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Lenovo On the Future of the Netbook
thefickler touts an interview in tech.blorge with Lenovo's Worldwide Competitive Analyst, Matt Kohut, who spoke about his vision of the future of netbooks, which involves Windows 7, bigger screens, built-in 3G, touch integration, and lower prices. Linux fans will be disappointed to hear that Kohut thinks Windows 7 will dominate future generations of netbooks because it offers a better, more familiar solution, with the benefits of touch. Quoting Kohut: "The other challenge has been, in order to keep the price points down, a lot of people thought that Linux would be the savior of all of these netbooks. You know, there were a lot of netbooks loaded with Linux, which saves $50 or $100 or whatever it happens to be, based on Microsoft's pricing and, again, from an industry standpoint, there were a lot of returns because people didn't know what to do with it. Linux, even if you've got a great distribution and you can argue which one is better or not, still requires a lot more hands-on than somebody who is using Windows. So, we've seen overwhelmingly people wanting to stay with Windows because it just makes more sense: you just take it out of the box and it's ready to go."
Everything you see today, only larger, faster and cheaper.
Nice "vision". Where can I get a job like that?
You know, I thought the whole point of a netbook was to be cheap and portable. Why would you throw a bigger screen on it? I've got a 17" laptop. It's great for long-term use, since it has a full-sized keyboard. Great use in class, when I was taking notes. And yet I'm *still* considering grabbing a netbook and an aircard so that I'd have something tiny to carry around for if I need to look up something quickly (bus schedules, addresses, etc). Something with a larger screen would just be relegated to laptop uses, especially with an increased battery drain from the larger screen. Seriously, what's the point?
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Linux, even if you've got a great distribution and you can argue which one is better or not, still requires a lot more hands-on than somebody who is using Windows. So, we've seen overwhelmingly people wanting to stay with Windows because it just makes more sense: you just take it out of the box and it's ready to go."
If Linux netbooks aren't ready to go out of the box, the vendors are doing a poor job.
If people are trying to install non-bundled apps, they might run into trouble. Otherwise, everything should just work. If it doesn't, something's wrong.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I will keep an eye on Thinkpad hardware to run Linux as I have for years, but I will have to remain paranoid and assume the worst until some testing and validation has occurred, whether by me or others in the Linux world.
It is sad to see people like Kohut gaining prominence. He has blogged more than once indicating his belief that the Thinkpad value is in that gimmicky crap software they add on top of Windows (whether the wireless manager, or power manager, or hybrid graphics driver), which truly shows that he has no respect for the robust hardware platform they used to provide. If they had any remaining pride in their hardware, they wouldn't need gimmicky software to differentiate.
Why is there no major Linux vendor, anyways? Aside from repackaging Windows machines with Linux? Why can't somebody do for Linux what Apple does for OSX?
Because most Linux users are geeks, and us geeks enjoy customization. For example, even though I might enjoy using Ubuntu, a KDE user might be appalled that KDE (and all the KDE applications) aren't installed by default. Gentoo users would find it wasn't fast enough, Fedora users would complain at the lack of Yum and it being Debian based, people who use lighter WMs would find GNOME too bulky, users of paid distros wouldn't like the hand installing of certain patented codecs, etc.
Basically, its impossible to find a distro or tactic that works for everyone. For example, I have an EEE PC that had Xandros installed, it seemed like a crippled version of Debian, so I just installed Xubuntu with a custom kernel which I could have done if it came with Windows.
Apple has basically said no to customization throughout their existence, so Apple users aren't used to customization, they like it one consistent way and will stick with it till the day they die. Windows, while it has a lot of GUI customization available via themes, there isn't really a supported way of customizing Windows the way you can Linux. It doesn't take too much work to make a distro of Linux that can fit in 10 MB and have a functional server, userland, etc. Within 50 MB you can have a full desktop distro. When you take Windows to fit in that size you remove some needed parts of the OS.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You can argue all you want that Linux is the preferable OS of choice for netbooks, but making claims like "the reality is that the netbook running FOSS will become the default" anything doesn't help much, when, for the moment, these claims are blatantly false:
People aren't buying as many Linux-based netbooks. And the ones that do get bought get returned in higher volumes. That is a fact, with data to back it up. So rather than denying the reality of the situation (Microsoft is laughing at your post all the way to the bank, by the way), why not be helpful and contribute some suggestions on how to reverse this decline?
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Professional programmer with extensive experience using open source software finds Linux easy to use out of the box; Can't understand why other people have trouble. News at 11.
Yeah I was reading that thinking, "Isn't a netbook with a bigger screen a laptop? So the future of netbooks is laptops? Huh?"
Yeah, that sounds like the "SUV" thinking that got the US car industry in trouble- "The future of cars= Larger, lalala, I'm not listening".
:).
Totally ignoring the netbook market.
A lot of people want something that they can use like a laptop (do work, use gmail, facebook, MSN etc), but it MUST fit their _handbag_.
The laptop market is not going away anytime soon, neither is the netbook one.
FWIW, I'd rather have a wearable computer that is actually practical (very usable) and won't result in the special forces shooting me in the back of my head. But I guess there are only a few like me
(next day) ... and then you should see it."
"Hello, I have trouble with my Windows computer. The internet isn't working."
"Ok, what version do you have?"
"Windows"
"Erh... no, 98, 2k, XP, Vista..."
"Umm... yes."
"Ok, something different. When you open your browser..."
"My what?"
"Your browser. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera..."
"Where is that?"
"In your start menu. Go start -
"I have "update windows", is it that`?"
If someone is clueless, giving him another system won't fix it. Educating people would. But that costs money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.