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Asus Slaps Linux In the Face
vigmeister writes "From Techgeist, 'Linux just got a major slap in the face today from Asus. One of the highlights of Linux going mainstream was the wildly popular Asus Eee PC preinstalled with a customized Linux distro geared towards web applications. While I personally never got what the big deal was, I was still happy for all the Linux people out there waiting for this day, but it looks like the cause for celebration won't be lasting much longer.
Asus and Microsoft have teamed up and have made a site called 'It's Better With Windows.' The page touts how easy it is to get up and ready with Windows on an Asus Eee PC, while slyly stating that you won't have to deal with an 'unfamiliar environment' and 'major compatibility issues.' While it is silly to state such a thing since Asus built the Linux distribution specifically for the Eee PC, I give Microsoft two points for snarky comments.'"
Meh. I'll just install linux over the windows install as usual.
https://www.speakservers.com/
I thought it was already pretty easy to "get up and ready" with my EeePC. Well, Asus will have to live with their decision.
My next motherboard will be a Gigabyte.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It is difficult to believe that Asus did this out of love for Redmond. I wonder how much MS paid for this special treatment, or did they threaten Asus with higher prices?
It is better with Windows.
Squirrel!
This might actually make sense economically for ASUS:
_Maybe_ less support calls.
_Very deep_ discounts/kickbacks from Microsoft.
Personally I am very glad that I got the Linux version of my Eee PC 901: More flash disk and more ram, for a little less money.
Currently I run the latest Ubuntu Netbook remix, and I'm very happy with it. The last time I booted it into XP must have been during Easter, to debug a Windows problem.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Just so that I can cost the bastards some money by demanding a Windows Refund on it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Don't get me wrong, I like my EEE but Asus completely screwed up. The interface was poor, the updates were rubbish and in fact some of the updates would break it. It's quite possibly the worst Linux distro I've seen. I might as well buy a normal smallish laptop with an SSD as I still have to uninstall the OS and put my own on with an EEE.
In a way their Linux distro is more of a slap in the face for Linux than not using Linux.
I've had much better luck since putting my own instance of Ubuntu onto the machine which I prefer much more than I would Windows or that custom Xandros OS.
This isn't the end of the world. Can't we all realise that there's a market for both Windows and Linux?
Those who want Windows on their netbook can buy it, those who don't can buy Linux. See?
Ultimately this is business, and it ain't pretty.
ilovegeorgebush
ill probably see a trollmod for this, but what the hey. this article isnt really news at all, as corporations have been keen to align themselves with the market leader for centuries. this is no different.
its still a computer
it still has an option to install an operating system
you can still order an ASUS with linux preinstalled
windows can be returned for a refund
there are market alternatives.
and just because a corporation appears to align itself with your ideals and interests doesnt mean it likes you or said ideals...its just business.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They definitely lost sales from me... and I regularly buy motherboards from them.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
IMO, success for Linux is no longer having to deal with vendor bullshit. "Oh sorry, yeah, no you can't use our product because you don't run a real OS" type bullshit. The numbers game is nothing but an abstraction of this. If Linux was treated equally by vendors, very few people would care how man people used it, (The people who do are those people called in to do jizz mopping on other people's infected windows computers.) but we recognize that we're only going to get an equal share from vendors if we put up the numbers.
Asus is just doing this to make a buck selling the EE PCs that have Windows on them. They'll still sell the Linux ones but they're expanding the market to Windows-only people who are afraid of Linux. And they're likely getting some marketing dollars from Microsoft to do this as well. Sucks that the company is "disloyal" but the libertarians among us should be happy that the free market is working so well. Asus is just following their profit motive and doing what comes naturally as distasteful as it is.
And so we put it in the same state as Washington. Now, I'm guessing this is a PR company and we have a perfect match of Arbitron Ad agency listing Michael Sharp as Manager, Agency & Advertiser Services for several different regions of the US. Ok, from there if you google Arbitron Asus and Arbitron Microsoft you come up with two very juicy powerpoints from Microsoft on Arbitron's site.
I just noticed those two powerpoints only come up because they're Microsoft Powerpoints so that's not a very strong link.
But that linking is probably unnecessary considering I just found this bio on Microsoft of a Michael Sharp as Director with the Information Security Team. Yes, it's a pretty common name but I'm pretty sure this ad work reeks of Microsoft and not Asus.
My work here is dung.
I was introduced to the eeePc when a friend bought one. It came with their version of Linux installed and he called me for help. I have been almost exclusively Linux since the early on and I was literally unable to help him. We were on the phone and with the graphical shell they put on the Asus, he couldn't find anything. He got frustrated and installed Windows. He ran for a short time before he screwed up Windows. At that point, he brought his Asus over and I installed eeebuntu. It has been a love affair ever since. I even offered to make his machine dual boot and was turned down. Now I have my own Asus running eeebuntu.
I can't imagine why it would be sponsored by Asus but they certainly link to it: http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1008HA/features.html
Hope you bought your Thinkpad used; IBM's PC division has always been in bed with Microsoft, and I doubt Lenovo is any better. This is just more of the golden rule, "He, who has the gold, makes the rules." in action; it will continue as long as Microsoft maintains it's ill-gotten monopoly.
"Sucks that the company is "disloyal""
Well those two words have never been uttered in succession before... and never will again!
I don't know what people are getting so upset for, it's just marketting, it doesn't mean anything. It's not like they're gonna be saying on their linux pages "but you'll prob want the windows version, cuz this one's shit"... no, their linux page is gonna be bigging up their linux product (presumably, I cba to look). Is like when a waiter says "excellent choice sir" when you choose the soup, the guy who cooks the chicken isn't gonna pipe up and say "what's wrong with the chicken?!". Everything is better than everything else, depending on what you're looking at.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Also excellent reasons not to use Vista and Windows 7.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Just make sure this isn't a ploy by Micro$oft to push the Linux fans away from a company that supports them.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
I love Asus motherboards and hardware. That said, the site looks very fishy to me. It doesn't look "professional" at all. The Asus and Micro$hit websites look really polished and complex. Itsbetterwithwindoze looks like an attempt to start a new flamewar between the M$ and OSS camps while putting Asus in the middle of the crossfire.
... it's just marketing....
There are some people that would like to take an organization's word for what the words mean. Asus made their own cut of Linux to work with the Eee and now they've caved to Microsoft pressure to eat their own words. Worse, it's a lie.
The integrity of such an organization then becomes suspect, as if they lied about this, then what else did they lie about? Trust is broken. And we then know them for what they are: an organization that will capitulate, lie, send mixed messages, all in the names of sales desparation. Too bad about Asus....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
OK, but that's very 80s and 90s thinking. The whole idea that systems have to be static, fixed, rigid is very much in the past.
There is no reason why releases have to be so long apart. That thinking comes from a license fee driven mentality; when you charge people for an upgrade, they must have something for it. So there is a huge incentive for feature bloat; look at "ribbons" v. "menus". I've yet to see a substantive difference in use but it's a brand new feature that's used to justify the huge cost of an upgrade.
Now look at the way linux develops. It's incremental, it's fast, and it relies on repositories. It doesn't have an attachment to the past. So a vendor doesn't have to customize the software to each distro, that's the distro maintainers' job.
Distro maintainers in linux are much like the OEMs in the MS world. They're ultimately responsible for making stuff work. The problem currently is that the major commercial vendors just plain don't understand how linux works, and so don't want to trust, support, or even acknowledge the package maintainers' role in making their product work.
The flip side is that the linux community has a short bullshit fuse; with flux and change being the norm, a commercial vendor has to be just as nimble, just as competitive, just as flexible as an open source project. Most of them simply cannot do that as they have too many internally competing goals.
So a piece of software that is not being actively developed is likely to be dropped in favor of some other. Look at what's happening to MySQL right now.
There are some people that would like to take an organization's word for what the words mean.
And those people are incredibly naive.
Well I maybe a prick, but I just canceled the order I did yesterday. It's a matter of principle for me. They won't go bankrupt due to my action but I really don't like being ridiculed for using Linux. There are other companies out there that also offer nice netbooks.
Yes, it looks like a troll, nothing to do with Microsoft or ASUS whatsoever.
If you google rdcpro@hotmail.com email address from the WHOIS record of that domain, you'll find this:
"I am an independant web and application developer, specializing in Content Management and Collaboration. My company, CollaborationPeople, Inc. serves clients in Seattle, Washington and the greater Puget Sound Region, although I have clients as far away as Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, CA and Portland, Or." ...
Regards,
Mike Sharp
rdcpro@hotmail.com"
http://www.experts-exchange.com/M_1301691.html
And also this site:
http://rdcpro.com/
may be... not maybe, I'm pretty sure I am a prick. Sorry for any confusion due to that error.
Unless of course somebody hacked into Asus's website and added that link. You can tell it was hacked because if you play the video on itsbetterwithwindows.com frame by frame, there is one frame in the middle where if you squint you can see the reflection from a sign saying "p0wn3d by D4 Cr3w". A quick search of Google will turn up the fact that "D4 Cr3w" are the same folk who faked the moon landing in the 60's.
By the way, cattle mutilations are up.
Has anybody checked whois database? Guys, it's fake, somebody made a website (hosted on godaddy) just to stir a hornets' nest.
Have fun being played...
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
Or perhaps they have an expectation of truth and honesty, and not finding that, believe that integrity is in question.
Naivety, once vanquished, leads to skepticism. Skepticism leads doubts, doubts make us look somewhere else for truth.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Tried installing a printer in Windows lately?
Tried installing a printer in Linux lately?
With servers Windows is waaaaay behind Linux. My Tyan 1U servers and IBM xSeries eServers all Just Work(tm) with Linux, while setting them up with Windows involves screwing around with RAID driver disks and all kinds of crap.
My ThinkPad T61p Just Worked out of the box, including automagic download of the 3D drivers for the nVidia card on the first boot.
Yes, I concede, Windows is ahead in the area of cutting edge desktop hardware due to the fact that OEMs still place priority on supporting their new hardware under Windows.
Enjoy this state of affairs while it lasts, because it won't for much longer.
I hate printers.
It's hosted by godaddy.
"A) Slashdot has a very vocal group of whiney emotionally reactive girls"
You, you... you INSENSITIVE CLOD!
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Why was this guy tagged as a troll? I mean, despite his borderline vitriol about Microsoft, his concerns about the legitimacy of the website seem pretty sensible to me, if one bothers reading the article and following the link to said website.
www.meneguzzi.eu/felipe
Although parent is modded Troll, just a quick whois reveals that the domain was registered by some guy with a hotmail address using godaddy as a registrar (and likely the host as well.. It also uses godaddy DNS. I would also question the authenticity of this website. A whois to the IP shows that it's hosted by hopone.net. Also, there is nothing on ASUS's website to indicate that they had anything to do with this.
Why was this guy tagged as a troll? I mean, despite his borderline vitriol about Microsoft, his concerns about the legitimacy of the website seem pretty sensible to me, if one bothers reading the article and following the link to said website.
Hell yes. Seriously, the site looks like it was designed by a 5 year old downs victim and while I don't like the Microsoft and Asus sites, none of those two are made nearly as bad.
+1 to the questioning legitimacy crew.
Until MS/Asus confirm or deny a participation in this, I will treat is as non-existant.
Nothing to see here, move along.
PS: And if I had mod points atm, I wouldn't have bothered to post this but instead just modded up the grandparent.
The link to the site is on the Asus website.
http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1008HA/features.html
Along the way, I've found that trust-based relationships can be made. Often, it's more with individuals than the organizations that they represent. You build mutual trust, then go from there.
Without trust, we're a bunch of warring autonomous micro-nations.
For many of us, integrity is above making a buck. Yes, we have to survive, but we can do so without lip farting, lies, FUD, and so on. The gift of communications has incumbent upon the gift, the onus and responsibility to do the best to speak the truth.
In this context, Asus has demonstrated their sense of that responsibility. In turn, we take note of that. We file that information for decisions made later. Perhaps they'll listen that we now categorize them as lackey sycophants of Microsoft. Perhaps not.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Seriously, they are taking Microsoft marketing money (just like Dell, HP, Lenovo, IBM, etc.) and stating simple facts.
Their custom version of Linux (or ANY version of Linux) IS unfamiliar to windows users. There ARE major compatibility issues between Linux and Windows - Applications from one can't run on the other, and documents from one CAN be incompatible with the other. Do workarounds exist for most issues, CERTAINLY, but those are just that WORKAROUNDS, that, you know, work around incompatibilities.
Additional claims on the site are:
"Trusted - Windows delivers a dependable experience that Microsoft and a worldwide community of partners stand behind" - this is true, there are countless MS partners and MS does provide a "dependable experience" (even MS detractors can't argue with that!)
"Familiar - Windows is easy to use and familiar so you can be up and running right away" - with 94% market share (Mac at 5% and Linux at 1%) it is reasonable to assume that most people are familiar with the Windows environment.
"Compatible - You can be confident that your devices and applications will work with Windows - more than any other platform" - the MS Windows ecosystem has more applications than either the Linux or Mac environments, and there are Windows-only devices in the market (printers, modems, on-board RAID controllers, etc.) that it is trivial to prve that there are more devices that work with Windows than other OSs.
Now, having said all that, this is not an MS or ASUS website - this is a troll to see how much traffic this site can generate.
View the source of the HTML - no copyright asserted, no authorship claimed, only some "google-analytics.com" javascript voodoo at the bottom of the page. There is no way either organization would develop a webpage annonymously.
Michael Sharp went to Godaddy and registered the domain 5-Dec-2008 - I know, he lives in Washington state, but he's having a bit of fun...
(The website is too thin, and there are small issues that scream fake to me - kerning, lack of contact info, no mention that Windows ia a registered trademark, links to additional info, etc.)
Ken
The campaing is a fake. Somebody took Asus EEE commercial videos and slapped a crappy looking badly aligned 'It's better with Windows' Slogan over it. Fonts aren't MS branding and the layout of the website is notably amatureish. You all have been trolled, so chill. It's a compareatively elaborate troll though, I give him that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Enjoy this state of affairs while it lasts, because it won't for much longer.
They've been saying this for several years now. "'X' driver support is getting better everyday!" "'Y' new distro will solve device compatibility issues!" "'Z' developer will have perfect Windows API integration and then the average user won't notice the difference!"
Puh-lease. Mod me what you like but the fact remains that, while there have been some damn good advances towards this state, "much longer" is not a quantifiable term. The linux zealots out there are predicting The Year of the Linux Desktop but are they really doing anything to make it happen? The Users' Home is the place of the Linux Desktop and Ubuntu is the most notable distro behind the movement, but they're not going to do it alone. It needs to be a global and unified effort across the entire linux community, and this is the biggest challenge facing them against the public Windows opinion.
Businesses are a good start because if they can get Windwos-equivalent software -- not "Windows-only-just-good-enough-for-most-users" software -- on their employees workstations then the home will follow naturally.
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Perhaps they'll listen that we now categorize them as lackey sycophants of Microsoft.
Since when we're they never not that? Did you honestly think that Asus put Linux on their EEE PCs because they really believed in the ideas of GNU and the GPL? Seriously? They put it on there probably to lower margin costs and to make money on some gullible GNUtards who are apparently just now realizing that Asus was out to make a buck and not to spread their ideology.
Have you somehow missed the last 100+ years of corporations lying, cheating and doing whatever it takes to make a buck? Based on what history should anyone think that a corporation isn't going to do anything it takes to inflate the bottom line?
Have you really never worked for a company that actually practiced what it preached when it comes to ethics and responsibility?
I've had bad bosses and good bosses, but only once have I had a scumbag boss. Outside of the scumbag, everyone wanted to treat our customers fairly and be able to sleep nights. To a certain extent that is self serving because we wanted to keep our customers, but we often spent many hours trying to resolve a problem for a customer, or implement a feature they wanted. If a customer was unhappy we tried to make them happy. If they felt we had let them down we tried to fix that.
That behavior goes up the chain. If you are not a scumbag chances are you don't want to work for a scumbag, and that is a recursive relationship.
Now, every place I have ever worked has tried to figure out how we could get our hands on more money, and that includes charging whatever the traffic will bear for our products. But that is not lying or cheating. We set a price upfront, and if what we produced was worth it to our customers, they paid it and felt like they got value for their money.
I can't believe my experience in business is that different from most peoples. What makes you think that if you work for a corporation (which most people do) you suddenly turn into a scumbag?
Or somebody in Asus UK is having a big laugh.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm sorry, I thought this was a kdawson post.
tag "itsatrap"
I bet all my modpoints that that site is fake. Anyone who RsTFA could see the same. It looks terribly amateur, is not mentioned elsewhere by either company and is just a bit too convenient for flamewar purposes. Sorry guys, nothing to see here.
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
The smart Linux people will carefully assess the entire picture. And I mean the whole thing.
When in the real world, people return the product, you don't squeal about MS, Windows, or anything else. What you do is really assess and work the problem. If they are being returned - why, and beyond why, what could be rectified, and what needs work.
Unix advocacy is utterly pointless and meaningless in the consumer space. Its not going to cut ice with users, and people.
After it shipped, people had to spend time making things work, new distributions have had to be built to cover short comings, and problems, and at the final point, companies that bought into what they were told 'Linux' is ready - have found the real world picture to be a rock and a hard place.
Linux companies I presume made the OEM deals with these companies, if people want to vent, vent at the product shipped.
It_is_not the users job to fix your broken, none working OS.
So, after having high returns, vendors turned away from you.
Learn a lesson. In the meantime, the reality of this is a harsh one. Within the limited confines of 'netbooks', a controlled, limited hardware base, and small requirements in terms of apps and OS, Linux came up short. Its an area where Linux should have hit for home runs everywhere. Absorb the lesson, learn from it, take some humble pie, quite blaming MS, The users, The vendors. This is an area where you should be kicking the absolute crap out of Microsoft, AND you should have been bending over backwards with vendors to ship higher spec machines, given MS's attempt to limit and lock it down.
Wether lessons are learned or not will reflect wether any vendors come back. Bringing them back will take double the work now.
We`re all equal
Thank you for doing homework on it. I was just gonna do the same.
Does the register's name match any other site?
They did it out of love for sales.
Look around you.
WalMart has tried to make a go of every flavor of OEM Linux. Every form factor.
No-name and the Dell brand name.
The dearly departed include Lindows, gOS, Sun Java, Xandros...
and so on endlessly.
Oh, the Merry-Go-Round broke down
It made the darndest sound,
The lights went low,
We both said "Oh!"
And the Merry-Go-Round went
"Um-pah-pah, um-pah-pah, Um-pah! Um-pah! Um-pah-pah!"
WalMart has tried every known sleazeball sales gimmick: the mini board in the maxi case: sold like a flea market BoomBox stereo.
The only customer is the ever-hopeful geek - the sheep who can be sheared as often as you like.
WalMart with its fantastic, enormous, unprecedented, purchasing power has never been able to consistently undersell OEM Windows by so much as $50.
Even when the Linux product is overstock purchased in carload lots. Sweepings off the warehouse floor.
It all comes down to this:
The Windows netbook has better specs than XP desktop of 2001 with integrated graphics. The dual core Atom with ION graphics is not far off.
The back list of MSDOS, Win 9x and Win XP titles that will run on this platform is immense.
You have a viable platform for mobile PC gaming. The legacy PC game. It works with your USB or wireless printer. Your camera.
It is the perfect compliment to your Windows laptop, your desktop replacement, your XBOX 360, your Zune.
That's your sales pitch - clear, concise, easy to understand, and it does its job damn well.
Not only that, but:
You'd have to be pretty naive (or blinded by Microsoft-hatred) to actually think either of these companies had anything to do with this site.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Also, there is nothing on ASUS's website to indicate that they had anything to do with this.
Actually, this page on asus.co.uk links to itsbetterwithwindows.com, although I can't find any such links on asus.com.
need4mospd deserves the credit for finding that link.
I appreciate your observations regarding the domain registration for this site, but the site is directly linked from the ASUS website .
So there is no question of this being a fake site.
while slyly stating that you won't have to deal with ... and "major compatibility issues.'
Great! Now we have it from Asus itself that it ships hardware that has major compatibility issues... with software pre-installed by Asus itself. Given that the company is obviously so inept, who tells us that there aren't any similar compatibility issues between the hardware and its BIOS. Well probably there are, and we should warn friends, family and employers to shy away from such a lousy brand.
Ok, so in reality Asus was probably paid by Microsoft to say this. Like the so numerous companies that were paid to display an "XXX recommends Microsoft Windows" on their website. But if they sell out their judgment so easily, why should they be trusted on anything else that they say? That too would be a reason to run.
And strategically this whole thing is really really stoopid on Asus' part, especially now after all the competitors (even Acer!) have brought out similar mini-laptops running Linux.
Except that you may have been fooled.
The site looks like a joke. The register address is a drop box at a UPS store in Kent Washington and if you want you can even find out the guys name with a little looking on whois
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I mistakenly ordered a laptop with Vista and the new Microsoft Office installed. Both present a new user environment. I am a power user with Excel, and found it very difficult to use the new Excel. They replaced all of the menus with icon panels, with beautifully redrawn icons, and scrambled the locations up. I'm playing a game of guessing what the icon does, hovering, and reading the "tool tip" to be sure. Talk about an "unfamiliar environemnt".
My entreprenurial landlord teaches classes for small businesses on how to switch to Open Office instead of the new Microsoft Office. If they're going to have to retrain anyway, why not go to something that is free?
(Alternatively, it could just be that I am getting "old". When I was a teenager I shifted from WordPerfect to Emacs with less difficulty.)
Looks like I'll be looking elsewhere when I buy a netbook.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
This quote might have looked intelligent the first time it was used; it doesn't now.
Also, remember something else. Gandhi, like Stallman, had a martyr complex. Martyrdom is a tactic which relies on a certain assumption about the moral nature of the opponent in order to be effective. If the opponent is amoral and doesn't care about your stance, then the moral high ground, and thus martyrdom as a tactic, is worthless. All they will do is laugh, steamroll you, and then continue with what they were doing anywayz.
There is a time and a place for martyrdom. If it is to be used effectively, it is definitely not a tactic for general use.
Likewise, don't be a parrot.
Yes, of course the Eee PC is a success because of the attention it got for using Linux and because it was the "first" netbook. However, the number of netbooks sold with Windows vastly outstrips the number of netbooks sold with Linux.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
http://itsbetterwithlinux.com/
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
We need a new mass-market/"newb friendly," distro, and we need to make sure that this one is NOT Debian based.
FreeBSD has the following technical advantages over anything Debian based that I've been able to see, and these could be recreated most easily with a non-Debian based Linux. These might be under the hood things, but they would definitely filter up to make life easier for the end user.
- Single point of daemon loading at bootup with /etc/rc.conf.
- Comparitive ease of kernel recompilation that is so much greater than Linux, and Debian in particular, that it isn't funny. The config file is tiny, and completely documented.
- Package management which doesn't subpackage, or have incomprehensibly stupid, bogus dependency declarations. Said package management also uses the directory structure of the filesystem itself as a database, so it can be used on low-powered systems which would have difficulty running an SQL database engine.
These are simplifications which, IMHO, Ubuntu very badly needs to adopt.
1. Praise Linux.
2. Have Microsoft run to you with deals, discounts, and dump trucks full of money.
3. Praise Microsoft, Bash Linux.
4. Profit!
This also works for government organizations and prominent businesses in the process of choosing software.
Except that site links to www.asus.co.uk Asus's real UK website is uk.asus.com
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I highly doubt that ASUS hosts there website on 1and1.co.uk. Nor would they use 1and1 for their registrar. Especially when asus.com is registered with Network Solutions.
Not to mention that page seems to be the only page that the domain has on it and if try to snoop around it just redirects to uk.asus.com which is where asus.com sends you when you choose the UK for your country. If you check other countries on the asus.com landing page you will see that Asus puts there country sites on subdomains.
nic.uk asus.co.uk whois
Result of WHOIS query:
Domain name:
asus.co.uk
Registrant:
Asustek Computer Inc
Trading as:
Asus
Registrant type:
UK Individual
Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their
address omitted from the WHOIS service.
Registrar:
1 & 1 Internet AG [Tag = SCHLUND]
URL: http://registrar.1und1.info/
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 23-May-1997
Renewal date: 23-May-2011
Last updated: 22-May-2009
Registration status:
Renewal request being processed.
Name servers:
ns59.1and1.co.uk
ns60.1and1.co.uk
WHOIS lookup made at 16:22:49 28-May-2009
--
www.asus.co.uk redirects directly to uk.asus.com, but if you go to for example http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1000HE/, you will arrive at a marketing page designed to cater to British buyers. So it almost looks like some yahoo in British marketing decided to do this without be told to. "Taking initiative", I believe it's called...
Which has been repeatedly proven to NOT be asus's web site, but is yet again a fake. The correct Asus UK site is uk.asus.com
First I thought ASUS had crossed the line, it's one thing to promote MS and it's another to trash linux. Especially since it had become wildly popular because of its linux version and all the cool things you could now do with a open system on a tiny computer. Obviously I am outraged (damnit stupid think-of-the-children types have usurped that word). Then I thought about their point of view. They get cash from microsoft, free publicity and a 0.1% of population of outraged geeks and nerds. Looks like a great strategy to sell more laptops while burning any cred they had with the open source crowd. Fuck 'em.
Which has been shown to NOT be asus's UK web site, but is yet again a fake. The correct Asus UK site is uk.asus.com. Do a whois on asus.co.uk.
Domain name:
asus.co.uk
Registrant:
Asustek Computer Inc
Trading as:
Asus
Registrant type:
UK Individual
Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.
Registrar:
1 & 1 Internet AG [Tag = SCHLUND] URL: http://registrar.1und1.info/
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 23-May-1997 Renewal date: 23-May-2011 Last updated: 22-May-2009
Registration status:
Renewal request being processed.
Name servers:
ns59.1and1.co.uk ns60.1and1.co.uk
I'm sure that Asus registered it as an individual and is hosting it through 1and1.co.uk. Instead of, ya know, hosting it on their own servers like all their other sites.
Hello, friend! I am also quite pissed.
Let's wait one year from when they purchase their Windows-disabled Eees, when their machines are clogged with spyware and malware and the registry's broken and the little Atom CPU desperately tries to actually do some work whilst constantly swapping things in and out of RAM. Let's wait until then and tell them "It's Better With Windows!(tm)".
I say f*ck this! I'm not buying another Asus product in my life!
Damn, it feels good to vent!
Most likely this was a microsite that a small marketing company pitched to either ASUS or Microsoft. Marketing companies frequently get little ideas like this and approach someone that isn't currently their client with them. Because of their low cost they get approved pretty often and you end up with a bunch of little non-uniform sites representing the end-client all around the interspace.
A quick whois shows that the domain registrar is Godaddy, which seems an odd odd choice for a company as large as Microsoft.
Registered out of Kent, Washington to one Michael Sharp. A quick Google for Michael Sharp, Microsoft, shows this guy as holding or having held a bunch of management positions.
This may be legit, if its not, it was very well researched.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
So Microsoft approaches Asus and says "Hey, let's do a joint advertising campaign. We'll fund $1M (totally made up number) towards the joint effort, whaddya say?" Then someone at Asus starts doing the math and says "Whoa, that's double what the whole advertising campaign would cost! Let's do this and pocket the difference!"
Microsoft gets advertising on Asus's site, may get a few more sales, may cause Linux to have slightly less market-share, and to them it's worth it. Asus gets free advertising and a cash bonus, to them it's worth it. It's not the first time Microsoft has done this, and in today's market who wouldn't take some free cash?
Now think about it a different way. What if the link was "It's Better with FreeBSD" instead of Windows -- would it also be a slap to Linux's face? Is the only non-slap to Linux the exclusive use of Linux?
Don't read more into what happened than what it is. Asus didn't turn its back on Linux. If you could make the product work on FreeDOS and were willing to pay for an advertising campaign (with cash positive results for Asus) I'm sure you could get your own link.
exactly. further investigation leads to http://www.rdcpro.com/, the "Developer's Home on The Web", apparently owned and operated by the same guy, mike sharp.
to say the least, the legitimacy of this site should be taken with a grain of salt.
there are no links back to either Asus or Microsoft, no "About Us" page, no contact page, no Copyright/Trademark notices, nothing. there's absolutely nothing official about this page, whatsoever.
on the other hand, it is directly linked from asus.co.uk, about 2/3 down the page.
how very confusing. and yet, since asus seems to have no oversight or actual control of itself, maybe this is all legit, sort of.
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
But the way the site is done.... it's almost like it was done to SAY one thing but reflect another.
Corporate Overlord #35 told Underling #3586586 to say MS is better. Underling follows the letter, but not the word.
Hrm.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Can it be more anti-Microsoft than this? Let's go through the video, shall we?
1) Why is the mother laughing at the Windows boot screen? Is it booting 10x longer than her previous Ubuntu 9.04 install? I don't have a clue...
2) Why is she closing the lid after having done absolutely nothing with the EeePC? Tired of waiting for it to boot? Isn't Windows productive, or just plane useless? You tell me...
3) The people in this 'commercial' are supposed to be representative Windows users. Now what mother gives her kids their laptops to s
chool but forgets to give them bread/sandwiches and drinks?!
4) After school, presumably, the kids go to the beach to make photos with a mobile phone. Now why on earth would hey do that? Isn't there a 1,3 megapixel (can't be better than that ancient phone) webcam on the EeePC? Doesn't Windows have photo capturing software? Ubuntu/Linux -> Cheese for Gnome. So Windows lacks software. Wow how bad can advertising be? But it doesn't stop there;
5) The kids need to usb-cable-transfer the picture from the phone to the EeePC while there is a cardreader slot. Except for plane stupidity on behalf of Windows users, doesn't the commercial say Windows redefines mobility/Wireless? Strange... Why don't they do it via bluetooth file transfer? Or isn't that supported in Windows either? Talking about compatibility with devices here... (that accounts for bith the phone and the bluetooth dongle.
6) After transfering the picture (mobility equals taking cables with you?) to the EeePC they can use some Live app to cut the picture. Wow! Totally can't do that with Gimp! Try to red eye correct that picture on Windows, morons. And no, Photoshop is not a part of Windows and no it doesn't run on a EeePC, but Gimp does.
7) The Business guy is spilling coffe over himself. Is Windows targetted for idiots? Nice move Microsoft marketing dicks...
8) After that incident he can share it with Live Messenger. Wow! Webcamming is the killer feature for Live Messenger? Except for the fact that it aint, the Windows marketing dicks suck balls.
9) Then the representative Windows user also like to laugh at himself for spilling coffee all over himself and enjoyes being lauched out loud by the people who he's webcamming with. Windows is targetted for loser? FAIL!
10) Redefining mobility? Like what the hell? Given the fact that this is a commercial for not using Linux and instead using Windows, what kind of redefining is going on here? Ubuntu 9.04 works completely out of the box with the EeePC (I am typing from one) and Windows sucks at connecting to wireless. Speed eh? NOT! Ubuntu 9.04 remembers you connections and auto-connects to one, and when you lost connection (because you're on the go) you can just click on the wireless icon in the system tray and click on a network from a dropdown list and you're finnished before you can say "right-click". No fscking around with settings and no BS.
11) Microsoft works... yeah... OpenOffice 3.1 'nuff said... Don't even try running the latest Office 2007 with that ribbon crap (fills the entire screen)
Ok so that pretty much nailes it: "Are you a loser, bad mom and/or plane stupid? Do you want a sucking EeePC experience? Install Windows XP with Live and Works!
Here be signatures
Yup. Scam site. It's registered to "Asustek Computer Inc" (asus.com is registered to "Asus Computer International") via a German 1&1 reseller/brand. It seems someone is trying to damage Asus' reputation.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Registrant:
Michael Sharp
12932 SE Kent-Kangley Rd.
Box 238
Kent, Washington 98030
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: ITSBETTERWITHWINDOWS.COM
Created on: 05-Dec-08
Expires on: 05-Dec-09
Last Updated on: 05-Dec-08
Administrative Contact:
Sharp, Michael rdcpro@hotmail.com
12932 SE Kent-Kangley Rd.
Box 238
Kent, Washington 98030
United States
(877) 788-8066 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Sharp, Michael rdcpro@hotmail.com
12932 SE Kent-Kangley Rd.
Box 238
Kent, Washington 98030
United States
(877) 788-8066 Fax --
Domain servers in listed order:
NS61.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS62.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off...
MS cheats, that's why.
Corporations have at most the conscience of those at their head. Their only responsibility is to make money one way or another.
Contrast that with the FOSS tribe. We're a collective of individuals with some corporate hangers-on. Most of us have consciences, and collectively we have a very good conscience.
We compete on our own terms, that's why. Eventually, the market will wise up. That's why MS cheats, to push that day off for as long as possible.
So far as I can tell, asus.co.uk is not Asus' UK website. If you go to asus.com and select the United Kingdom, you are sent to uk.asus.com.
The page you linked shows "asus.co.uk" in the address bar, yet if you go to "asus.co.uk" directly, you get redirected (as in "please wait while we redirect you") to uk.asus.com. I was unable to find this page on uk.asus.com. Furthermore, uk.asus.com is 66.238.93.162 while the page you linked (asus.co.uk) is hosted at 87.106.102.168.
A lookup on asus.co.uk shows that it is registered to Asustek, but it was updated very recently (May 22, 2009) and the nameservers are now at 1and1.co.uk (never heard of them).
Is it possible that someone has intercepted the domain in order to provide "proof" that the site in the summary is legitimate?
Can we all agree never to use the word 'polish' when evaluating an OS, ever again?
It does not convey any information beyond a vague dissatisfaction with UI elements; It's not a useful term. It can mean anything from, "I think brown is ugly." to "The clipboard widget has obscene error messages."
At least try to distinguish between aesthetic and technical issues. "Polish" has become a catch-all term for anything that someone dislikes about linux. The worst part of this is that it's distro-specific, or specific to one desktop environment, or specific to one WM/UI. Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Enlightenment, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and the Moblin UI are all 'linux desktops', and presumably all have varying degrees of 'polish'. All of them behave differently and look differently: the only common interface in linux is the terminal.
I think it would be extremely fair to call the terminal a very 'polished' interface, and I hope that idea will dissuade you from using the term in the future :)
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
They must really really needed for the ASUS Linux experiment to fail. I just wonder what really went on behind closed doors, and what it cost MS in monetary value to squelch the deal.
"In order to compete more effectively against Linux and other providers on these deals, we can now leverage the Education and Government Incentive [EDGI] program to help tip the scales to MS in the deal. After engaging the regional team. the region may use funds to provide services and/or rebates to the customer with the following limitation:
"Not to exceed the estimated Windows royalties recognized by MS from the OEM selling the PC's to the customer (in the example, 50,000 PC's at approx. $100/PC for OEM Windows XP Professional would result in a maximum of $5M for the individual deal)"
It is essential, therefore, that we use this in only in deals we would lose otherwise
"Bottom line do our best to show the great value of our software to these customers and ensure we get paid for it under NO circumstances lose against Linux before ensuring we have used this program actively and in a smart way
davecb5620@gmail.com
Hmm. A quick google doesn't reveal anything useful about this guy. Does he work for Asus?
Well, at least once Expert Sexchange was good for something:
Ick.
np: Tocotronic - Samstag Ist Selbstmord (Digital Ist Besser)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
http://www.asus.co.uk/ is not Asus UK website. Check out http://uk.asus.com./ Also check whois info for both.
For asus.com:
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com/
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Expiration Date: 2011-10-24
Creation Date: 1995-10-25
Last Update Date: 2007-03-29
Name Servers:
dns3.asus.com
dns7.asus.com
For asus.co.uk:
Domain name:
asus.co.uk
Registrant:
Asustek Computer Inc
Trading as:
Asus
Registrant type:
UK Individual
Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their
address omitted from the WHOIS service.
Registrar:
1 & 1 Internet AG [Tag = SCHLUND]
URL: http://registrar.1und1.info/
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 23-May-1997
Renewal date: 23-May-2011
Last updated: 22-May-2009
Registration status:
Renewal request being processed.
Name servers:
ns59.1and1.co.uk
ns60.1and1.co.uk
Furthermore, if you look around the fake site, you'll see that it redirects to uk.asus.com for all URLs that you feed to it (thus creating the illusion that it is indeed an official Asus site), except for that one URL which opens the webpage linking to the site in TFA.
Especially since I just replaced my last Windows XP desktop running on my wife's computer last week. She's sick and tired of Windows issues that she asked what's Linux like?
She's in multi boot right now in case she needs anything and I showed her how to access her windows partition for files she's missing. In a few weeks we're flattening the Windows partition and we're done.
Sorry charlie.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com