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Linux Notebooks Selling Well On Amazon Germany
christian.einfeldt writes "The LinuxTech.net blog points out that Linux notebooks are currently selling quite well on Amazon's list in Germany. The blog includes screenshots showing the Linux Asus and Aspire notebooks in positions 2 and 4, respectively, on that list. These machines are not netbooks, but full notebooks, albeit on the moderate to low side regarding price and performance. That LinuxTech.net blog was dated 23 July 2009, and the Asus machine is still holding second place more than one day later, while the Acer machine slipped to fifth position, despite the volatile nature of Amazon bestseller lists. While these two data points are just snapshots in time, they are consistent with other data showing that Microsoft itself attributes some of its recent weak earnings to surging sales of low-end notebooks, as well as data showing that the Linux-powered and Unix-powered computers topped Amazon's sales charts in all categories for 2007. If there is to ever be a 'year of desktop (or laptop) Linux', it won't happen all at once, but will creep up in ways similar to what we are seeing now."
who ever is tagging these is a legend.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You have to know that 'major' German PC enthusiast magazines have been publishing tutorials monthly about using Linux since around 2000. Together with installation CDs/DVDs etc. Also their government has a strong push towards using Linux.
I wanted to buy a sub-notebook (aka netbook) with linux but I could not find such on my country anywhere from shelf itself. Ordering could over one month and the extra bucks was included when comparing windows. Biggest resellers are just simply saying that Linux versions has be sold out since start and about 6 months ago they were marked such that they will not come back to the selling lines. So only way to get such computer is to buy it with Windows. Even that I never booted Windows but throw right in the mandriva disk and installed it over windows.
It is not nice to be forced to be MS client in statics but not a client for Linux OS. At least Mandriva could get their own static about me because I registered this machine too for their database.
If world would be fair, I could call to MS or Asus and say that I want my information of selling be removed from statics as MS user.
I'm sorry to say that, but I doubt that this shows a rising interest in Linux from mainstream customers in Germany. If you look at the customer reviews for the Asus notebook (in German) you will find out that a lot of comments deal with removing Linux and replacing it with either Vista oder Windows 7. Naturally, customer reviews are not a representative survey but I guess a lot of people simple save the money for the OS and install pirated copies of Windows.
Like many here I admin family computers. A month ago I did an experiment. I told my parents I'd upgrade their aging computer (mobo and main HD change) and as such it would look different. I installed kubuntu instead of the previous system (which you can easily guess). Made sure there were desktop links to firefox, kmail, dolphin and a SD card image transfer script. I didn't even show them the result, just as an experiment. And I left. They called only once after a week: "Yeah it works fine, but we don't have skype anymore", which I promptly remotely installed. I consider this experiment a great success.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
In my experience, Linux outperforms Windows and Mac on the low end, the high end, and the middle end.
Free software is never a bad choice.