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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."
What with their ridiculous SL series and their lack of Linux support (and flagrant linux dismissal) since IBM spun them off, I say goodbye to you. I shall miss the trackpoint, but as you are trying to phase it out anyways, c'est la vie.
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?
Linux *is* awesome, but not ready for the masses who don't have an IT staff to tweak their image. Linux is vexing to those who support the idea of open source, but don't have the time or skill to navigate the endless FAQs needed to complete simple tasks (play DVD's, etc..). The key points of a netbook is ease, portability and its "appliance: nature. If there were a way to develop an instant on environment and purpose optimize the device a la kindle, then that's great. However, windows will rule until an easy GUI is developed that does not require a background in technology to use. The first poster is right, there is definitely some intellectual laziness out there, but I'd also argue that there are people without time to learn an OS during late night camel lights/sierra nevada fueled geek sessions. The iLife suite is a POS, but it's easy to learn and use, and that's one reason why apple has been so successful. If pcs were marketed solely to technology-inclined people, it would be a different story. Do you really think Joe the Plumber would be able to burn ubuntu isos and learn to use linux without getting frustrated?
There are several varieties of "wild boar" (at least in N. America). Some are viscous.
Jesus....really?
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
It's worth checking out Ubuntu Netbook Remix, an official ubuntu thing. Myself, I use debian and have no complaints. But then I use it on nearly every computer I own or have access to :)
Guidance/instructions for the eee range are here:
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC
I don't know how well it works on other netbooks, but I'm sure it's just a quick google away.
I honestly can't blame consumers from returning netbooks loaded with Linux, and exchanging them for the Windows versions. I don't think it's a fault of Linux, though, but rather with OEMs who haven't even *tried* to polish it up before sticking it in their low-cost machines.
Here, now, how many of you have bought a Linux-equipped netbook? and how many of you *weren't* tempted to replace it with Ubuntu as soon as you first booted it up? fact is, most OEMs are treating Linux as they used to treat FreeDOS: something to stick in the machine until the user goes home and installs their pirated version of Windows in it.
Missing drivers, non-working features, ugly non-standard interfaces and practically no apps out-of-the-box, it's a pity OEMs are giving Linux such a bad image just to save themselves the effort of giving their users a quality, distinctive experience.
Guess Linux' world domination will have to come from business after all, pity...
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
http://lunduke.com/?p=429
A friend of mine works part time at BestBuy. He more or less has told me the same thing. All brands of Netbooks (Asus, MSI, HP, and Dell) have had a very high return rate on models that were preloaded with Linux. It's not that people don't like Linux, it's that they want it to work the "Windows" way. So far, only Microsoft and provide that for obvious reasons.
If people really wanted something to work other than Windows, I'm sure they would have chosen Mac instead.
Life is not for the lazy.
What the TFA mentions that "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" is blatantly false. I unpacked my Linux eeePC, plugged it in, turned it on, and started working, something I never managed to do with any Microsoft computer.
In windows you always need to get and install all the software you need to actually do something with the computer.
In my case, I do a lot of Python programming, and that was there. I also found Kate, my favorite editor for programming. Plus OpenOffice, a media player for music and video, a bunch of icons for starting Firefox in several different modes, which means 99% of what I need for work and play was already there. Let me see a windows netbook that comes with all that pre-installed.
The only complaint I have about the eeePC is that the keyboard should be just a little bit bigger, other than that it's an excellent machine. But, of course, one can always have a thinner, lighter netbook, with longer lasting batteries. That would be my choice of directions for evolution.
My ma, my kids grandma runs Ubuntu- no problems whatsoever. She loves it. As far as the bigger screens nonsense Lenovo is spouting- sounds like he doesn't like the low margin netbook market and wants it to go away. My 7" ASUS was fine but the screen IS too small for regular use. The form factor though is perfect. My new 10" ASUS is about perfect esp with about 11hr (extended battery) run-time. If the screen were bigger I wouldn't get it, it would be too tough to carry around and bring on planes. If a notebook/netbook isn't EXTREMELY portable with a long run time I'll just stick to a much cheaper, more reliable and usable desktop.
From the article: "You can just take it (Windows 7) out of the box, and its ready to go."
I'm getting really sick of these stupid people saying how their manufacturer configured, tweaked and driver loaded version of Windows 7 works with their laptop 'out-of-the-box'.
Surely, I'm not the only one who finds this stupid. OF COURSE your manufacturer configured OS is going to work out of the box!!!!!!!!111one1
From the article: "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."
Error, should be: "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 used to only using Windows."
I'm going to sit down - my hands are shaking with.......wage.
Yeah, thats right, I got so indignant I typed this reply standing up and pounding on my keyboard.
Yeah, but a larger screen will always consume more power than a smaller one of the same age. And that still doesn't address the portability issues. Seeing a future of "larger" netbooks just strikes me as, well, stupid. We have larger netbooks. They're called _laptops_. That would make it "the past." My post makes sense. You just can't get over your own cleverness.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
> I think the printer driver issue alone is a problem for most people.
Excuse me? Most printer drivers for Windows XP come on a CD with the printer. Netbooks don't have CD drives.
Printer drivers on Linux are pre-installed. On Ubuntu, all you have to do is plug the printer in and turn it on while Ubuntu is running.
On netbooks the printer driver issue is a Windows issue, not a Linux issue. Methinks you have gotten yourself very confused.
Yep. And they are doing a piss poor job.
I was in a shop the other day and had a good look at whatever the latest Linux EeePC thing is. I use Linux exclusively for my personal computing and I found the desktop really confusing. And it looks so bland - as if they have spent several years and multiple design cycles iteratively increasing it's blandness until it makes a plain brown paper bag look absolutely fascinating in comparison. "Hey, that browser icon looks a little interesting, I'd better file a bug report."
What do Windows users do with one of these? They stuff around, find they can't figure out how to use it (I could barely figure it out) and take it back. What do Linux users do? Most put Ubuntu on it rather than the crap it comes with.
I wonder how long it will be before a manufacturer to realise that if they stop sabotaging Linux user interfaces and start using distros that everyone is using, e.g. Ubuntu for the EeePC, then they will actually have a market. I reckon they are deliberately screwing with the user experience to make windows look more favourable, and I think they are being stupid in doing that.
I don't therefore I'm not.
How long will it take for someone to combine a netbook with a digital ink screen (ala e-book readers)?
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
Indeed. .. but he was REALLY upset about it). ... and seen from this point of view, yes, Linux *IS* a PoS.
I was chatting to a non-computer savvy friend who moved to another country a few months ago, and he said he wanted to buy a new computer, but it absolutely shouldn't have linux on it. I asked him why, and he said that he was using Linux right at that moment on his wife's laptop and he was hating it with all his heart. I was kind of amazed by his horrified reaction to linux (I mean, okay! It's different from windows and so on
I asked him whether he was using Gnome, KDE or if, at least, he knew which distro it was. It turned out that his wife had bought an Acer Aspire One ( which, ironically, I was typing at, albeit using Ubuntu 8.10) and he was still using Linpus. For him, Linpus WAS Linux
Too bad I can't just tell him to boot off some live CD to show him what it's really like.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Also some manufactureres such as Canon refuse to publish the specs for their printers, provide drivers for other systems or put restrictive terms on the information. Hence making it almost impossible to write effective drivers for 'unauthorised' systems.
And there is no technical reason for the above restrictions. In fact it was trouble with obtaining printer information without having to sign an NDA that contributed to the formulation of the GPL.
Since getting a new laptop from $work (a Lenovo, no less), I've been in the opposite situation. I have few problems printing to a winprinter-like device (hp2600n which HP says "don't use with Linux), and those problems are all ghostscript problems. But my laptop, running XP, I've given up trying to get it to work. I lost the CD that came with the printer, and trying to figure out which stupid driver to download from HP is a lost cause. So the only machines that can print here are Linux.
Windows is a huge hassle out of the box. It takes ages to set up and get your programs installed and if something goes wrong it takes ages to diagnose and fix - else the solution is a re-install.
What you say is 100% correct. Out of the box, Windows itself does absolutely nothing and everything requires you to go find and install third party applications yourself. The thing can't even send email for crissake. And Microsoft will be among the first to suggest a bloody "format and reinstall" solution at the first hint of trouble, because actually figuring out what's wrong and fixing it is too hard, and in many cases, impossible.
However, none of this matters to the average Joe, since much of the software he wants will be pre-installed by the OEM, and to him that's "Windows". As long as it does what he wants when he powers it on, he's fine with it, and he has been conditioned to think "find, download, and run random untrusted installers from the web" is a normal thing. When Windows inevitably comes grinding to a halt in a few months, Joe is also fine with reinstalling -- because he's been conditioned to believe that's just how computers are.
And so it really comes down to the Devil you know versus the Devil you don't, in Joe's eyes. He knows that Windows is a pain and a half to use, but at least he thinks he knows what to expect. Linux may be far superior, and have an easy learning curve these days, but Joe doesn't want to find out because he's not sure what it'll do or how to handle any problems that arise. He doesn't really know how to handle Windows problems either, but he has the illusion that he does, because he's so used to it.
I think the other big portion of "Joe's" problem is that he has a misguided notion of what he "needs" on a computer. For the past decade Joe has been using MS Word to write documents, and to him that's simply how it's done. He thinks he needs Word, and when he finds out you can't run Word in Linux, he believes Linux is a waste of time. I say this is misguided because what Joe really needs is to be able to write documents -- and it doesn't matter if he's doing that in Word or Openoffice Writer. He'd be okay with either once he started, but again, it's the Devil he knows versus the Devil he doesn't.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Wow. That's either impressive or insane :-)
I can't even stand to carry around my 15" laptop on a daily basis. It's not so much the weight as the annoying "bulk" of it. It's awkward thick and wide. The power brick is big and needed far too often. The laptop is too big to fit on most lecture hall desks, and it's not at all unobtrusive... whenever I have it I'm instantly "that jerk with the giant laptop."
So 17"... way too big :-p
My bicyles
Of course the dominant market of netbooks will always be education, from primary school to university, hundreds of millions of units with hundreds of millions of licences, either they give it away for free and loose (FOSS advocates still win, we believe in bridging the digital divide) or give that market away to FOSS software and still lose (FOSS advocates prefer that as it gives people equal access to the software globally).
Of course they can attempt to follow the corrupt path and get governments to continue to throw away billions of dollars on licence fees but the general public is really starting to take a dim view on that flagrant waste of tax revenue, especially for the rest of the world outside of Redmond, WA, USA.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"Hello, I'm having a problem with my Linux computer. The SuperSpoodle application says it won't work because it has the wrong version of something called ffmpeg"
"I see. Ok, I'll talk you through updating that package. Do you usually use yum, yast, apt-get, or portage?"
"What are those?"
"They are package updaters. Ok, do you use Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, Gentoo, Fedora, or Linspire?"
"What are those?"
"Ok, maybe it would be easier if you just brought up a terminal window and I'll tell you letter by letter what to type"
"Ok, how do I bring up a terminal window?"
"Well, if there's not an icon on your desktop, then it depends. Does your Linux computer use Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or Enlightenment?"
"Um, what are those?"
"Those are different windowing environments you might have. Depending on which you have, the menus and interface could be very different."
(pregnant pause).
"I see ... would it be possible to install Windows on this machine?"
"Bring it in and we can do it overnight."
"Thanks."
Linux has printer drivers for most printers built in. Adding a printer is simpler than in Windows, where it searches for drivers, asks for CDs, and then often still doesn't work. Printing itself just works. Incidentally, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions use the same print spooling software that Macintosh uses.
The same is true for a lot of other hardware. Hardware and driver support in Linux alone is a reason why it is such a great choice. Standards-conforming hardware (printers, modems, 3G, cell phones, drives, etc.) just plug in and work.
My parents have had big problems with both Windows and OS X; despite the advertising claims, those systems are not easy to use and don't "just work". Since I switched them to Ubuntu, everything just works, and they can even safely use new software and hardware when they want to. They aren't going back.
He wants to have faster hardware, more RAM, more CPU power and hopefully more runtime. This is understandable, because otherwise W7 won run on it. And he wants to have bigger screens. And even with more expensive hardware and W7, he wants to be cheaper than other brands.
The is very ambitious. However, he will fail.
1. Netbooks are not about bigger screens (unless he is copying OLPC-2, which would mean through out the keyboard for a second screen) Netbooks are about mobility.
2. 50-100$ price cut for a Linux machine compared to W7 makes almost 25-30% of the overall price for a Netbook. So this is a significant part of the pricing. People will go for 25-30% less. Especially in a not so friendly economic environment.
3. W7 is so different compared to Win XP, so that people have to relearn a lot. So there is no difference to a good Linux distribution. And in addition. People are useing different user interfaces on their different gadgets. So Linux on a Netbook is no difference to Linux on a smartphone. Oh look some of these "Analysts" already claimed that Google Android will be on Netbooks.
So when Linux has no future on Netbooks, then Android has no future too. Or are they really thinking that are two different things.
The most interesting part is, that Lenovo is obviously for searching ways to drop Linux support for their Notbooks. Or that not all parts of the company want to pursue Linux business.
x86 netbook, short battery life and big.
:-)
ARM netbook, long battery life and small.
x86 netbook is Windows, looks like Linux lost on that battle field, not wholey fairly either....
ARM netbook is Linux, far more functional then a WinCE netbook could ever be. What's the point of Windows where you can't run your normal apps?
MS one the x86 battle, but will they win the netbook war? It depends what exactly a netbook is for. If it's to be a mini general purpose PC where people run the apps they know, ARM and Linux loose. If it's to be a travel mini PC for web surfing and the odd jobs (and for Linux people, anything) ARM and Linux are in with a chance. Linux nearly succeed with x86, so maybe longer battery life will swing it.....
Personally, I want x86/Windows monopoly to be broken, I want competition on the OS and chip fronts, but I think they have such critical mass the market alone won't do it. People learn only Windows and don't realize how limiting that is, thus no real competition, and no real competition, means slow and fat.....oh wait that's been happening for years. Windows main competition is old versions of Windows and that sucks. It's just kept good enough that most people don't look desperately for something else. There is at least some competition on the chip front, as long as it's x86....
I would love to see ARM/Linux win, but I'm not feeling hopeful. Still I'll get myself a ARM netbook as a full pocket linux and a powerful media player in one.
This comes up every so often and I post these links every time I notice it:
IBM Metapad. It was a modular computing concept device and I've been waiting for it to become real since I first heard about it.
http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/MetaPad/metapad.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/technology/designconsulting/port_metapad.html
You want a PDA? Netbook? Desktop? It's all three~
--- Do you believe in the day?
Thank you! And as for the poster who said "when was the last time you used Linux?" like I was basing this on some 5 year old distro? Is Ubuntu 9.04 new enough for you? Here is a little experiment-go to Walmart (or Walmart.com if you prefer) and look at the under $80 printers. Now look up those printers and see how many of them are a royal PITA to get working in Linux, if you can even get them to work at all. Walgreen's refills Lexmark carts for a whole $10, so the whole "$30 printer that takes $30 carts" doesn't apply anymore.
In the past 2 years I have had maybe 2 customers bring a box through the door that didn't have the Lexmark "driver" running in the taskbar. That is a whole 2 customers out of God knows how many. Just last month my landlady asked me to come by her office and set up her new printer. Guess what it was? The Lexmark all in one printer/scanner/fax sells for about $40 at Walmart right now. There is simply NO WAY I can tell my customers "Oh, BTW, please take your perfectly working printer/scanner/fax and throw it away".
The simple question that needs to be asked is this: Does Linux developers WANT more marketshare? If the answer is yes, then the path is simple. Go to Walmart, which is one of the biggest retailers on the planet. Go to their electronics department and make DAMNED SURE that everything on their shelves, especially all in one printers, work in Linux. because what Linux needs right now is the infrastructure that Windows users enjoy. They can go into any shop like mine and get Windows upgraded, get Windows fixed, or get a new Windows box built. I myself have been moving WinXP boxes as fast as I can put them together. But guys like me don't sell Linux. It isn't because we hate Linux, I personally want their to be competition in the marketplace and for those that just surf and download it would make a great option. But I can't offer it. Why? Because the support will frankly bankrupt me.
I have tried to sell Linux boxes no less than 4 times in the last 4 years and it is ALWAYS the same. They buy the box, go to Walmart, and expect whatever hardware they bought there to work, especially printers. When it doesn't it is brought back to be "fixed" (which is often impossible) and when it can't be fixed they demand their money back because you sold them a "broken" computer. They don't care about freedom or GPL, if it doesn't work it is YOUR problem and right now that is Linux's problem. So complain about the "Windows tax" all you want. But I have found the $89 cost of XP Home is frankly a hell of a lot cheaper than selling Linux boxes at any cost. They just need too damned much support. Fix this and you will have lots of marketshare because guys like me will be happy to place low cost Linux boxes right beside the Windows ones. But until then it is simply cheaper from a support standpoint to be a Windows only shop, as I'm sure the Netbook makers have been finding out the hard way.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.