money, you can have degraded performance and not have to worry about all that controlling-your-own-hardware nonsense"
Alas, like most of their similar pitches, I'm putting my money on it working spectacularly.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
You create artificial shortages and cripple the hardware to keep the market from "eroding". I guess we don't don't create markets to sell products anymore. We create them for their own sake. That's quite a monster you got there.
What?
How will Microsoft compete? It is very common knowledge that Windows runs slower on any given system than Linux does. The low-end PCs are not beefy by any means. Linux will just feel snappier and also shouldn't need as much RAM for similar tasks.
In the low end, it seems like all MS will be doing is highlighting their shortcomings.
Limiting the hardware specs ensures a healthy profit margin on the OS. Sounds like good business.
We wouldn't want folks loading "WinXP lite" on good hardware. It might run really fast and have fewer conflicts, then they'll come to expect that from us in other products.
Invenio via vel creo
Do business schools teach their students that it is somehow a good idea to accept the terms of a "discount" from one supplier that require you to ship a POS product, when if you go with another supplier, it's absolutely free and you can sell whatever you want?
It seems people were buying the EeePC just the way it was, with Linux and all, and using it just fine. I can't speak to it myself, as I have no use for such a device. However, what rationale is there for screwing up a perfectly good market just to make Microsoft happy, when they weren't a player to begin with?
The first is that they limit screen size and also prevent you from having touch screens. Maybe it's just me, but the probability of any device I own having a touch screen goes up the smaller the screen size is, so this seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot.
The other thing that really leaps out is this:
The goal apparently is to limit the hardware capabilities of ULPCs so that they don't eat into the market for mainstream PCs I can think of a lot of other companies that have tried to limit the capabilities of products in one market segment so that they don't compete with those in another (IBM with the PC, SGI with low-end graphics hardware) but I can't think of a single company where the approach has resulted in anything other than them losing the market to a competitor. Maybe the MS monopoly is so strong that they can do this, but I doubt it somehow.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So ... your mythical Windows user bought the cheapest box he could find ... and then wants to spend MORE money ... at WalMart ... on applications?
When he could just download the app at home.
Yeah, the specs seem high enough.
My real reaction to this is nausea. In effect this is what is happening:
"Please please pleeeaaasse sell XP on your products! We'll even give it at a discount, but then you need to do what we say specs wise."
C'mon, why the limits on the hardware specs? Is it to limit the choice of the customer?
"Sorry sir, if you want a touch screen with that baby we'll need to limit you to using Vista. I know you are supposed to have a choice in the matter, but Microsoft policy dictates otherwise. Yeah, in effect they get to decide what you can run on what you buy. A linux alternative, uh sure - I think dell offers a similar spec device with Ubuntu on it... wait, where are you going!?"
When will MS begin to put the interests of their customers first? If they can develop a custom version of Windows for mobile devices, surely they can develop a custom _modern_ version of Windows for low-end or micro laptops.
If a linux community can do that, why can't they? Are they admitting that the open-source community which they deride so is capable of something they are not?
Could it be that they cannot develop something like this? I say they definitely can, so the only other alternative is that they don't want to - hence they don't give a rats ass what the customer needs.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
[...]
People bash on about XP being slow and crappy on these low power systems but in reality it isn't. That's all peachy dandy as long as your install is still fresh. Give it a few months and your precious XP will be crawling like a dog as it does on any other PC it's been running on for a period of time.
With Windows, you'll have to reinstall to regain your original performance. With Ubuntu, it won't degrade in the first place.
And then IBM tried to protect the IBM PC market from lower-price competition with the crippled PC-Jr.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I know Joe. He wants a lot of things. He wants our web design firm to make it so that whatever funky formatting he tries to paste in from MS Word will come out in the site exactly how it looks in Word.
Joe has a problem: the cost of creating an online application that mirrors Word (and Excel and friends) exactly is in the several-millions, and is furthermore legally proscribed by patents anyway.
We can hook Joe up with some great RTEs and OOo templates that work for a couple thousand dollars, but Joe wants the illegal multimillion dollar project for $2,000.
I'm not interested in trying to accomodate Joe anymore.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
bingo, that's why everybody is squealing. Asus cut the harware specs to cover the windows costs. To the average user, it will look like two things cost the same one "broken" without Windows but a few GB of ram (who cares about 8GB when there's 500B drives for cheap?) Stores simply won't sell without windows, and I'm sure MS has advertising agreements to sell the Windows stickers with big box stores so the Linux version won't see shelf space.
On another note, a lot of good the "patent" agreement did Xandros here. They got "blessing" to sell their linux with windows "compatible" functions only to have Microsoft come and eat their lunch when they actually make sales.
Yes, but Linux dominates the ULPC market, and that has Microsoft's attention.
http://www.mhall119.com
No, the real reason is to try to stem the numbers of people getting exposure to Linux and finding out that it is quite capable of doing the job for a fraction of the Micro$oft cost.
And to add to it, since Vista is too fat to fit they are going to be using the soon to be discontinued XP base to do it. Go figure.
First, CDs are dinosaurs. Just download it.
If you need to, just ship the software on a USB which can also double up as storage. Seriously, in bulk they are cheap. And can be reused for backups. In my case, these can get it off of my Linux media server. With 1TB of disk on the end I could watch 200 movies.
The last laptop I bought, I took the CD-DVD player out and put a second battery in it and never used the CD-DVD device. And if kids use it, one less thing to break and consume power uselessly.
WeSaySo Corporation isn't listening. This is just like New-Coke and Coke-Classic all over. The only way OEM Vista users can get XP is if they re-purchase a 2nd XP OS for their systems. A double dip. Brilliant to pump up sales numbers, but people are getting tired of Microsoft games. So much so, Microsoft drives people to Linux. But this will backfire on Microsoft in the end.
OEMs are not talking, but I bet systems with Vista have a higher return rate chipping away at profits in a competitive market.
For example, I am waiting for an economical commodity laptop PC that runs XP or Linux. No, I am not going to order a extra expensive business model so I can get over priced XP. I will not buy one with Vista as long as my old one holds out. And if they think they are going to get $200 for XP Pro and $400 for Office....they are smoking crack.
Microsoft better get used to the idea that the PC including Microsoft software is a commodity. And that means their market elasticity in pricing is shot.
Ten years ago worrying about gasoline prices wasn't a big deal..but the prius and insight hit the market, and now folks are dumping their SUVs. Now all the majors are coming out with hybrids and plug in hybrids are closer and all electrics will be coming as well. Ten years once a credible decent product made the first sale. Stuff changes man. MS has made hundreds of billions, but it isn't carved in stone they always will. Open source just keeps getting better and better, and I am not reading too many headlines about throngs of people going on and on how much they really appreciate the vista upgrade. The Asus eeepc was the first serious game changer, just like the ipod was. There were computers before, and music players, but sometimes all the details come together and whammo, a runaway hit. Lower cost light weight/portable hardware combined with free linyx is a dang good combination. MS is *lucky* they have XP to fall back on right now, and even then people are going to be changing. Inevitable, the younger folks want it, they become the bosses of tomorrow.
> somebody else on their way up will.
:)
Oh course. It is always thus. All of the established players were fearing where this would end up. Now they think they head this off at the pass and declare that what everyone really wanted was tiny $500 machines instead of $500 machines with 14" screens and 120GB hard drives.
But there are plenty of Chinese manufacturers without a vested interest in the current product catagories and retail outlets who don't have a horse in the computer races. Imagine these:
1. Take 1 15" LCD panel, strap $50 worth of computer to the VESA mount on the back. Give it enough smarts to get itself onto most broadband connections via wired or wireless. Sell em through Big Lots or some such deep discounter. Or imagine an LCD TV/DVD player with a brain upgrade, a WiFi antenna and a USB keyboard/mouse in the box.
2. Grab an ARM system on chip, a smallish LCD and whip up a $120-150 portable. Forget making it especially small or light, just go for CHEAP. Again, push em through stores that don't HAVE a computer department to worry about cannibalizing.
How about this for an idea for a totally new form factor. Imagine a clipboard form factor. Screen at the top, keyboard at the bottom, a flat sheet of lipo battery on the whole bottom. NO hinge, NO bother. CHEEP. Add a vinyl folding cover if ya just wanna pay lip service to protecting the screen or want to make it a 'notebook'.... heck, add a place for paper and go for the 'portfolio with a computer embedded' form factor.
At any rate, Moore's Law will keep driving down the cost of a system capable of running Firefox. Eventually we have to get low enough Microsoft won't be able to stay in this game of limbo and then the game changes.
Democrat delenda est
These hardware restrictions, particularly the ban on touchscreens, lead me to suspect that what MS is really trying to protect, without totally giving the new tiny-cheap-laptop field to Linux, is the UMPC. Remember, "UMPC" doesn't just mean "little laptop". UMPCs were supposed to be a bold new category, remember all the "Origami" hype? Essentially, the vision of small, portable computing that MS specced out was that of fairly powerful devices, with touch screens required and keyboards optional, running straight Windows Vista and accompanying software, with a touch screen interface slapped on top. Unfortunately for them, the "fairly powerful" requirement made UMPCs surprisingly expensive and made their battery life suck pitifully, without actually making Vista run all that well.
The first few versions utterly sucking is something that MS is used to, so there was reason to believe that they would work this one out as well. Costs would gradually go down, chips would get less power hungry, and so on, and the UMPC would eventually worm its way in. Then the eeePC and friends show up(arguably, the tradition of tiny laptops goes back a long way, various PC makers have been pumping them out for years, although in small quantities and at high costs, and the OLPC project can be said to have spurred cheap, small laptops; but the eeePC was the first to hit the western mass market). Compared to the UMPC, the eeePC and similar are pretty boring tech. Just normal laptops; but smaller. Thing is, this is one of those situations where modest ambitions are a real blessing. UMPC goals required hardware that was either unavailable or too expensive. eeePC goals required nothing more than the willingness to slap together parts that are already cheap and common. Even if the eeePC and its ilk were all running XP from the get-go, they would still be a kick in the teeth for the UMPC. I doubt that the category is dead; but the road to acceptance, particularly for consumer level applications, became much steeper and much rockier with the advent of the eeePC and similar. The fact that Linux is showing up for the party is adding insult to injury.
I'm thinking that the hardware restrictions serve a few purposes:
Keep a clear distinction between UMPC(now positioned as "premium") and the teeny laptop("budget"). Teeny laptops kill UMPCs at being cheap; but MS hopes, at least, to preserve certain features as UMPC only.
Keep Linux from creeping upward. Obviously, MS doesn't like any machines not running Windows; but they would rather preserve a "linux=cheap gadget/Windows=real computer" distinction than not. By not allowing high end features to creep in(or, at least, forcing OEMs to make more hardware variants if they do), MS can keep eee type boxes from gradually shading into full computers or "premium" small computers.
Analyst IDC's forecast is more modest: On Thursday it said it expects ULPC sales to hit 9 million units by 2012, up from 500,000 last year. Again I bolded.
a)Say M$ is successful and is able to sell XP on every second of those ULPC's. That is a lot of PC's running Linux.
b)Now if a gaming developer manages to develop a high quality game that (1) runs on Linux and Windows and(2) runs on their lower specifications it would make a killing in the market.
c)If they develop a high quality inter platform game for these ulpc's, they could pitch their product to the vendors of these ulpc's to include as pre-installed, and make revenue from game related content, and maybe even from the inclusion of these games.
Why is this a good idea?
i) By conservative estimates there will be 9Million of these units sold by 2012. That is four years from now. WinXP will be very outdated by then, so MS will either need to ship a competitive modern OS for these, or Linux will be the dominant OS, so beginning a cross-platform development process makes sense. At best M$ will be able to gain 50% of the market.
ii) 9Million units are a lot. This is a lucrative gaming market. The Playstation (the PSP) and Nintendo (the DS) offerings have shown that mobile gaming is alive. Preparing a product for the boom to come makes sense, as these products become cheaper they will continue selling well.
iii) A possible sales pitch to the makers of these products is this: A range of games for these devices will radically expand the market. Parents will feel better about buying their children a portable productivity tool that also plays games as opposed to buying a dedicated entertainment device. Adult gamers will also spend money on a combined device rather than having to buy two separate devices.
iv) The hardware specifications also lend these devices to a satisfying gaming experience. Many of them have wireless networking functionality, internet access will soon be a given, and they come with lots of processor power and RAM. Graphics support might be problematic in the short term, so 3d games that are graphics intensive might pose a problem for now. MMORG, FPS, Racing and strategy games will all be popular on these devices.
v) Since the ULPC is in essence a device based on x86 compatible architecture it will be easy to port games to the traditional gaming PC, making it easy to for once effectively bridge the divide between mobile and home-based gaming. The internet will make it possible for both to play games online against each other.
In closing, there is a lucrative, largely untapped Linux (and windows) market for the gaming industry. If effort is made to develop a range of games for these devices it will mean revenue over a very long term. If extra effort is put into developing the business model properly a gaming developer might be the first to offer a game that can be played transparently on the ULPC, the PC and the Laptop. This will be a first, and good firsts make money.
Money is a motivator, and if you develop for the ULPC linux market you are also by default developing for the Linux desktop and notebook market, hence you will have broken into not only a wide market of mobile gaming, you will have broken into the linux gaming market, and you will not only be a market leader, you will essentially be the market owner on most common platforms today and tomorrow.
I would be surprised if a gaming developer isn't already working towards this goal.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I note with interest on the "Windows Life-Cycle Policy" page that despite Windows XP Retail and OEM licenses are being dropped on 30 Jun 2008, and System Builder licenses on 31 January 2009, there's now a little footnote: I love the smell of Microsoft's fear in the morning. It smells like
Still, that's only a two year grace period. Do Microsoft think the "ultra low-cost" PC just a fad? Or that in two years they'll be powerful enough to handle the three ton white elephant that is Vista? Or that they'll have a slimmed down Vista-replacement out the door by then? Microsoft's problem is that the moment they leave a gap in the market e.g. "ultra low-cost" PCs, Linux is there to step in. I expect the anti-Linux FUD and dirty tricks will be especially fierce now: SCO and OOXML fast-tracking was just the entree.
Photoshop CS2 is usable in Linux now.
I still have a windows partition on my home computer , but I find myself really only using it for games. At work all our dev boxes are linux.
Remember when the biggest issue with Linux was the lack of drivers? Lack of applications is the next challenge, one that is getting closer to being solved all the time.
...They have a less than 2% share of the market. There isn't a company in the history of mankind which needs to focus it's business decisions based on what a competitor with less than 2% of the market is doing... especially when that company's various products hold about 94% of the market. But a long, long time ago, Mozilla Firefox had less than 2% share of the market, and Microsoft didn't need to focus on it, specially when it holded about 97% of the Internet browsing market with Internet Explorer 6...re "It's time for manufacturers to tell Microsoft...":
;-)
Exactly.
For the first time, a manufacturer like Asus could have managed to achieve a position where they can say "You want us to put Windows on all EeePCs exclusively? Well, let us have your offer and we'll talk about it. Or maybe you want the Windows version of the EeePC to be substantially less than the Linux version instead? Alright, that would be... let's see... all the XP licences for free, plus some cash as a subsidy per unit... How much could that be?"
Presumably, something like this happened for the Australian market, i.e., Microsoft and Asus might indeed have some kind of agreement down under.
A handful of other markets might even follow, like Germany and Japan.
But, most probably, there will be no such agreement in (say) Thailand or France or in most of the remaining 170+ countries of the world...
Too bad for Microsoft, isn't it?
har, har.