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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?
If the plan is to deliberately cripple the low end Pc hardware specs, then how can you get decent performance out of windows? I remember that XP would barely run wel lat all on my old computer, so wouldn't Windows 2000 be more suited to this task?
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
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
Can someone convince me that these devices are [very] useful to the point of replacing the notebook? You see, I will be returning to this September and would like to consider one of these devices as a replacement for a notebook. Can I for example, load OpenOffice.org on the Eee PC?
How the hardware isn't crippled until Windows is installed on it :;)
http://chimpbox.us
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 if you're looking for thin & light notebooks to join your AD domain, you still need the Linux ones.
They've just defined the features for the next big Linux boom: 12" touch screen, 100GB HDD, dual core. That was clever. Differentiate your product as the less capable one. Genius!
These machines will never run Vista well. Let's keep that important knowledge in front of people. Intel expects to move 10 million Atom platforms in the first wave, and none will have Vista.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Because Joe wants to run Calendar Creator or some such nonsense. He doesn't want to type "sudo apt-get install $whatever". He doesn't even want to use Synaptics Package manager. He wants the damn CD he bought in the bargain bin at WalMart to load and install.
He wants IE and all the stupid toolbars.
He doesn't want to think about this appliance he bought.
And he especially doesn't want to go online and post a question to a forum. Even the warm and inviting Ubuntu forums. He just wants it to work. (Irony noted).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't know about ultra low cost pc's but I've held on to an old laptop that's falling apart, had a failing drive and the replacement never quite fit so I just pulled it out and have been using a Damn Small Linux CD to boot so I can browse the web and even VNC into my main desktop.
I also found this today. MilaX which claims to be like DSL but is based on OpenSolaris. But it doesn't look like that POS laptop will be able to run this.
MS is planning on charging betweek $26-$32 bucks for Windows XP Home Edition for these machines. That's still a significant cost compared to the price of these machines. Especially the One Laptop Per Child based on reports of what they're planning on charging. But then again it seems their prototypes wound up being 2x as much as planned.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Posting again to retract the above comment. Later in TFA, it mentions that they must also have no more than 1GB RAM and a single core processor with maximum speed of 1GHz, which should still be more than enough for XP. I'm currently running XP SP2 with 384MiB Ram and a 1.07GHz Celeron cpu - it doesn't take crapware well, but otherwise performs acceptably.
If Microsoft attempts to force manufacturers to cripple their products, it is going to be hit hard by antitrust authorities, as this is a clear-cut case of monopoly abuse. So the Europeans will draw more cash from Microsoft and the American politicians will increase their pardon fees. At one point, this is not going to be financially profitable to Microsoft: European antitrust penalty + American pardon fees + very little money from the crippled computers = net loss. So their only goal seems to be killing that market before it becomes unstoppable. But people are sick and tired of carry heavy weights around, so they have to fight not only against the zero cost of Linux but also against the comfort level of travellers, and even if they were able to kill Linux no marketing campaign is going to convince people to carry more weight around other than in their belly and bottoms.
With MS trying hard to limit a company's hardware, that means that they will prevent sony and others from competing directly. So NOW is the time to start a hardware company. Do several platforms. The first being something that is XO style. Then go to next levels, which would be just above what MS is blocking. At that level, make it have touch screen. And of course, make it with some form of OSS (most likely Linux). This will allow you to hold down costs, and compete against the big boys
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
He's gonna have a hell of a time finding where to put the CD in on one of these low-cost laptops. I have yet to see one with an optical drive.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
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.
It is an effort to stop Linux dominating this market
Whoa, we're dominating a desktop market? That's awesome!
Sometimes, when you turn around and look at the path that FLOSS has made over the past two decades, you just have to be proud. Way to go everyone!
1: Give up the immunity necklace?
2: Let Microsoft dictate their product design, especially into a less competitive stance?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
[...]
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.
The PC industry is terrified of low-cost laptops. They see $199 laptops in bubble packs at every WalMart, with a profit of about $1 per unit. Dell is in trouble; their custom-build business model is dying. So Microsoft's approach to driving up prices looks attractive.
It won't last, but it might be good for a few years.
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.
It's time for manufacturers to tell Microsoft "Look, we do this on our terms. If you want to cooperate on our terms, fine. If not, then take your fucking ball and go home!"
Seriously, there's a great alternative out there. Microsoft is, for the first time in a very long time, in a position not as the big bully, but as the kid trying to get popular. Let's see how they manage to cope with this...
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
That is an abuse of power gained through their monopoly. They know users would feel more comfortable with Windows so companies would like to use it so they're offering it at a low price but forcing companies to hold back on innovation.
If this is true then people should complain to their governments. I'm sure we can count on the US gov doing nothing about it but hopefully the EU will put a stop to that at least happening over here.
Microsoft OTOH is caught in a dead end. The only chance I can see for them to be relevant 20 years from now is a gamble and not at favorable odds. They need to loose WGA, meaningless product definition, and all the other annoying and ineffective marketing tricks and focus their considerable talents on building the best servers and desktop systems they possibly can. They have lost over a decade since their last user oriented release (Windows 95) and will already be playing catch up in many areas.
Yes, they will leave money on the table short term. But if they can get their act together, they may have an expanding base of happy and enthusiastic customers ten years from now. If they don't do that, they are doomed to lose out to Apple, Open Source, and Google who do have such a base.
BTW, I just had to deal with a series of hardware and software meltdowns that required getting both a Windows XP and a Linux PC up with just basic install software and a backup of the old applications. Neither operation was fun, but Windows was especially awful -- a sort of ongoing horror show of stupid and arbitrary constraints on what could be done and how it could be done. The only place where Windows was clearly superior was in installation of a network printer. And eventually CUPS will be usable by mere mortals, so Windows won't even have that to brag about.
To sum it up. Windows and Open Source both have a long way to go. Open Source looks to be chugging along. Windows is lost in a horrendous swamp. It isn't hard to see the eventual outcome.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
The rule was, never release a new platform that won't run the latest version of Microsoft's products. ASUS broke the rule and can't make their new product fast enough. Their new deal with Microsoft just highlights that if you break the rules and succeed, you get new rules.
Maybe ASUS will take the money and run, Maybe they'll deprecate their Linux offerings and move millions of XP Home eee machines and be happy. I don't think so, but that could happen.
It doesn't matter. If ASUS won't break the rules somebody else on their way up will. This whole scene will play out over and over. Marketing deals cannot halt innovation because it's the innovators that bring the interesting new products that catch our attention and gain the most enthusiastic early adopters.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
The guys who take the decisions have huge share packages. Do you really think they'll do anything that reflects reality and thus nuke their potential retirement?
It's already hard enough work to keep shareholders from bolting after the Vista debacle, the EU fine (which IMHO will get worse as a problem) and the ISO farce which will come back to haunt them. The amount of BS that is required to drown out reality is enough work as it is without someone trying to be realistic about their prospects as well..
[yes, I'm being sarcastic, but MS *is* taking huge hits, whatever spin they put on it. To have to report a loss *after* they had several months to massage the figures with creative accounting is a *very* bad sign]
Insert
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
Because Joe wants to run Calendar Creator or some such nonsense
This dismissive attitude is one major reason that Linux isn't further along taking over the desktop.
Name me a good Linux alternative to the following software:
1) Microsoft flight simulator 2004 or FSX
No Flightgear doesn't even come close to cutting it. It's years behind.
2) Chessmaster X or XI or even Fritz
Don't start with GNUChess or XBoard, which only do very basic chess, don't have any coaching
3) Rollercoaster Tycoon 3
Yes it's a game. It's also a simulator of sorts. However name me a 3D environment in which I can design a running theme park.
4) Realflight G3 or G4
I'm not even aware of a remote control flight simulation package on Linux. Practice here stops me crashing planes which means I get to spend less time and money building and more time flying them.
So far it's games and entertainment, but they're important to me. Let's get broader
5) Photoshop
Yes I know it's a typical complaint but Gimp really doesn't do everything I want to do and really is more awkward to use. I'm still trying to use GIMP where practical since I hate Vista with a passion and XP is being killed off. I'd like to get some familiarity with an environment i may be forced onto in a year or two.
6) Omnipage pro
Solutions that only OCR single column text are useless to me. I got Omnipage SE "for free" when I bought a printer, Okay so I paid for it but I didn't have an option to get the printer without it since it came bundled. Anyway the OCR solutions aren't near as feature complete.
7) IE only websites.
I'm willing to admit that when it comes to web browsers and Office software, Linux isn't far behind. However if I'm doing my banking with someone whose only catering to IE am I suppose to drop every other consideration and move to a different bank at great expense just so I can go to Linux? Or do I have to use VMWare? Be reasonable.
I won't go on, and I could.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Actually, most UMPCs run XP or Linux - and all of the decent ones. Many aren't that expensive... not as cheap as the eee, but comparable to a conventional budget laptop. And the Raon Everun gets 4 to 5 hours with real-life use... double the battery life of the eee. With the extended battery, it gets up to 11 hours. Unlike the eee, it's barely warm to the touch and is nearly silent. Unfortunately, the Geode processor is a bit underpowered (hopefully there'll be an Atom version) and the unique hardware is not yet supported under Linux.
Regarding your first point: X-Plane is an advanced commercial flight simulator package available for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It should compare favorably with MS Flight Simulator.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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.