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Lenovo On the Future of the Netbook

Posted by kdawson on from the can-you-say-windows dept.

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."

8 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. So basically ... by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everything you see today, only larger, faster and cheaper.

    Nice "vision". Where can I get a job like that?

  2. Goodbye Lenovo by Reed+Solomon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Goodbye Lenovo by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    2. Re:Goodbye Lenovo by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Funny

      There was once a company "VA Software,"
      They sold Linux on custom hardware,
      Their stocks took a dive,
      Yet SourceForge did thrive,
      And now they own Slashdot, you're aware?

      --
      There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  3. Bingo... by schon · · Score: 5, Informative

    If Linux netbooks aren't ready to go out of the box, the vendors are doing a poor job.

    And this is exactly what we saw.

    Acer said they got lots of Linux returns, but ASUS says the opposite

    1. Re:Bingo... by sammyF70 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Indeed.
      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 .. but he was REALLY upset about it).
      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 ... and seen from this point of view, yes, Linux *IS* a PoS.
      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
  4. Re:Linux eeePC is ready to go by Telvin_3d · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Printer Drivers not readily available by Gibbo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.