Asus To Phase Out Sub-10" Eee PCs

jeevesbond writes "The Register reports that Asus president Jerry Shen has revealed his company will be phasing out all sub-10" Eee PCs. According to Shen, the 'standard' netbook next year will be a 10" model with a hard drive running XP. Shen also said XP is outselling GNU/Linux on netbooks by a ratio of 7:3. This is somewhat contrary to news from the UK earlier in the year that GNU/Linux units were out of stock while XP machines sat unsold. Are Brits more open-minded than the rest of the world when it comes to choosing an OS?"

Comments

Re:Well "Works With Linux" is a feature to me

[frieko]

This is absurd. Isn't the whole point of a netbook that it's small, light and efficient? Why would you get rid of the smallest model and the most efficient OS? This smells of a backdoor M$ deal. If they offered both OS's on the same hardware I'm sure the picture would be much different.

Rolling two stories into one post, my friend bought an Asus Aspire with linux. The other day she asked me what the NewEgg return policy was. It took me a while to pry it out of her that she couldn't get on her university's VPN in Linux. I installed the linux client for her. Point is, her first impulse was to return it rather than attempt the learning curve.

Re:Well "Works With Linux" is a feature to me

[Kamokazi]

Small, light and efficient, eh?

I decided to revitilize my grandparent's old Celeron 500 w/ 128MB of RAM with Xubuntu. I couldn't install it with the live CD, but I got it on there. And it ran like crap. Very, very slow and sluggish...I was kind of suprised So I was about to throw it out, and figured, what the hell, and put XP on it. I turned off the Fisher Price UI, and it ran a HELL of a lot better than Xubuntu. Enough that it turned from unusuable to usable. I was stunned.

So I see no reason for XP to be any slower than a modern version of desktop Linux, unless the UI is REALLY stripped down. But any Atom-based computer will handle XP as well as Linux without a sweat.

And MS did do a deal..but it was very front door, not back door. They slashed the cost of XP for netbooks to something like $30-$40. Linux was used first because of cost, but the cost advantage is much smaller now. And the manufacturers and retailers believe that XP will produce fewer support calls and reduce return rates (whether or not they are correct is up for debate), justifying the extra cost. I'm sorry, there is no secret MS conspiracy here for you to be paranoid about. They did their normal thing...they saw Linux gaining marketshare, figured out why (cost), and they compensated.

Also, it's Acer Aspire. Asus's netbook line is the Eee.