Linux For Housewives. XP For Geeks.

Talinom writes "ZDNet has an article sure to raise the hackles of any self-respecting geek. They report that housewives buying small laptops like the Asus EE are causing Linux usage for that demographic to spike. A reporter for Tech-On states that 'Retailers and contract manufacturers in Taiwan say that novice PC users there, like students and housewives, tend to buy the Linux version of the Eee PC701, while geeks go for Windows XP.'"

Comments

My girlfriend has got an eee

[MrKaos]

She loves it because it fits in her hand bag, "it runs linux eh? what's linux? It does what I need it to do and it's cuuuttteee"

It's a No Brainer! :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Housewives are used to getting the products that have the best cost-benefit ratio.

The Eee is a machine that provides wireless web browsing and email, instant messaging, etc.

And it's cheaper without XP.

It's a no-brainer then.

As for why do geeks prefer XP? I can speak for myself and say that I thoroughly know the beast, it is a pleasure to google for the most wild assed software/driver you can think of and find that due to the widespread presence of the thing, pretty sure SOMEONE has gone through the same ordeal as you, and has posted a workaround.
It works, and given current hardware configurations and provided that you configure it properly, it is FAST.

I know it is light years away from an elegant OS from an academic's point of view, but I rather have XP on an Eee and be open to all the possibilities of interaction with other peripherals (oh, how our choice of words reveal one's age) than spending time tweaking linux.

Yes and?

[Corporate Troll]

I bough the 701 4G a few months ago. My father in law liked it so much, and after hearing the price, ordered two for his kids: 4yo and 12yo. (Kids from his second wife: I'm not married to a 4yo or 12yo).

Anyway, I'm surprised to hear the geeks take the XP version. I'm actually quite happy with the default Xandros install. It even has perl, ruby and python for crying out loud!

Year Of the Linux Desktop

[scenestar]

I guess that instead of the year of the linux desktop we should be celebrating the year of the linux laptop

Funny, Considering the fact that Linux + laptops used to be one of the biggest headaches in the world.

Re:Not sure it applies here as much

[WibbleOnMars]

Taiwan culture is not US culture, of course.

Maybe not, but the UK is much more similar, and I've stood in a Dixons store here and listened to the salesman talking to a novice about the EeePC on display, explaining its OS as "Linux is low powered and suitable for a beginner."

Granted, Dixons aren't the only people selling EeePCs, but they are definitely targetting EeePC at the less technically savvy.

You stood in a Dixons?

[Kupfernigk]

Please cut your geek card across with a pair of ceramic scissors and hand it in at your local Citizen's Advice Centre for controlled demolition.

True story, I once worked with an ex-Dixon's manager who admitted they looked for ignorant and easily cowed staff because they could exploit them, whereas the technically capable could easily get better weekend jobs somewhere else. Of course, you can guess the kind of managers they employ.

I Admit That I Would Have To Think Twice

[pandrijeczko]

I use Linux most of the time, my job at work centres on securing telecoms applications servers that invariably run Linux - but I also recognise XP fills a lot of the needs that Linux cannot just like XP cannot fulfill my needs for writing scripts and programming at the shell prompt.

But the fact is, I have two PDAs that are Windows based and for synchronising calendars and emails, for the moment it has to be Outlook and Activesync to do that.

I also spend a lot of time minimising the footprint of XP as much as possible - I truly hate with a passion the default XP UI but I've used "Classic Explorer" for years now & can live with that.

Then I get XPLite, strip out the MS-provided apps that I never use and stick on my favourite free stuff like VLC, Media Player Classic, Firefox, Notepad++, The Gimp and a few others. And once I've thrown PuTTY on, I can SSH to my home server wherever I can get a low bandwidth Internet connection if I need my shell prompt.

To be honest, I've always thought of a geek as someone who just tries to find the best software to do the job he/she needs to and there's plenty of free or Open Source apps on Linux and Windows that are useful tools to have.

Yes, Linux does most of the stuff I need to do with computers and one day it would be nice to be able to just use one OS - but XP fills the gaps quite well and apart from a bit of extra time administrating more OSes on my PCs, I'm pretty happy with my whole computing experience.