Vendors Rally While Windows Sleeps

Anti-Globalism sends along a PCWorld article outlining two technologies from Intel and Dell that do an end run around Windows. "Dell, Intel and their partners announced last week new technologies that represent major leaps forward for mobility. The companies seem to have discovered the secret to making such bold leaps: Cut Microsoft out of the deal. One technology involves enabling users to gain instant access to a laptop's e-mail, browser and other basic functionality — without booting Windows at all. The second technology enables an Internet-based message to wake a Windows PC from sleep mode. These new technologies are perfect metaphors for what's happening in the industry... Windows is asleep while Microsoft's own partners give users what they really want."

Comments

they call this "technology"

[fpgaprogrammer]

i'm afraid that they use the term "technology" because they plan on suing you if you don't pay them to license it. a computer that boots quickly from the BIOS to a thin OS and runs Windows in a remotely accessible VM is not new technology in that sense. you can't just append "...that doesn't suck" to existing product descriptions and patent it.

EEPC + Latitude

[edisrafeht]

This article is a gem. ROFL. From TFA:

What Dell is really doing here is building the equivalent of a secondary Asus Eee PC into a full-featured, full-size laptop. The Latitude On feature uses a low-power Intel ARM processor, flash storage and Linux (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10) separate from the laptop's main CPU, hard drive and Windows operating system. But unlike a subnotebook, the Latitude On system won't allow you to install applications. It's essentially a "cloud computing" device that depends on the Internet for much of its functionality.

... ON's custom Web browser is based on Firefox. E-mail, "diary" and contacts are, of course, non-Microsoft applications. But some Microsoft data types are supported in one way or another. The system, for example, includes viewers for Microsoft Office documents (as well as for Adobe PDF documents). The built-in organizer grabs the 100 most recent Outlook e-mail messages from the laptop's cache and displays them.

This is just a dual-booting machine that accesses your Windows partitions for documents and emails. The Linux portion also sounds severely limited compared to a regular Linux distro.

File this under "meh".

Re:Sensationlist much?

[MasaMuneCyrus]

The govt should have no part in this. This isn't a Microsoft-enforced monopoly. There is nothing stopping vendors from offering Linux laptops (though if you want to talk monopoly, vendors aren't allowed offer Mac-based laptops). The only reason other OSes haven't caught on is because they're not profitable. It's a socially-enforced monopoly, if no one ones to use anything other than a Microsoft computer (and the Microsoft eeePCs have been more popular than the Linux ones, if I'm not mistaken) then the vendors aren't going to offer anything other than a Microsoft PC. That has nothing to do with Microsoft monopolistic tactics, that has everything to do with consumer opinions and their confidence in being able to use a different OS.