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Comparing Windows and Ubuntu On Netbooks
Barence writes "With the arrival last month of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, PC Pro has revisited a familiar question: which operating system is best for a netbook?. The magazine has run a series of benchmarks on a Asus Eee PC 1008HA running Windows XP Home, two versions of Windows 7 (with and without Aero switched on) and Ubuntu Netbook Edition. The operating systems are tested for start-up performance, Flash handling and video, among other tests. The results are closer than you might think."
Thats because a Mac Book Air A) Isn't cheap and B) Has specs that aren't bottom-end. The Air is simply a light laptop, not a cheap laptop.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The way I read the graphs is: XP and Ubuntu win on almost everything (Ubuntu loses once on Flash on iPlayer but that's hardly surprising), maybe only by a small margin by they do, and Windows 7 takes twice as long to boot as they do. The article doesn't recommend bothering to upgrade to Windows 7 if you already have XP on it, and suggests that Ubuntu would be just as good.
Now, let's look at *value*: Assuming you can get them all for the same price, they all provide roughly equal value (it could be argued that 7 is worse value but only by a small way). However, if you have to pay *any* extra for XP or 7, then you're just as well off with Ubuntu. So, it's all back to the old question: who wants to sell me a netbook with an operating system that's just as good as the others but which is FREE for life? In the early days, that's how netbooks became so cheap and so popular - I know, I worked with the original EEEPC's because a school could afford them but MS wanted about £50 a license to "upgrade" them to XP. Now it seems either Microsoft are giving people Windows for free, or Microsoft are stopping manufacturers from supplying netbooks with only Linux on them. I vote for the latter given previous history.
All this article confirms is that, basically, all the OS's are roughly the same now. A bar chart here or there but on average there is no winner. Thus, the free ones should represent infinitely better value. Strange how the manufacturers don't reflect that in their pricing / OS availability any more.
You're right, the testing wasn't fair at all. It was on usability. These things are not equal.
It wasn't supposed to be fair. It was supposed to see how close general equivalents perform, in a real world scenario, for the casual user. It's not perfect comparison because, as you indicated, that'd be impossible, and as I'm indicating, that's not the point.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Well, I can only answer this for myself. I have a desktop at home, which for all sorts of reasons (CPU, GPU, memory, dual monitors, full size keyboard+++) is where I like to do anything serious. When I want to go mobile, I want something small, light and cheap I can bring almost everywhere. I'm not a road warrior, so I don't need a powerful laptop. I'm not hauling it from site to site so I don't need a desktop replacement - I did have one of those as a consultant though. I just need a real computer to go and the 10" screen, cramped keyboard and anemic performance are acceptable tradeoffs.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Actually a netbook is broadly understood to be a cheap low-performance computer for a limited set of common computing tasks, inaugurated by the Eee PC which was explicitly a commercialised equivalent of the OLPC's "cheap but useful" approach to hardware design.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I think it's more that MS started leaning on the manufacturers to discontinue it and started to charge them royalties for their IP whether they used Windows or not.
A genuine Netbook shouldn't be running Windows, it should use a specialty OS that's more appropriate for the form factor. And not just a neutered version either.