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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 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.
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The point isn't really to replace the notebook. They'll do that too, though. A modern laptop is ridiculously overpowered for the purpose of running a well designed OS and office application. The idea is to make it cheap enough to not freak out about breaking it, to provide enough power to do your stuff but not so much that you have to be chained to a wall wart to accomplish anything that takes more than two hours.
Yes. And it runs just fine. And with Compiz the visual effects are flashier than Aero if you want them to be. And it will play HD video just fine. And it's got all the wireless features you would expect. And on and on. The screen and keyboard are a little small. The next generation may be better in this regard.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
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.
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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!
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.
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 $2,000.
I'm not interested in trying to accomodate Joe anymore.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
bingo, that's why everybody is squealing. Asus cut the harware specs to cover the windows costs. To the average user, it will look like two things cost the same one "broken" without Windows but a few GB of ram (who cares about 8GB when there's 500B drives for cheap?) Stores simply won't sell without windows, and I'm sure MS has advertising agreements to sell the Windows stickers with big box stores so the Linux version won't see shelf space.
On another note, a lot of good the "patent" agreement did Xandros here. They got "blessing" to sell their linux with windows "compatible" functions only to have Microsoft come and eat their lunch when they actually make sales.
It's time for manufacturers to tell Microsoft "Look, we do this on our terms. If you want to cooperate on our terms, fine. If not, then take your fucking ball and go home!"
Seriously, there's a great alternative out there. Microsoft is, for the first time in a very long time, in a position not as the big bully, but as the kid trying to get popular. Let's see how they manage to cope with this...
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
No, the real reason is to try to stem the numbers of people getting exposure to Linux and finding out that it is quite capable of doing the job for a fraction of the Micro$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.
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.
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.