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"Good Enough" Computers Are the Future
An anonymous reader writes "Over on the PC World blog, Keir Thomas engages in some speculative thinking. Pretending to be writing from the year 2025, he describes a world of 'Good Enough computing,' wherein ultra-cheap PCs and notebooks (created to help end-users weather the 'Great Recession' of the early 21st century) are coupled to open source operating systems. This is possible because even the cheapest chips have all the power most people need nowadays. In what is effectively the present situation with netbooks writ large, he sees a future where Microsoft is priced out of the entire desktop operating system market and can't compete. It's a fun read that raises some interesting points."
This kinda of reminds of the '640KB should be enough for everyone' theory. If everyone is just content surfing the web and writing e-mails, then sure the 'good enough' solution sounds fair, but if 'good enough' also means dealing with a Windows ME experience then no thanks. At the same time what is considered 'good enough' will evolve over time and new solutions are created and user expectations evolve.
Will my 'good enough' computer handle my photo library, my 32MP entry level camera, recognise the faces in my photo collection. This sound like far fetched stuff today, but as these technologies peculate down from high end systems and people get used to the computer doing more of their mind-numbing repetitive tasks, user expectation will adapt and want them in their 'good enough' computers.
In many ways plenty of people are already using 'good enough' computers. Whether they are satisfied with them is a whole other question.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I'm all for cutting costs using an open source OS, but the problem with increasingly cheaper hardware is staying power. Yeah it might be all you need, but how long is it going to be around for. Of course the trade off is, is it cheaper to get short term cheap computers, or long term expensive computers. And, to top it all off, if we do switch to a disposable computing model will we having recycling programs in place to make sure we reuse the rare and valuable parts, and keep the really toxic parts out of landfills?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
There is nothing particularly insightful about the article. Obviously the largest portion of the computer using population would never need cutting edge power, so effectively "good enough" has always been the paradigm. How many of us have super computers? This is just a piece with some wishful thinking hoping that people eventually see through Microsoft's coerced perpetual upgrade cycle.
I got a catholic block.
There will always be higher res movies to view and process, and more data from the world to be saved. I remember one colleague telling me in 1995 that if I got a 2 gig drive it would never be full.
But Windows won't run on the next generation of netbook computers (the ARM-based ones, such as what Freescale/Pegatron is comming out with). Unless you count WinCE. But Linux will run the same apps as always, since everything can be (and has been) ported.
Of course, this hinges on the assumption that ARM-based netbooks will take off, and I think they will. For one thing, they get much better battery life than you can get out of an x86 (even though Atom is low powered, you still have the thirsty chipset). And the prices are better than most of the x86 netbooks ($100 to $200).
Microsoft knew this a long time ago. That's why they are where they are today... everywhere. You don't need something that's perfect and awesome, you just need something good enough so people can get by. The cost savings you get by not putting tons of effort into perfection can be passed on to consumers, who almost always buy on price alone.
Good enough has changed because Linux keeps up with the Windows upgrade cycle...I attempted to dust off a Pentium II 300 with 448mb RAM, 40 gig hard drive, CD-ROM, DVD/CD-RW, ESS Mastro II PCI sound card, and an Nvidia TNT2 (32 mb). To a get a mostly usable system (partially attributable to broken ACPI), I went from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 to XUbuntu 8.10 before ultimately making a reasonable net appliance with FreeBSD-7.1 & XFce4...that lasted about two weeks until I got a DFI AK76-SN with an Athlon XP 1800+, 512mb RAM, and an Nvidia Ti4200 (128mb) from my brother because I was bitching about not being able to get a stable system from ancient hardware...granted I moved from circa '97-'98 hardware to probably about '00-'01 but what a difference 3 years makes when the current kernel has been basically synced to the MS upgrade cycle because that's what's been driving hardware development...I now have Ubuntu 8.04 running on a completely usable system, no difference from the XP Pro box upstairs in terms of functionality.
Not all Linux software is OSS. If Flash (for example) wasn't available to ARM, I think it would make them less attractive - my wife spends a lot of time watching the BBC iPlayer on our Asus EEE.
This article claims the ARM version of Flash will be out in May. I hope it is. I like our EEE but an 8hour battery life for the price they are talking about would be enough to make me buy one.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Your post is true; but I don't think that it actually contradicts TFA's assertion.
Apple is, in fact, a significant beneficiary of "good enough". They make mostly laptops, which always have price/performance and worse absolute performance than do desktops. Nobody much cares; because laptops are more convenient, and they are fast enough for the job(even within the laptop market, Apple doesn't bother with any dual HDD offerings, or SLI setups, because the lower spec stuff is good enough). On the desktop side, all of Apple's consumer offerings are all-in-ones with extremely limited expandability. Nobody(except gamers) much cares; because the stuff built in is good enough, and PCI blanking plates are ugly.
Having a manufacturer selling limited-performance hardware, with minimal expansion capacity, distinguished by industrial design and software, rather than performance, and doing quite well is exactly what "good enough" looks like.
That doesn't mean that Apple is the only part of "good enough" el-cheapo walmart desktops and netbooks are also a (larger in marketshare terms) part; but Apple is hardly in opposition to "good enough".
With the debut of Windows 3.1 'good enough' became the accepted norm in computing.
You could pay more for a NeXT workstation, a Sun workstation, or even a Mac. However Windows 3.1 was 'good enough'. Most people didn't need networking support built in, or the compilers or software that was available for the other platforms.
You could have gone all multimedia with a fancy Amiga that did incredible sound and graphics, but 16 colors and trading files via floppy was 'good enough' for the majority of people. You could add hardware and software to Windows 3.1 computers if you really had a need to network them. The computers Windows ran on were capable of displaying better graphics (games that booted to DOS showed this), but Windows 3.1 was 'good enough'.
Windows 3.1 really did make computers easier to use. Macs, Amigas and NeXT did a 'better' job of making computers easier for people, but Windows 3.1 did a 'good enough' job at making things easier. At about US$2,400.00, a mid range computer with Win 3.1 on it was a lot cheaper than the competition. It was 'good enough' and cheaper.
The history of economics shows that 'good enough' and cheap wins.
Think of the 'best' hamburger that you ever ate...
Did you think of a plain old McDonald's hamburger? Probably not. In any scale of human measure (taste, smell, satisfaction) McDonald's hamburgers rarely rank as 'best'. But measured in market share the McDonald's hamburger is the best.
Ford's Model T was not as fast or as fancy or as comfortable or as good in quality as the hand crafted automobiles it competed with. But thanks to mass production and economies of scale it was cheaper and it was 'good enough'. Ford and other mass produced vehicles dominated the market. There are still purpose built vehicles, but they are a small specialty segment of the market.
'Good enough' and cheap is always the 'best' when you consider things from a market dominance point of view. What a human thinks is 'best' and what the market thinks is 'best' are not the same thing.
I know exactly what you mean. I had to boot into Vista the other day to update my iPod, and it was a mess. I mean, it's pretty much a brand new install, and I've done as much as possible to reduce running services and apps, but still...it can barely handle a single browser on this computer. And it's so damn unresponsive. Combine that with the horror than is iTunes (It just starts doing all kinds of crap that I don't want it to do, and it slows my computer to such a crawl that it takes ten minutes get my mouse to the cancel button) and what should have taken five minutes ended up taking over an hour.
After that experience I have truly realized why I love Linux. I love it because, even on my $500 Dell Vostro, I can run a browser with 15 tabs open, and leave it running for weeks at a time (an old, leaky firefox even!)...while running KDevelop and Pidgin and Amarok and Konsole and Epiphany (yes, I run two browsers sometimes) and kate and whatever else I need. And nothing slows down. I love it because I can squeeze almost 6 hours of life out of a battery than can barely hit 3 on Vista. I love it because I can do 'sh passmount.sh' and punch in a password rather than typing in some huge string, typing in a username and password, selecting a drive and hitting next 6 times...but if I want GUI tools, they're right there too. I love it because all of my apps run. All of them. From Fantasy General and Zone Raiders (old DOS games) to World of Warcraft and Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars. Basically, I love it because it does what I want. Everything I want. But _only_ what I want.
Before you harp "run wine or gimp" normal people don't know about wine, gimp, or why they should use it. They want to attach their iphone to their computer like Steve Jobs says they can with a Mac or Windows box.
Actually, I'd suggest that if they actually need Photoshop, they should use it. If not, they should use Gimp. And I'd suggest Amarok, but that's another matter...
What, exactly, do you suggest?
They don't care about FSF's definition of "free" or even "free as in beer" since they'll gladly throw cash at expensive gadgets and software sold by Apple, MS, and Adobe.
No, but they ma start to care when they actually want something Linux does well, or some software on Linux, and Windows won't do it.
This began with Firefox. At first it was a vocal minority, and there wasn't much change -- most websites would still be designed for IE, and many of them would look terrible in Firefox. And, as you predicted, people blamed Firefox. (Well, Mozilla at first, and then Firefox.)
The first thing that Firefox did right was the extension concept. In fact, Firefox was born out of the idea that Mozilla had a solid foundation, but too much crap built-in that could be done as an extension.
The real catalyst came with just a few of those extensions. Firebug made Firefox possibly the best browser to develop on -- very quickly, web developers started to prefer Firebug, and dislike Internet Explorer. Of course, to this day, few sites will actually be so bold as to refuse supporting IE, but similarly, few sites will not work on Firefox.
That was really a prerequisite to getting most users to even consider Firefox. Users don't like to even think about the browser, so asking them to run two -- Firefox for most things, and IE for that one last site -- is lunacy.
The other important extensions are Greasemonkey and the various blockers -- adblock, flashblock, noscript, etc. These are important in that they give the user a reason to love Firefox -- who wants to go back to the web before Adblock? These are features IE doesn't have, because there's no incentive -- why would Microsoft sabotage their own live.com ads?
It's worth noting: Firefox didn't have to add ActiveX support. (It's been added, but it's buggy enough that people use IE anyway.) There are still sites Firefox cannot be used for. Yet Firefox has forced IE back below 80% marketshare.
I see no reason Linux can't do the same thing. It will take longer, but it is possible. But constructive criticism will be useful here, because it's unlikely Linux will ever just run Photoshop, at least until Linux gains sufficient marketshare that Adobe targets it. (Not that this stopped them from porting the Flash player or Acrobat Reader...)
So, what does Linux do well now, or what is it that Windows and OS X really suck at that Linux could do?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!