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Microsoft Boasts 96% Netbook Penetration
An anonymous reader writes "Citing figures from market research firm NPD, Microsoft says Windows' share of the US netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February. 'The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal,' wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft's in-house Windows blogger, in a post Friday. Information Week author Paul McDougall notes Microsoft's 8% decline in Windows sales is due to netbooks sporting Linux. How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?"
Chair penetrates netbook 96%.
For a short while people were willing to forgo Windows for the form factor and price of a netbook. Then Moore's law ticked over and Microsoft was able to enter that market - same price for the machine but with the specs that XP needs. Next iteration they'll be selling units with Vista on them. The only way to keep Microsoft out is to race to the bottom and there's no economic incentive for the hardware manufacturers to do that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm sorry, I'm braindead, I was going to put some witty comment in here asking whether it ran linux or if 96% of your base are belong to us, but I can't.
Come back tomorrow, maybe I'll have come up with something.
Way to go Netbook! Getting to home base 96% of the time would make any frat boy proud.
How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?
By giving it away? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?" they only count the ones that have the little window sticker
How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?
That's easy, netbooks aren't sold in a comparable quantity, so a staggering increase of 80% reflects a tiny shift in the overall license count. Got any other braindead statistics questions for me?
Assuming that these figures are correct & MS has managed to grow their share of the netbook market....let's not forget:
1) They had to keep XP around to do so.
2) Linux has proved itself good enough that manufacturers will consider it.
3) Pulling the same stunt on the rash of $150 arm-based netbooks that will be hitting the shelves later this year will be much harder.
My pics.
I wonder if they count my shiny new Acer Aspire One? Yeah, it came with XP, and yeah, XP is still on the hard drive, but I installed Linux on the first day, and have spent about 1% of my time in Windows since then. I would call that a Linux computer, but I suppose they call it a Windows computer.
This isn't shocking at all. The netbook market isn't what it used to be, mostly I suspect because Microsoft AND the hardware makers recoiled in horror from what was happening. Look at the original netbook:
Old cheap Celeron CPU
7-9" Display
2-8GB Flash storage
512MB-1GB RAM
Weight 1KG
Price centered around $350 +/- $50
Now look at what passes for a netbook:
1.6Ghz Atom
10" Display
160GB HDD
1-2GB RAM
Weight 1-2KG
Price $300 to $500
The original specs couldn't run XP very well, and it wasn't an option. Vista was right out. So Microsoft brought back XP and everyone amped up the specs until it ran nicely. After all the new above average netbook was a kick ass desktop when XP was introduced.
Add in the fact all of the major netbook makers also make notebooks and desktops and thus need Microsoft's good will and it is easy enough to see how most netbooks now ship with Windows. Anyway, at the current prices and specs they are more like small laptops anyway and pretty much 100% of those have always shipped with Windows.
Wait for the ARM invasion. If hardware CAN run Windows vendors are always going to get pressured to load it. The ARM machines simply can't do it. Give a choice between a full Linux desktop, Android and WinCE and Microsoft's offering is going to come up a little short.
Sooner or later we will see netbooks under $200 and that is where things will get fun. If they give out Windows licenses cheap enough to put it on sub $200 units it will either force an across the board cut in all OEM licensing or really tick a lot of people off.
Democrat delenda est
"How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?"
The same way the Mac was 400% faster in Photoshop competitions? Select a minuscule market where you want to see growth -> See massive growth -> Expunge data.
Oh, you mean netbooks that have a 800x600 screen & flash drives with only 2 gigs of storage? Yeah, then we meant 0.01/4 growth instead.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Because an 80% increase in netbook sales is still tiny compared to 8% of total Windows sales.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
It should be interesting to see how MSFT will deal with a preference for a less expensive netbook compatible Win7 on non-netbooks. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/microsofts-netbook-conundrum/
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
We all know what Microshit means when they talk about "market penetration."
This goes against the prevailing wisdom here, but Linux is not necessarily the best OS for netbooks.
The newest netbooks have about as much CPU power and memory as a notebook computer made 3 years ago. That's enough to run windows XP and older Microsoft applications such as office 2003.
And, Windows has the overwhelming advantage it always did : it has an enormous existing software library that still dwarfs that of Linux. An operating system is an enormously powerful natural monopoly. It's time to admit that the only way Linux or MacOS could ever pull ahead and have the diversity of software Windows has is if Microsoft royally screws up over a period of years. Windows ME didn't even scratch Microsoft's monopoly, because everyone kept using Win98, and it appears that Vista is the same way.
Finally, I've heard many complain that the netbook manufacturers don't properly choose a good Linux distro and configure it with all the software a user is likely to ever need. If the manufacturers did that, pre-installing open office and VLC media player and firefox and the rest, and tuned the distro behind the scenes to run blazing fast on a flash disk, then Linux might have stayed a viable option.
I would assume Microsoft has also adapated to this market : they must be offering a substantial discount on the software license for a netbook. Wouldn't surprise me if they were selling "XP for netbook use" for $20 a license. It could very well be that it is cheaper to pay Microsoft than it is to pay the technical support costs for Linux.
How many netbooks actually come with a full version of Linux? Admittedly I don't follow the latest netbook developments much, but most of the Linux models I've seen have some rainbows and unicorns OS that is only suitable for people under 10 years old.
A sale does not constitute usage. I bought mine with XP and later tried Ubuntu from a live CD using an external drive. My system ran faster and better on Ubuntu. So I installed it and I have not missed Windows on my netbook. Something tells me MS still counts me as an installed base.
"...Microsoft says Windows' share of the US netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February..."
To know why, we need to look at the alternative:
Linux: This offer more often than not, suffers from the following issues:
1: Poor and often inferior hardware specs as compared to systems loaded with Windows
2: Microsoft became smart and did that fast! They were about to retire Windows XP but decided to let it live.
3: Software on Linux systems still sucks big time, though folks at KDE appear to be doing a better job than those at GNOME.
4: Folks around Linux still cannot understand that in the software world, choice while good, breeds confusion. On this very point Bill Gates stated it bluntly while referring to UNIX. He said..."With so many different (Unix) versions, said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., 'There's always been Tower of Babel sort of bickering inside Unix, but this is the most extreme form ever. . . . This means at least several years of confusion.'"
Who gained out of this confusion? Microsoft.
Maybe they're also counting machines with intellectual property thefted (so much easier to say 'pirated..') XP on them. I've definitely heard of lots of people buying these little machines and then throwing on the "free" version of XP...
Yes because raping computers is much more sophisticated than consenting adults.
Like me, I bought a Dell Mini 9 netbook with Windows because they were trying to get rid of them *cheap* ($250 US), and immediately ditched it for hackintosh Mac OS X...
How is it possible? Because what MS (and many companies) are calling a "netbook" are *NOT* netbooks. Netbooks were supposed to be:
1) Small, light
2) Inexpensive
3) Lower specs/speed/ram/resolution
4) Solid state storage
and in all original incarnations
5) Linux based
So, the answer to the questions is: just change the definition of a "netbook" to the same specs as a regular entry-level notebook, ressurect XP, give XP away for nearly free, and then marvel at the market penetration. Sorry, I am not impressed.
.
The only way to break the monopoly is a computing paradigm-shift, similar to what the smartphones are doing.
Whats microsoft gonna do when $99 arm netbooks come out?
People say race for the bottom like its a terrible thing... im quite happy with my $19 dvd player thank you very much. Make it cheap, easy to use and good enough.
Funny how Microsoft is so quick to tout big gains in OS adoption but they probably aren't shouting too loudly that it's an OS they have been trying desperately to kill off. "Yay! Selling like hotcakes! Now die... Die... DIE!!!"
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
.. who knows. They don't exactly have much of a track record in the honesty or integrity department. The one thing they do really well is hype.
There have been other sources for quite a while now that have confirmed the huge shift in netbook sales to Windows. The last one I heard was some months ago, at which point 90% of netbook sales were on Windows.
The simple fact that most slashdotters don't want to admit is that people *want* Windows. They don't want Linux. We can all sit around and speculate on the reasons, but the basic fact is unchanged. They want Windows, and if they have any idea what Linux is at all, they consider it a "cheap knockoff". They want the real thing.
Wait for the ARM invasion. If hardware CAN run Windows vendors are always going to get pressured to load it. The ARM machines simply can't do it. Give a choice between a full Linux desktop, Android and WinCE and Microsoft's offering is going to come up a little short.
Would you be so sure about that? The whole point of a netbook is that you can basically do a few simple things. If you can do that with WinCE as well as Linux, then what difference does it make? The whole value proposition of Linux is that it has a full server stack with it. You don't need that with a netbook.
This is my sig.
So:
1- Take 2 months of data
2- Take the data from the first 6 months of a year prior
3- Compare data
4- ....
5- Profit!
I wonder if they count my shiny new Acer Aspire One? Yeah, it came with XP, and yeah, XP is still on the hard drive, but I installed Linux on the first day
Which distribution would you recommend? My cousin has an Aspire One, and he's looking to split off about 10 GB of the hard drive to play with Linux.
Let's not forget that Microsoft had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this market.
There is, however, a completely Windows-proof option: ARM-based netbooks will start selling this year
Are you certain of this? I've used Windows Mobile on ARM-based PDAs made by Symbol. Some things about CE are a pain, but overall, it should be possible to build CE into something that competes with "netbook remix" style distributions such as the version of Xandros that comes preloaded on an Eee PC.
What devices do you think they are readying the new version of windows mobile for? smart phones and ARM devices.
FOSS has almost no penetration in the home markets. Sadly M$ plans to keep it that way as best they can. The only hope here is if enough vendors push Android or a FOSS solution despite the pressure they will have from M$.
After the debacle most of the vendors had in Linux support on their netbooks, most will be happy to use M$ if the licensing fees are low enough to offset the support cost savings.
Whats microsoft gonna do when $99 arm netbooks come out?
The same thing it did when ARM-based PDAs and phones came out: make a distribution of Windows CE called Windows Mobile.
Very droll, and sadly true. For this HP killed off PA-RISC?
... until I replaced it with Mac OS X. (Acer Aspire One / 1.5GB RAM / 8GB SSD / Broadcom Networking Card)
8==8 Bones 8==8
The Alphasmart Neo is a useful device that apparently runs on a Motorola DragonBall chip running at 16Mhz and change. http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=cpu&id=c68328ez It runs for 700 hours on three 2AA batteries. Of course, it doesn't do much. http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=motherboard&w=39436080%40N00&m=pool
Even though I am a Linux user, if I were to purchase a netbook, it would have Windows on it. This is because of M$'s licensing scam. If I purchased one without Windows and then would up needing it later, it would cost me about $200 for a copy. The Windows netbook doesn't cost much more, and the Linux distros that ship on them aren't the ones for me. Thus it makes no sense for me to buy a Linux netbook. I can just install my favourite distoro on it anyway, and I have a copy of Windows for the thing if I need it later.
Last week I walked into no fewer than 20 different computer stores here in Taiwan (the home of ASUS, Acer, MSI, etc), big and small, in order to buy a Linux netbook. But despite the fact that some of them displayed as many as 20 different brands and models, I found exactly 0 (zero!) netbooks shipping with Linux. Zero, nada, nothing! It just doesn't exist any more.
So yes, I believe Microsoft and its 96% figure. While people had choice between Linux and Windows, the figure was very different, but since the consumers are no longer offered a Linux option, even 96% seems low. The situation with netbooks is now exactly the same as with laptops - it's 2009 and it's still impossible to buy one without Windows pre-installed!
I always have to laugh when I read news about EU suing Microsoft for bundling a browser or a media player with Windows, but fails to see the real issue - Microsoft's complete stronghold over hardware manufacturers. ASUS, Acer, MSI, Dell, HP - they all "recommend Windows for everyday computing" on their web sites. Out of their free will, no doubt...
the way i read this was that microsoft has f*#ked 96% of netbooks... =p
That's not what she said.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
I don't think that MS came up with Windows for Itanium just to "let Intel know they support them." They did it because they thought Itanium would be the Next Big Thing. As did a lot of other software vendors — all the major Unixes had Itanium versions, though they were mostly cancelled once the schedule started slipping.
Of course, Itanium is now seen as a white elephant, and all the effort people put into developing for it was wasted. But that's hindsight.
Just because MS got burned with Itanium doesn't mean they'll automatically stay away from ARM. If they see the whole netbook market taking off and face real competition from ARM netbooks, they might just do it.
The big stumbling block might be simple technology. ARM is, by design, a very simple, unsophisticated chip. I have to wonder if it can keep up with all the overhead of running Windows.
> How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?
That's easy. I'd hazard a guess, and say that 80% of netbook users aren't running a legitimate copy of Windows XP.
he said penetration. heh heh heh.
I maintain that a netbook running Windows, or even a standard Linux build, isn't really a netbook. It's really just a small, underpowered laptop.
... all of the things that you didn't really want to drag out a PC to do, but didn't really want to cram onto a phone either ... and with a snappy operating system that boots up quickly and gets the job done without calling attention to itself. If you have to run Windows Update on your netbook to protect it from the worm-of-the-week ... you've totally missed the point.
The whole point of netbooks was supposed to be that they *weren't* PC's, they were consumer electronics devices. Quickie access to the Internet, a little photo sharing and music playing
I'm more interested in the next generation of netbooks -- the ones that will cost $150-200 and run for eight or nine hours on one battery charge -- running low-power ARM and a designed for small form factor OS like Android. That generation of hardware will prove that a netbook isn't supposed to act like a PC. (And even if Microsoft weasels its way into that market by building Windows for ARM, they'll still find themselves at a disadvantage because x86 Windows software won't run on it. In fact, they'll even be faced with an unprecedented rate of customers returning them for just that reason.)
Let PC's be PC's and let netbooks be netbooks. They're not the same thing.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
From Linux having a 100% share and Windows having a 0% share in the netbook market, the upstart Microsoft has busted your illegal monopoly.
GAME OVER
I got one of them fancy Samsung NC10 netbooks (Atom 1.6GHz, gig RAM, XP pre-installed).
My OS of choice?
Mozilla Firefox.
At least that's where I spend 99% of my time on it.
Aside from the fact that MS probably counts shipped units to come up with its "96%" claim, does it really matter whether Linux geeks or Microsoft (or both) claim me as a user? The underlying OS identity is about as relevant to me as the manufacturer of the 2.5" hard drive the unit comes with. I stuck with XP since it was the path of least resistance.
Discuss...
Sigh.
I hold a little bit of MSFT stock and this depresses me.
Do they really believe a race to selling your product for nothing is the way out or ahead?
So basically MSFT has bragged that their OS somehow ships on 97% of all sub-300 dollar devices? Even if it were true I don't believe they are making any money at all from this.
Yes, I know I'm quoting you out of context but people who run Windows dwell among us, including family members.
:) Sure that would conflict with their Android platform dreams, but it's for the greater good!
Having freedom from MS is a good thing but most non-technical, non-Slashdot people find Windows familiar.
I'd be interested in the possibilities of ReactOS on such ARM devices. Basically a clean-room version of Windows XP - without the bloat and without the licensing fees to MS. It'd be able to use all the open source software you mention with a cross compile to ARM (if the tool-chain uses gcc). Java, via OpenJDK, already works on ARM linux via Cacao and Zero. Free as in beer software such as Safari, Flash and Opera already exists for ARM (just not on Windows, obviously).
In this way, you could have a GPL'd desktop running an environment that our non-techie brethren are comfortable in. No Photoshop, Quicken or MS Office obviously. However, there's a lot of open source and free as in beer software available for Windows that could appear practically overnight with a re-compile to ARM.
ReactOS is in pre-alpha stage for ARM but a few Google Summer of Code projects and we're away.
Hackers Boast 96% Netbook Penetration.
That windows won this battle because linux doesn't have enough critics.
Global 3Q netbook sales: 5.61 M units
Windows market share: 96% = 5.39 M netbooks
Global 3Q PC sales: 80.1 M units
Windows market share: 89.6% = 71.7 M PCs
Microsoft's windows netbook license count is a 4% gain on overall PC license sales.
We had an internship for a group of college students over winter break. For completing their task, they each got an Acer Aspire One. Most of the students had 2 - 5 year old laptops and the freaking netbooks had the same speed processors with more ram, larger HDD (120GB), and even more Video Ram (32MB vs 8MB shared).
Biggest complaints were lack of media drive and screen size. But after classes started again, they loved 'em. Perfect for taking notes and running most of their programs and they fit inside their backpacks without having to lug around an extra laptop bag.
But again, they all wanted XP. (and were glad it wasn't vista)
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Not off topic
it's so funny to watch you bitches try to justify the numbers in your own deluded little minds. just the way you fucks try to explain everything away that doesn't fit your open sores model is so cute.
face facts, no one really wants linux except for egotistical fags who think that they're going to single handedly change the course of computing history. get over it fags, there is no john galt of computing. it just will never happen.
on a side note, i'm surprise microsofts share isn't closer to 90 percent. after all they say 10% of the population is faggot. i expected all the faggots to go running for linux. or maybe they're cheating on the other little linux faggots.
cock smoking queers deserve to get aids and die.
A good fraction of netbooks have Win XP or Vista basic wiped in favor of Ubuntu et al. Not to mention many being sold with it preinstalled. I would go so far as to say linux has a much higher penetration on netbooks than it does on consumer desktops. It's funny how MS has spun that the other way.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I know that they mean they swapped machines for ones with different software, but I just imagine downloading Linux for free then trying to find a place to return it.
As far as 96% penetration, Ms has been f5g everybody for decades and so that is a 4% decline.
Bought an EEE PC with Linux - ok but not great even for basic use, though bash was welcome and system overall interesting. Installed and old XP license on it, what do you know, now it runs faster than before. Even my wife uses it now when her mbp battery runs out. I prefer Linux on servers... I know, hammer away...
Yea, love my linux netbook. I am going to order another.
If there is someone to blame in this mess, it is the netbook makers for insisting on putting their own bastardized versions of linux on them. Jut put one of a million stock distros on it, and provide the drivers. The community will do the rest. Once they figure that out, their profit margins for linux will double.
Living in Chile
When your screen, SSD, and chipset all use more juice than the CPU, switching to ARM is not the fix.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Lack of commercially supported packaged-VPN solutions with Linux/Windows client is one big problems for the unpopularity of Linux netbooks in corporate world. Don't point me a million websites. The point is Linux-VPN companies aren't being successful. So Linux devices are not able to connect to the corporate world (IM, Email, Corporate web services etc).
Microsoft Office (with Outlook) is still the killer application for selection of netbooks and laptops. Yeah I know there are Linux solutions as well. Google Docs like solution running on a corporate web-server have a better chance at competing with MS Office than OpenOffice does.
Virus/worms are really nuisances to problems solved by Windows. Nobody is going to stop using WIndows because of Virus and worms. There are fixes for those as well.
TFA title leaves something out, 96% of the netbooks in the US run Windows. Worldwide Linux runs 25% of the netbooks.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Don't mind me, I'm just savoring the moment.
Good chips but FX!32 wasn't so good. Given enough tyme DEC may of improved it though.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
As long as I can run Mathematica, I don't giveabout OS
Yes, 96% sounds about right. If you examine the "netbook" models on offer from Lenovo, HP and Dell very few offer Linux, and in some countries none at all. And I bet they sell the most, when push comes to shove. In Australia the only one I have seen is the Acer Aspire One, and that's a cut-down version of Linux. Also the Linux netbooks are deliberately offered at nearly the same price when in fact they cost less, or on machines where the $50 difference won't be noticed. The consumer has no real choice. The choice is made entirely by the manufacturers, who have signed agreements with Microsoft in various countries forcing them to offer Windows on all their machines.
I keep encountering folks with Macbooks that have installed Windows. What's up with that? I know it's marginally relevant, but if users are returning Netbooks because they lack the 'Windows Experience' in their new purchase, is the same happening with MacBooks as well?
Yea, I'll give you a 'Windows Experience'. One you'll never forget.
"Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
I'll explain how Windows share of netbooks can go up but sales go down using very simple numbers for math challenged /. readers. Microsoft likes to sell higher priced versions of Windows Vista...Home Premium, Ultimate and Enterprise...more than they like to sell Vista Home Basic or Windows XP. Netbooks are often (but not always) low-powered machines that run OS's with lower system requiremetns. If the percentage of PC's running more expensive versions of Windows Vista decreases in favor of netbooks - which tend to run Windows XP or Windows Vista Home Basic then Microsoft's revenue (and presumably profit) decreases, even if they have a larger percentage of netbook sales year over year.
As in 'Lowest Common Denominator'.
"Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
Because they might not be getting Windows but they SURE as hell ain't getting Linux either. I got one and I removed that piece of crap and installed a real OS as soon as I could put an image on a USB stick.
Linux of course, arch linux if you must know, but something I control, not Acer.
Linpus is horribly locked down and doesn't even have Firefox 3 by default. Updates are way to complicated. Sorry, but it seems like little more then those DOS machines Dell sells you because they have to supply an OS to keep MS happy.
Frankly, I think Ubuntu's remix is worth taking a look at as well. One thing that a netbook has is mobility but that comes with some serious drawbacks. For me, trying to use that bloody trackpad while in public transport. KEYBOARD people. The first distro to come with an interface that can be efficiently controlled in a moving train on a relatively small screen (hint, dialog boxes need to be SMALLER then the screen) could have a real winner. Or maybe just wait for Apple to do it right.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
they use the word "penetration" to shove it in your... face that they are fucking you.
I think I see the reason. In Taiwan it's probably easy to get illegal installs of XP + all software when buying in small local shops- I know it happens in Russia. So the market for really free software is probably quite low. In Germany however, it is different. It is more difficult to sell computers with illegal stuff on it, and there is a substantially large group of pricky nerds that are in favor of linux for ideological reasons (and nationalist pride, suse started here). So at least in the small shops you can get linux netbooks, or notebooks with no OS preinstalled. And then there is Dell, where I bought my linux netbook via the german website.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Wait till the end of the month and give the jaunty (ubuntu 9.04) "netbook remix" a try.
I'm waiting for it to come out so I can install it on my MacBook Pro.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I didn't read it before. If I had I wouldn't have bothered to reply.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Microsoft has OEM deals will all manufacturers and is giving away rotty Windows XP copies for pennies with every netbook sold. I don't see how this is a major victory for them. Unless Microsoft keeps giving Windows away for free, they'll slowly bleed to death, despite the "sales" figures.
99% of what makes Linux inferior to Windows is the lack of drivers that are not written with the x86 ISA + Windows OS in mind.
In the case of machines running Windows Mobile or pre-installed Linux, the manufacturer makes sure that drivers for the included hardware are installed on the machine. Or are you talking about things like CUPS?
I'm not sure what you mean, if CUPS is inferior or not, but the only problem I've had with it was I couldn't figure how to get my printer working right on my Linux PC using USB. I've used 3 printers on my Mac though, OS X uses CUPS too, without a problem.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Erm... 318 comments at the time I read them. Plenty are about penetration. Many are contesting the 96% figure.
I have a better solution that combines them both: They simply made a typo and were looking for 69%.
Look ma i can give away things for free!
HTTP/1.1 400
There are multiple possible explanations, that make M$ figures valid:
1. they included netbooks with mscorefonts package installed
2. link to Microsoft Percent is missing
3. user target restrictions are missing - it should say something like "96% of rednecks, who don't already have a Mac"
4. they missed a coma - it's 9,6%
And now you have it - 4 different explanations that would make that statement completly valid :P
Price of an Eee 1000H at Best Buy with XP on it: $329
Price of an Eee 1000 (different model) with Linux: $499
The Linux model is in some ways arguably better, but the one "with Windows" is what I could get cheaply and quickly... And it runs Ubuntu.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Of course, to keep Linux machines out of the market, they need to offer a competitive price against free software. They may dominate the market, but they'll haemorrhage money with each unit sold. And if they try to creep the margins back up, suddenly Linux becomes viable as a competitor again.
Now normally, they'd only need to do this until the competitor went out of business. But that isn't going to happen with Linux. So the question becomes how long MS are willing to keep throwing money away.
Of course, this is taking the MS figure at face value, which I must admit, I don't. Still, interesting times...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Remember the humping usb devices? That's pretty much what Microsoft does to 96% of netbooks.
4: Folks around Linux still cannot understand that in the software world, choice while good, breeds confusion. On this very point Bill Gates stated it bluntly while referring to UNIX.
And how many choices does Microsoft offer with Vista? Though not as many as there are Linux distros and other Unices MS has 4 versions of Vista.
Who gained out of this confusion? Microsoft.
The thing about choices is that a person can choose what they want. Of course many Windows users wouldn't know how to choice a Linux distro.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
NT for Alpha had a x86 emulator so you could run your 99,9% non-Alpha NT applications.
With FX!32 I was only able to get one commercial app to run on my Alpha running NT4. I was however able to get most of the Free/shareware software I tried to install to work.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
... "penetrate better with 150% better penis" or some such nonsense. It's got as much validity as what MS is spewing here. You expect us to believe you, when even your internal numbers don't match up? If they do "match up", then the only explanation is that MS is, essentially, giving away their OS for free for the netbooks, or charging a paltry fee.
I almost fell bad for the Executive level staff at Microsoft (and do feel sorry for the rank-and-file employees), because the $200 and even $100 netbooks aren't far off. Like, supposedly, April.
Yes, we've heard the "$100 laptop" fo a while now (a year or two) but this time, we really are pretty much there (if, for no other reason, the fact that prices do keep dropping, in one regard or another, and ARM hardware is cheap).
And yes, these low-cost netbooks will have ARM processors, because there's no other economic way to do it. And people will buy them - as long as Youtube, a modern browser, a decent word processor, and a chat client are there, 90% of users will be just fine.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
92% of all statistics are made up.
duh.
API calls and so on are in too many cases far too different. it's a job like porting to Linux, rather than updating from 2000 to XP syscalls.
Even if Microsoft is telling the truth, Linux having 4% of the Netbook Market Share that's a formidable growth from it's overall market share of 1-2%.
And more importantly for nearly a year people tried out Linux and liked it. Maybe they have to or want to go back to Windows, but the fear of the Linux bogeyman has been weakened, and that's a big problem for Microsoft.
To put it anecdotally, when I showed my father the Ubuntu Live CD, his fear of this virus ridden piece of communist filth was palpable. However, now he has an Asus 900 with Xandros on it and he loves it. Now, he's the kind of person who is afraid to change his background wallpaper for fear of breaking the PC - so there's no way he'll install Windows on it.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Sounds like Windows is penetrating... Linux. Bring on the lube!
"Citing figures from market research firm NPD, Microsoft says Windows' share of the US netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February"
.. Brandon stated a number that may be true for U.S. retail for one month of sales '
'Windows Is Not on 96% of Netbooks
I just ordered a Dell Mini 10 from Dell Denmark and they can only deliver the machine with Windows XP pre-installed. I ordered via the phone, and was offered a discount of ~$35. I have no use for XP and plan to install Ubuntu on the machine when it arrives.
Unfortunately, my machine will also count in Balmer's statistics.
Next up, malware boasts 96% netbook penetration.
One word: FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
Alright... maybe not one EXACTLY one word.
FWIW, here in Italy it's particularly hard to find linux-equipped netbooks from Asus. I bought a 901 in January but it took a while to find a retailer that still stocked those with Linux. At the moment the very rare linux-ones are even more expensive than windows-ones, guess it's a matter of the law of demand.. no one asks for the penguins ones anymore (and I'm quite sure that if I ask the average user if he just knows about linux I would get a blank stare in return). BTW, when I read the user manual (yes, someone still reads them) of my 901, I got the sharp impression that Asus is in bad faith when they sell linux netbooks... More than a third of the manual details the wiping of linux and the installation of xp. The accompanying CD is mostly filled with xp drivers.. My guess is that Asus (and the other netbook manufacturers) used linux to force M$ to keep xp alive and to lower the price dramatically. In the end M$ had everything to gain from the widespread use of xp... and the development costs of xp are already well recovered by now..
What about all the Hackintoshes? My Wind came with Windows, but that was quickly deleted and now it's running OS X.
The customized Xandros OS on Linux eeePC's is pretty weak out of the box for my taste. It's basically a window manager & a launcher with a handful of apps to do basic tasks. The custom Xandros distribution is somewhat stale. The package selection, though skimpy is well chosen for functionality. Next to an Acer Aspire One with XP it looks like a toy.
Once I dumped that for full on Debian & KDE3.5 it made the AAOXP look like a toy from 7-11.
I was recently in Tokyo and Seoul on vacation, and happened to poke my head into a few retailers (Yodobashi Camera, TechnoMart, among others). There were dozens of different netbook models for sale. There were zero netbooks running Linux for sale. About half the netbooks ran Vista.
Go to TigerDirect, 2 out of 55 are Linux. Cheapest is $229US Acer Aspire 1 16G - Windows XP. Cheapest Linux netbook is $299 HP mini.
Got to Geeks.COM, $169 for a MIPS-based Linux system, but their only x86 netbook is $329 Intel Atom-based system with XP.
If the price is so much lower, I would be tempted to get one with a hard disk and XP, repartion, and load Linux. However, this would COUNT as an XP sale.
I clicked this article in RSS because it had the word "penetration" in it...
Haha. As alway M$ spreading made up news and reporting made up numbers before it even starts denting the market. oh well I hope they stay happy in their dreamworld.
What's the chicken and what's the egg?
The netbook that interests me is the Asus Eee PC 901 with Linux. My favorite vendor does not even carry it. Many of the netbooks are not even available with Linux.
Worse yet, the Microsoft requirements mean that the present crop of netbooks are beefed up enough to run XP but can't be beefed up past certain limits. (The XP version of the Eee PC boasts 12GB SSD while the Linux version has 20GB - at the same price.)
I bought a netbook for my wife which had windows pre-loaded, the first thing I did was install Ubuntu on it. I've booted Windows once since the original install to upgrade firmware, so I guess that netbook is counted in their stats.
and linux claims "just the tip".
I was at PyCon week before last in Chicago. I guess all the netbooks not running Windows were there. They were all running Linux. What a great conference. Saw no more than 10 Windows laptops the whole time. Majority were MacBook Pros and MacBooks. Overwhelming majority of HP's and Dell's were running Linux. About 1000 people in attendance.
What a wonderful week.
Just curious, but is it possible to run an X86 emulator on an ARM processor? If so, could they not compile the base OS for ARM, then in the transition period run "legacy" applications under emulation? I understand the major performance hit, but sometimes something is better than nothing at least until applications are ported?
Granted this is pertaining to a more Windows related question, but wouldn't this also be the case if you had to deal with binary blobs for linux?
I hope I'm not making too ignorant of a question/statement...
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
There are many comments here reporting that Linux netbooks are becoming impossible to buy. It seems to be the same here in Germany: I haven't seen a single Linux netbook in a brick and mortar store until now.
My impression now is that hardware manufacturers were never serious about Linux netbooks. They were just bluffing so that Microsoft would lower its prices, that's all. Now that microsoft bent its knees, they are happily going back to Windows, which is known territory for them. This explains the lack of advertising for the Linux models, as well as the low quality of the Linux distros preinstalled on many netbooks. Of course, as long as you're just bluffing, any investments into Linux integration are just a waste of resources, so you keep them to a minimum.
On the flip side, TFA shows that Microsoft is realizing that they now own the market, so they'll probably soon start to impose their onereous conditions again. It's indeed interesting times we're living...
So Microsoft can leave a hole in my buget AND my netbook? Great.
I have a theory that the real reason lots of folks are buying netbooks is because it's the one place they can walk into a store and walk out with a product with Windows XP (instead of Vista) pre-installed.
Ok, it's not a very good theory... but it's mine and I own it, and what it is too. :)
Seriously though, back when MS didn't take netbooks seriously, Linux was cheapest/easiest for OEMs to go with. Once MS decided to bring their weight to bear, I'm sure there were the "you WILL stop preinstalling Linux and you WILL preinstall XP, right?" kind of back-room pressure.
In the end, it's a non-story.
IF the US passed a law tomorrow saying that no computer could be sold with an operating system pre-installed, and that people had to buy one to install, MS would still have a big share because lots of folks are comfortable with it. However, over the longer term more and more folks would migrate to Linux; due to either price or just eventual "head-space" familiarity (brand recognition, whatever you wanna call it).
I bought a very nice little Samsung netbook, and it came with Windows preinstalled as well... Not exactly difficult to fix that though, now is it?
The Digital Sorceress
I went to Postgres East last week and won an ASUS EEE PC 1000. It has the 40GB SSD, 1.6ghz Atom and Linux installed.
Unfortunately I can't install a raw install of OSX on it (like the mini9 can) so I'm looking to sell this one.
They opened it at the conference to show to other people, but it's unused and has never been turned on.
I'm asking for 375... email me if interested
How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook
http://i.gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook
Oops! I meant bribery and coercion, not free market; I always confuse them.
It will support innovations. Faster boot, energy efficiency, more functionality like a built in browser. Look at what Linux BIOS can do already, for instance in the "100$" Laptop.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
You unwashed *Nux homos wouldn't know sophisticated humor if it crawled up your leg and bit you on the dick.
That's simply untrue. That happened to me the other day, and I was all "Aaaah! Sophisticated humor, biting my dick! Aaaaah!" So shows what you know.
The enemies of Democracy are
I want too choose! I don't want to pay $20 more on a $100 device for something I'm not going to use. Same with laptops and desktops. Why can;t we have choice? Then the market share discussion of OS distributed will be moot.
I don't know about netbooks, but I'm looking at buying an Ubuntu desktop from Dell - the Inspiron 530N - and it's more expensive than the Inspiron 530 with Vista. The CPU is a little faster, but part of the cost difference is that you can't order the Ubuntu machine without a monitor. You can get the Windows machine without one, though.
How much sense does that make?
...and the return rate for Linux netbooks is comparable for the return rate for XP netbooks, according to Dell senior product manager John New. So Microsoft's numbers are suspect.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
quite well put. MS used its monopoly power here, and I'm sure we'll hear more about this later. The problem is 'linux' is not a very defined entity here, and the hardware maker have their balls in MS's vise, so they won't squeal too soon.
I propose a nuclear war against MS. Just level Redmond to the ground, and burn their embassies. Or force them to open source their OS code permanently not these puny EC pinpricks.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I got 100% penetration on your mom last night.
I would call that a Linux computer, but I suppose they call it a Windows computer.
They call it a Windows PC because Acer knows damn well the geek who installs his own OS is insignificant in the mass consumer market.
Penetration. Lol.
Corvidae.
Nobody's penetrating my wife's netbook without my permission, or at least letting me watch. I'm the system administrator.
It had never even occurred to me to consider Windows on a NetBook (Dell Mini 9s with Ubuntu really are amazing machines), but how do you install Windows software without a CD-Drive?
The Ubuntu Mini 9 had 99% of the software pre-installed, and the rest a couple of clicks away, but I don't think they even have an option of pre-installing MS Office, and I have never seen a Windows game that didn't need the CD for copy-protection.
... the manufacturers will soon stop worrying about Linux compatible hardware. Who cares about the 4%? And then we have the same problem with Linux on netbooks that we all know (and hate) on notebooks.
While I get your point 2, my pessimistic prediction could turn true as well ...
IMHO Linux has lost an opportunity with netbooks. Blame it on manufacturers that sold netbooks as small notebooks (and not as internet computers). Blame on the Linux distributions on the netbooks. Ubuntu is now "shaping up" to be a viable competitor. Now. When the battle is lost.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Not commenting on netbook sales in general, but which OS to choose.
Personally I was forced to a crippled XP Home, as I could not find the netbook I bought (Asus S101) with Linux in Finland. I needed the netbook for a trip and didn't want english keyboard, thus was forced to buy what was available.
Naturally I would have preferred Linux with SSD twice the size that came on my XP-forced one for the same price.
You can guess what OS it was running by the time I got my hands on it... ...and as a hint, it's not OS X. At least not yet.
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
Let's just do the numbers.
First, remember, there's China where you can get the netbook version of Win OS for something like $10 legally - and that's a lot of Netbooks.
Second, MSFT counts all free copies of Win OS "sold" worldwide at full non-discounted retail price. Even though they "gave" them to people in India and Africa.
Third, in the first world, let's say you have 1 million netbooks - 90 percent of which have Linux on them - total cost is .... $1000 total. Cause it's free. Now let's look the 10 percent that are MSFT - total cost is .... $20,000,000. Which makes MSFT's MARKET SHARE in the first world ... 99.99 percent!
Microsoft wins!
But, in cold hard reality, most netbooks are shipping with Linux.
There are TOTAL UNITS SOLD. And there is MARKET SHARE. Market share is based on Units X Price of OS. Linux will always lose this battle (free) and MSFT will always win this battle (too expensive). And they have all those subsidized Chinese Win OS netbooks to let them sidetrack you from the true picture, as well as their "donated" copies.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I have several original-model Eee PCs (the "2G Surf" model), which run a cut-down Linux. The Linux face just isn't very good. There are dialog boxes bigger than the screen. The process of connecting to a WiFi network is slow, and it seems to be running a shell script of commands and scraping the output messages, and if something goes wrong, you don't usually get a useful message. You can open a text window and look at the log from the shell script, which is nearly meaningless from an end user perspective, and not very good even if you understand the entire networking stack. This is the classic Unix/Linux "Mold coming through the wallpaper" problem.
(There was a fundamental design error made in the design of UNIX that leads to this. When launching a program, the launching program gets to pass a list of parameters and environment variables. When the program exits, all that's passed back is a single integer status code. Big mistake. If "exit" passed back a parameter list (i.e. void exit(int status, int argc, const char* argv[]);), calling a program would be more like calling a subroutine, with structured information coming back. Shell scripts would then treat programs more like subroutines, rather than the current practice of more or less blindly executing programs, maybe checking the status code, and dumping any problems back on the suffering user.)