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Netbook Return Rates Much Higher For Linux Than Windows
ivoras writes "An interview with MSI's director of US Sales, Andy Tung, contains this interesting snippet: "We have done a lot of studies on the return rates and haven't really talked about it much until now. Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don't know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it's not what they are used to. They don't want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.'"
RTFA, and unlike the submitter, you'll see that the interviewers point out that MSI offer a poorly configured version of Linux. I wonder what it would cost someone like Microsoft to have MSI spike the competition.
I could have shared this observation months ago. It may have to do with the distro itself in this particular instance, but as a senior sales associate for a larger computer + electronics retailer, I can state for a fact that we get a substantially higher return rate of Linux-based Aspire One and EEE PC's compared to that of the Windows-based ones. The most common complaint when asked the reason for the return? "I can't install any of my programs on here. Office, Adobe, MSN, nothing works!" I try to take the time to assist them, showing them where they can find comparable programs and install them, such as GAIM/Pidgin and OpenOffice. Some are more than happy with that, others still want to return them. Lucky for them we have a pretty lax return policy.
I bought a linux version of the Acer Aspire One, and I loved it at first. It was an RPM based distribution using XFCE, and although I'm used to aptitude-based package management, I've got no qualms with using yum.
However, I bloody well couldn't, could I? The manufacturers had installed some of their own RPM packages before sending out the laptops, many of which had dependencies on other packages. I couldn't bloody update my system because these packages weren't on the central RPM repositories for fedora etc., and there were countless conflicts. Their proprietry RPMs required firefox, so I couldn't update firefox because that would require interfacing with these RPMs, which weren't there. I couldn't update ANY fucking packages, my distribution was useless, unless I forced removals and forced installs of new RPMs, but then all the conflicts had to be sorted out manually.
I've ended up putting Xubuntu on it with XFCE, but it's far less responsive because you loose the intelligent optimisation that Acer etc, put into it, and installing it requires making bootable keydrives etc., and loads of optimisations to the SSD, swap etc.
Why the hell the manufacturers don't just use Ubuntu (I've heard Dell have the sense too, at least), I do not know.
Stupid.
My wife just purchased an HP mini-note. I've dabbled a bit with Ubuntu but Suse was new to me. The system comes completely uncustomized for easy use by the general consumer. For instance, it still has the OS set to search the optical drive for installable software...but there is NO OPTICAL drive in the computer. NONE of the online repositories for software are already added to the OS. There is absolutely NO documentation included with the system to help a new Windows XP -> Linux individual navigate their self around or teach them how to do something as simple as installing a piece of software or adding a software repository. Yeah, Google is there but to the Average Joe, you shouldn't have to search Google for every simple answer and then risk messing up your computer if you input a typo into one of your Terminal commands.