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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
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 $2,000.
I'm not interested in trying to accomodate Joe anymore.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
bingo, that's why everybody is squealing. Asus cut the harware specs to cover the windows costs. To the average user, it will look like two things cost the same one "broken" without Windows but a few GB of ram (who cares about 8GB when there's 500B drives for cheap?) Stores simply won't sell without windows, and I'm sure MS has advertising agreements to sell the Windows stickers with big box stores so the Linux version won't see shelf space.
On another note, a lot of good the "patent" agreement did Xandros here. They got "blessing" to sell their linux with windows "compatible" functions only to have Microsoft come and eat their lunch when they actually make sales.
No, the real reason is to try to stem the numbers of people getting exposure to Linux and finding out that it is quite capable of doing the job for a fraction of the Micro$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.
> 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.