Can Dell and HP Keep Pace With An Asia-Centric PC World?

MojoKid writes "If you've paid any attention to the PC industry in the past few years, you're aware that things aren't as rosy as they used to be. After decades of annual growth, major manufacturers like HP and Dell have both either floated the idea of exiting the consumer space (HP) or gone private (Dell). Contrast that with steady growth at companies like Asus and Lenovo, and some analysts think the entire PC industry could move to Asia in the next few years. The ironic part of the observation is that in many ways, this has already happened. Asia-Pacific manufacturers are more focused on the consumer electronics market and better able to cope with low margins thanks to rapid adoption and huge potential customer bases. Apple has proven that high margin hardware can be extremely profitable, but none of the PC OEMs have been willing to risk the R&D costs or carry new products for a significant period of time while they adapt designs and improve market share."

Comments

Easily fixed

[hessian]

Start building them here in the USA.

If labor costs are too high, use robots.

Re:Easily fixed

[satuon]

What makes you think robots cost less than Chinese labor?

Re:Easily fixed

[Selur]

import robots from Asia,...

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

They certainly don't - for now.

But...
- the total cost of production for automated factories is decreasing rapidly (and will continue to decrease)
- the current cost of borrowing money to invest in capital is relatively low
- the current economic incentives to relocate manufacturing back to western nations is 'somewhat' significant
- the cost of Chinese labor is increasing (and will continue to increase)

The long-term outlook is good for robotic production. I don't know exactly how close we are to the break-even point, but I suspect it will be soon (for variable definitions of soon, of course).

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

15 years ago, I would've gladly bought made in USA. But now I avoid buying American products as a matter of principal. The way I see it, part of the money I pay gets added to the American military and "intelligence" budget so they can make more wars. Given the choice, I'd buy Chinese, Japanese, or Korean every time. When USA goes back to a peaceful nation and starts cooperating with other countries instead of competing with them, I'll start buying American again.

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

But now I avoid buying American products as a matter of principal.

Is that because you don't have enough principal, or because your principal won't let you?

Re:Easily fixed

[drdanny_orig]

Where oh where are my mod points when I really need them?

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Youre going to get modded down, but this is far more common than most Americans realize. Many of my European friends think the same; they refuse to buy american products until such time as the USA starts acting as a responsible member of the world community and stops with the wars and forcing their IP laws onto other countries. At the moment though they cannot ethically buy USA made products (not that there are many of those left....)

Re:Easily fixed

[masternerdguy]

They may be eating them though as the USA has a lot of agricultural exports.

Re:Easily fixed

[Bomazi]

What makes you think China can't do the same ? They are probably the one you'll be buying the robots from anyway.

Re:Easily fixed

[karnal]

Use robot shells with Chinese laborers inside?

Profit!

Re:Easily fixed

[MightyMartian]

Meanwhile France and Germany are along the world's largest weapons exporters.

I vaguely remember a saying about those in glass houses.

Re:Easily fixed

[ChatHuant]

I vaguely remember a saying about those in glass houses

Hmmm... Those living in glass houses shouldn't try nailing their paintings to the walls?

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be under the assumption that hurting the US economy will be translated into less war-mongering. You don't understand the US.

What will probably happen is:

US economy falters. Gas prices soar. Product prices soar.
Right-wing conservative hawks are elected in response. Half the country gets hopped up on jingoism, (which wouldn't take much).
Far more US military action world-wide.

You are much better off keeping the US fat and happy and waiting for more and more social-leaning leaders to be elected.

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree and I'm American. See every election cycle we get these Republican assholes whining about how high taxes are on small businesses...so I figure I'll do them a favor and order from overseas then you and your small business won't have to worry about paying any taxes on my purchase. When "job creators" stop crying about taxes I might consider buying locally again, until then Europe and Chinese keep me supplied with all my needs. Business owners act like they're doing me a favor by being in business. No you're providing a commercial service. Since you feel so "oppressed" running your business I'll happily buy from Europe instead.

Re:Easily fixed

[rwa2]

Start building them here in the USA.

If labor costs are too high, use robots.

No, market them here in the USA. Actually, that's all US companies really seem to do with any product (cars, etc.)

Asia /always/ had a rich and broad ecosystem of the latest / greatest new technology products when it came to computers, personal electronics, cars, etc. All US companies do is pick a few good ones and dumb them down into a handful of brands that can be effectively mass-marketed to the US. As an aside, it's remarkable how little branding means in Asia... products are mostly sold on specs alone. Even Nintendo game prices would fluctuate based on the MB of ROM in the cartridge and the market demand/popularity over time, and not based on how much Nintendo spent on the marketing campaign for the characters and agreed to fix prices with distributors over a long period of time.

So the shift really is that the asian companies are getting better at simplifying their product lines to market directly to the bulk of americans.

As for robotic assembly, maybe that would work for building widgets that never change, but technology products change too fast too afford to keep your robotic workforce up-to-date.

I'm afraid the only viable financial future in the US is in the collecting on and enforcing of intellectual property. Kinda like how Old Imperial Europe collected its money from colonial and trade royalties. But we kinda know how that played out eventually.

Re:Easily fixed

[fredprado]

In short term that may be the case. In long term, if US economy kept being hurt, US ability to maintain military equipment and personnel, and its ability to invest in military action would diminish significantly.

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the AC who posted the GGP (currently modded flamebait)... We all realise that it's impossible to avoid ALL American products, and that's why I said "given the choice." Actually given the global economy, it's impossible to avoid all products from any specific country... For instance the supermarket in my small town carries a lot of produce from the States, and if they only offer American oranges I'll live without them (and yes I encourage them to get local produce), but sometimes I need a specific ingredient for a dish and if I can only find some grown in the States, I'll hold my nose and buy it. And no doubt a lot of prepared food sold at the supermarket and restaurants is made with American ingredients, there's no avoiding that... Also I'm posting on Slashdot which is clearly American.

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't make that dish.

You are either principled or you are not.

You start making exceptions, you lose your principles.

Be glad you are not an American. They only way to keep your principles is to live like Grizzly Adams. Nearly everything you do and everything you buy is tied into the corporate structure that is destroying us.

Re:Easily fixed

[JonBoy47]

So when you buy a Thinkpad from Lenovo, 20% of which is owned by the People's Liberation Army, or a smartphone from Huawei, whose CEO used to run Chinese Intelligence, what do you think your money is supporting exactly?

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, the Chinese military and intelligence has been active only within their own borders and the neighbouring countries. Can you give me an example of the Chinese military flying their personnel halfway across the world to destroy entire countries?

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

OK I'll tell you what. I'll start buying American when the US removes all their boycotts of Iran and does everything to make Iran fat and happy and pledges to wait patiently for more and more social-leaning Iranian leaders.

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

This 1000 times. Foxconn has invested heavily in their brand new robots and i'm sure they'll be pulling out of mist of the mainland-china labor as soon as possible since they are a Taiwanese company. With MolyCorp opening back up rare earth mines in California (after china mucking about with RE exports), Its no wonder why Apple wants to guarantee $300 million in manufacturing to Foxconn for opening a robotic factory here, in the US.

Granted, then the us wont just be offloading our debt to china, but whatever. maybe we'll actually starting some consumer electronics goods.

-S

Re:Easily fixed

[Immerman]

Large Chinese factories are beginning to automate. Enough said.

Humans are great for our versatility, but if you're doing the same exact thing week after week there's a good chance that a robot can do it faster, cheaper, and more consistently.

Re:Easily fixed

[Immerman]

> As for robotic assembly, maybe that would work for building widgets that never change, but technology products change too fast too afford to keep your robotic workforce up-to-date.

It depends on what you're doing - for making circuit boards for example pick-and-place machines are the way to go, and there's nothing to change except the component map to make a circuit board for something else.

Re:Easily fixed

[Dog-Cow]

Iran is not a democracy. You are being sarcastic, but still, what you suggest cannot happen.

Re:Easily fixed

[unixisc]

It's pretty easy to avoid American products. By contrast, think of people who don't like China - for whatever reason - wanting to boycott them. Unless they are filthy rich, it's tough to avoid them - to the contrary, it's easier to buy only Chinese products, and I'm not talking about people living in China.

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

US isn't a democracy either, so what's your point? My point is the other post is asking us to not boycott American products while the US itself is boycotting other countries. That's sheer despicable hypocrisy!

what you suggest cannot happen.

That's your choice. Dig yourselves into a bigger hole. Half the world hates you already, keep bullying and acting like giant hypocrites and soon the entire world will hate you.

Re:Easily fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing about that is those agricultural exports are largely produced by the equivalent of sweatshop labor i.e. undocumented mexican immigrants working for subsistence wages. There are still a lot of things robots and tractors can't pick and for all that they use mexican peasants. if you've ever seen some of the communities those migrant laborers live in it actually makes a foxconn dorm look pretty sweet.

Yes

[Murdoch5]

Just offer options that customers want! For instance don't only offer Windows's based notebooks, offer Linux as an option, imporve tech support so people can actually get help. Offer GREAT hardware, not just the cheap crap.

Re:Yes

[DogDude]

For instance don't only offer Windows's based notebooks, offer Linux as an option,

+1 Funny!

Re:Yes

[jbolden]

Well first off Dell has been selling Unix options for over 2 decades, they used to OEM SCO to have their own Dell Unix. Off and on they have offered Unix desktops. In any case, there are companies that sell Linux notebooks and desktops. If this were a truly big seller you would expect to see them doing more volume.

As far as tech support Dell and HP both offer better tech support as a paid option. Dell in particular had 3 consumer tiers and let consumers pick.

Finally on great hardware, consumers for Windows machines have consistently picked worse cheap hardware. Dell and Compaq (part of HP) both used to be premium brands.

Re:Yes

[Skapare]

It would be simple enough to just make sure all the parts in the desktop, laptop, notebook, and tablet offerings can run a stock Linux. If some company trying to sell you parts won't make it work in a stock Linux, then it's crap and you should not use it because in the end it will break even under Windows. Then have options for the OS: (1) Windows 8 with full support, (2) Windows 7 with full support, (3) Linux Mint 14.1 with hardware support (labeled "geek special" ... they are going to replace it with Arch or Debian or Gentoo or Slackware, so don't worry about it).

Profit!

Re:Yes

[bbelt16ag]

Then whats the issue now? are they just failing in the market?

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

Riiiight, that is why every retailer from Best Buy to Walmart, and nearly all the OEMs from Dell to MSI have tried offering Linux and now avoid it like the black death. You see as a retailer there is one little bitty thing the "FOSSies" as i call them seem to forget...if you don't stand behind your products you are dead in retail.

What does that have to do with Linux? Simple your drivers are deep fried shit (thus showing that yes you DO need a stable ABI, if you didn't then your drivers wouldn't be getting crapped on so damned often) and your updates remind of Win9X in that they break more than they fix. Don't believe me? Step right up and take the Hairyfeet Challenge!

You take ANY user friendly distro, PCLOS, any of the *Buntus that has what a Linux users considers to be a normal release schedule which seems to be anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half, take the one from 5 years ago (because as a retailer I can tell you the typical lifespan of a PC now is 5 years) and update it to current using ONLY the GUI, just as the customer who has bought Linux for the first time would be expected to do.

Know what you'll find? Linux IS BROKEN, I don't give a shit what Use Distro X! you name, I have tried it on a dozen so far and its ALWAYS the same, you have multiple drivers BROKEN and a system that is just a mess, in fact many times if you actually just update the thing as you would expect a normal user to do what you end up with is less stable than Win95. Talk about amateur hour, dead WiFi, graphics drivers shat upon, again doesn't really matter which vendor as they all ended up shat upon, from Intel and Nvidia IGP to Nvidia and AMD discrete, all were crapped on by the updates,sound? Bwa ha ha ha, if you think Pulse is gonna survive I have a bridge to nowhere for sale, and even something as simple as basic wired networking can be hit or miss.

So I'm sorry but until you get somebody with a brain to be the head of a distro, one who'll flip the bird to Torvalds and just fork the whole damned thing and make a Linux distro where you can update the damned thing without shit breaking? We retailers would rather try to sell Vista than take that POS because it drives our after sale support costs through the roof. This is why the ONLY place you see Linux systems sold is online, because "all sales are final now fuck off" is pretty much the norm when it comes to online sales. this is the opposite of retail where if I told a customer whose PC wasn't even 2 months old "Go Google for a fix" I'd be closing my doors in under 6 months.

I really wish it wasn't true, that the state of desktop Linux wasn't so piss poor, but it is. why do you think I tried over a dozen "user friendly" distros with that test? Because I WANTED it not to be true, as MSFT gouges us system builders and having a free OS that actually ran well and could be put on all those XP boxes that come through the store? would have been great...too bad the product IS BROKEN.

Linux works in servers because not only do you have guys getting paid a high 5 figures to deal with broken shit and because frankly a LOT of the problem components just aren't there. You don't see servers running WiFi or even sound and most don't have full GUIs, same thing goes for embedded where you get the added bonus of most stuff is never updated.

And I apologize for the length but I am fucking sick of FOSSies trying to blame us retailers for Windows while they keep pushing a piss poor broken product that ignores what we retailers have to have to actually put your product on shelves. hell now Ubuntu is killing LTS and going rolling release, so it can break constantly! I swear Linux devs must like in the bizarro world, its like "Quick things am stable! This not good, our users won't feel leet if they not got broken shit to fix! We must throw out all the stable stuff, break the drivers, toss the DEs for alpha quality crap, then users feel am leet!"...sigh. I said a million times here what we retailers

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Blakeyrat, is that you?

Re:Yes

[Areyoukiddingme]

That ended up as something of a rant, but it's all true. I've been periodically trying to use Linux as my desktop since the late '90s, and it has always ALWAYS sucked. To the point where I abandoned the RedHat distribution in 2001 because of self-contradictory package dependencies. For a while, it was simply impossible to have a sane system at all. I dumped it. I've used Debian since then, but even they have run into that same sort of idiocy. They're all better about packages now, but the driver situation is definitely a disaster. Linux supports a truly impressive array of legacy hardware, but too often, something somewhere is broken and has to be manually tweaked in a config file somewhere. WiFi never EVER works right.

And yeah, sorry, the whole sound subsystem situation is just beyond retarded. I don't even understand that one. I've been coding to music for almost 20 years now (the sound isolation is absolutely essential in an office environment), and I know I'm far from unusual in that respect, so why oh why is Linux audio an utter trainwreck? It boggles the mind.

So I use a Windows desktop, and run XWin32 if I need access to Linux GUI apps, and PuTTY for everything else, and it takes something like ChromeOS to finally get close to a Linux Year of the Desktop.

Re:Yes

[graphius]

I dare you to do the same with MS Windows, or even Apple for that matter.... Doing multiple updates IN ANY OS can cause problems.

Re:Yes

[jbolden]

Too many pronouns in your question, I'm not following. Is who falling in what market due to which issue?

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

Tried it, don't work, why? Because what is stable NOW may NOT be stable 7 months or a year from now, see how Atheros was the "go to" for wireless then suddenly their drivers were broken for either one rev or two revs, can't off the top of my head remember which. Doesn't really matter because if I had sold Linux all my customers with Atheros would have had worthless laptops until it was fixed which is simply unacceptable.

Until you show me a Linux that 1.- Cost less than Windows, 2.- Can be installed NOW and have full functionality WITHOUT jumping through CLI hoops, Googling for fixes, or playing forum hunts 8 years from now? we retailers just can't use Linux. Any retailer will tell you after sale support eats into the bottom line and the more likely the system is to need after sale support the more likely you end up losing money. Home users WILL NOT buy support contracts so don't even start, look at how many scream bloody murder at Best Buy trying to push extended warranties, so that system you sell them better "just work" until/unless they screw it up by installing a virus.

So I'm sorry but your product just doesn't work on a desktop. it works on servers, on smartphones, and in embedded applications, but its frankly a piss poor desktop and always has been. Most of us can't afford to run our own repo like Dell does just to keep our systems from breaking and without doing something THAT radical they WILL break. Why they will break is obvious, Linux is NOT an OS, its a bunch of little programs written by guys that "do their own thing" and ignore what everybody else is doing. Imagine if Windows had a kernel by Oracle, graphics subsystem by AMD, Audio by creative, and another 300 or so companies making all the other parts and none of them sat down and worked up a plan saying exactly what each was going to do? Think it would be stable and solid? of course not yet you expect that same situation in Linux only with no budget added to the mix to magically work...it don't. The places it DOES work is where its stripped down (server) or where it will rarely if ever be updated (embedded) and has EXTREMELY limited hardware to support (smartphones) so the problems can be routed around.....that just isn't the case with desktops guys.

Re:Yes

[alexgieg]

yes you DO need a stable ABI

That, right there, is the reason I went back to Windows in 2010 after using Ubuntu exclusively for over 2 years.

Last week I tried the live install CD of Ubuntu 12.10. The CD I just downloaded, from the official server. Guess what? No audio! And this is the exact same box I used back then with Ubuntu 10.10, in which audio worked. So, yeah.

Also: clicking a local drive doesn't open it within the live CD environment doesn't open. There's been a command line (command line!) workaround to fix the issue for months, but no fixed live CD. Go figure... ~double facepalm~

I love my SSH for doing interesting and productive stuff on servers, but for my main home desktop I want to double click and have the shiny stuff happening, no spare thoughts on it. Linux isn't ready for the desktop. At this point I've given up, it just isn't going to happen. So, Windows or OS X it is.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

75% of the world's smartphones are currently running Android (i.e. linux), etc., etc., etc. Seem to be doing extremely well in the retail market, etc., etc., etc. Your ignorant rant is a waste of electrons, and will hopefully be recycled into something useful. Seen any Android tablets, etc. lately? All running linux, and again, seem to be quite popular. You're evidently just a troll.

Just because a marketing genius slapped the word 'Android' on a linux box, without using the word linux, demonstrates the ignorance of the masses (and you). The vast majority have absolutely no idea they are using linux. They call it Android.

Re:Yes

[Kjella]

So I'm sorry but until you get somebody with a brain to be the head of a distro, one who'll flip the bird to Torvalds and just fork the whole damned thing and make a Linux distro where you can update the damned thing without shit breaking?

Unfortunately it's not Torvalds you should flip the bird to. There are a lot of components that live between the applications and the kernel, and pulseaudio is one of them. Here's a pretty good illustration, Linus controls the kernel layer with the ALSA/OSS hardware drivers, HAL and network stack (for remote sound), but not the pulse engine or library layer. Also all USB devices work in the same way, the kernel only has basic USB read/write functions so if your device doesn't have drivers it's not Linus or the kernel at fault. There have also been many cases where the initialization/config/user interface has been broken, you can fix it from the command line but out of the box it appears broken.

Of course all of this doesn't matter if you're the user, anything that breaks anywhere from the GUI to the kernel is broken, but if we're going to play pin the blame game it is important. For example if you want to pin the blame on pulseaudio then Red Hat created it and many other distros like Ubuntu implemented it very poorly, Linus was not at all in the decision loop and I think he'd be very insulted if people though he'd approved that clusterfuck. What we should have is more people like Torvalds that could hit all these other projects with a cluebat, honestly if all components were run like he runs the kernel we wouldn't be having this discussion. His rule 1, 2 and 3 is don't break userspace.

Re:Yes

[gtall]

Customer: Wow, great looking machines, show me what they can do.

Salesdroid: Well, this here Windows machine runs all Windows software that you probably already have. This Linux machine runs maybe a little of the software you already have, but you'll need to download versions for Linux..but its easy.

Customer: Gee...download software, that's dangerous, that's how my current Windows box got wedged.

Salesdroid: But Linux is safer, just don't agree to install anything you don't want...errr....or something.

Customer: Okay, I'll take the Windows box...ummm....this doesn't look like Windows, what are these tiles, where's the start menu.

Salesdroid: Oh, screw it, just buy a fucking computer and get the hell out of here.

Customer: Bye-bye, now!!

Re:Yes

[dunkelfalke]

I actually did exactly that two days ago. Took an old netbook, replaced its harddrive with an SSD, installed Windows 7 RTM on it, and updated everything from the drivers to the SP1 with the latest patches. Took a few hours - an Atom N270 is slow - but worked out fine otherwise.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not a retailer, you are an idiot.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

Challenge accepted! I HAVE done the same with Windows, taking Vista with MS Office 2K7 (which would give the same 5 years the Linux fails at) and updated to current and guess what? ALL of the drivers worked, not some, not most ALL of the drivers worked. And the fucking programs that came with it worked too! I have even done this with XP, that is TWELVE YEARS worth of SPs and updates, fired up the MS Office 2K at the end? tada! It all fucking WORKS.

Again pick your poison, PCLOS, Ubuntu, you name it it will NOT work on this simple test because Linux is NOT AN OS, its a shitload of spoiled rotten devs doing their own thing with a "fuck it its free" attitude. this is why DEs that are finally getting stable are just shitcanned, why audio that was finally getting functional is tossed for a broken mess, its because the devs DON'T GIVE A SHIT if it works for YOU, all they care about is if with enough CLI horseshit and fiddling it works for THEM.

That kind of attitude is fine on a hobbyst OS but NOT on a desktop you expect tens of millions to use. Oh and for the AC that screamed "Android!" I already explained how embedded works, VERY limited hardware and a top down control by Google. even with all that they are looking at one MILLION infected Android units by summer and you also can't take say an Android 1.0 system and upgrade to 4.0, in fact most systems won't be able to update for more than a year thus again failing the Hairyfeet challenge. if you want to claim Linux works on disposable devices? Sure it does, but laptops and desktops aren't generally considered disposable like that smartphone is.

Re:Yes

[Murdoch5]

Your argument is that your incapable of running a stable Linux system and there for it's to dangerous for OEM's to offer. Well for that entire rant of nothing you put up I can tell you that you know nothing of how to install, configure, use or enjoy Linux. Your talk about how Driver support sucks ..... That proves you don't understand drivers on Linux and you have no idea on how drivers work. You claim update break Linux but that only if you fuck around with the update process.

You've used dozens of distributions and somehow you've seen all these issue. All I can tell from that entire long rant is that your a wantabe computer expert with no skill. I've used over 10 different distros across five different computer systems and have ran into maybe one poorly supported or broken driver. Linux requires you to understand the basics on how a computer functions, if you don't then when you have issues you simply go on and blame everyone else. A person who blames Linux for broken drivers and bad updates is like a contractor who blames the hammer for not hammering nails in straight, or the drill keeps slipping off the screw so it's the drills fault.

You talk about Pulse being broken and on it's way out, Pulse is a better sound system by FAR then anything offered on Windows and Mac. Windows loves to bring flat sound and dead sounds environments, Linux brings a live environment and options to the music / audio lover.

All you've proven in your rant is that your a dumb ass, you have no clue on how a computer system works, you want to press the any button and have magic rainbows come out of the stars. Linux from the OEM will work, it just needs the right customer support backing, that is what is lacking, that is why it doesn't work.

Re:Yes

[qzzpjs]

The post is about Linux on a PC desktop being broken.

He specifically mentioned that embedded devices work well because they never get updated. No one patches individual packages or rarely even the Linux kernel by itself on an android phone. The update replaces the entire phone OS (kernel and supporting processes). And since user apps are written in Java, they don't see the changes underneath them.

Embedded devices also have constant known hardware. They don't have to support 450 different graphics cards, monitors, network devices, etc. They need one driver for each peripheral and it never changes. It's very easy to support that type of hardware and Linux is absolutely the best choice for it.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

To steal a line from Tron Legacy "I stand for THE USERS" and I don't give a shit WHO broke it, what matters is its BROKEN. And Torvalds is very much to blame for a good chunk because if there was a stable ABI then drivers could bypass a LOT of the bullshit. Hell here it is 2013 and Linux STILL doesn't have a "roll back drivers" or "system restore" for when shit goes wrong and those were introduced in Windows in 2000!

The simple fact is EVERY MAJOR OS has stable ABIs except ONE. BSD, Solaris, OS/2, Windows, iOS, OSX, hell I wouldn't be surprised if Android and ChromeOS have one too, the ONLY hold out is Linus fucking Torvalds. Does anybody HONESTLY think Torvalds is smarter than ALL of those devs put together?

We all know what the definition of insanity is and that is Linux in a nutshell, they keep bad dev practices yet think they will get a different outcome. Well if their driver design was gonna work it would have done so by now and it hasn't. hell even the "let the kernel devs handle drivers" premise doesn't hold up to basic logic! You have MAYBE 3000 devs ON THE PLANET truly qualified to write low level system drivers and you have a good 50,000 devices MINIMUM coming out each year that need drivers! And that isn't counting all the stuff that has been released up to this point, which means if you took those 3000 devs and pumping them full of coke and had them working 24/7/365 the math would STILL not work!

So I'm sorry but as a retailer i'm tired of being blamed because nobody will carry your shitty product. I tried carrying your shitty product and no matter what hardware I chose the amount of breakage on update caused my after sale support costs to shoot through the roof and even though I have spoken and even written articles explaining EXACTLY what we retailers need to have happen to sell your product we get told "Do it our way or fuck off". Well with an attitude like that you honestly shouldn't be surprised you are in last place and even when MSFT puts out shit like Vista and 8 you gain nothing, its because your product is BROKEN and nobody will do what it takes to change the situation, no sale.

Re:Yes

[Murdoch5]

Seriously......That's your sales pitch.

Customer: Hello, I need a new computer, I know your company now carries this thing call Linux what is it, is it better then Windows.

Sales: Well Linux is a new platform, it run's the same kind of programs Windows can, it's safe for Virus's and Malware and it's fast, lightweight and well supported.

Customer: Oh okay, well I need Office, Facebook, Skype and Games, how do I buy or install them on Linux.

Sales: Well unlike Windows where you flush money down the toilet, Linux comes with a fleet of free, avilable and supported software. You simply search for what you need and it downloads for free. Facebook will still work, Skype will work and you'll find great audio and video support.

Customer: Hold on, so it sounds like my computer will loose all the annoying baggage that I hate and finally run like I want it to, well costing me less money for software and update.

Sales: Actually I can't lie, yes it will, Once you try Linux you'll find you'll want to stay with it. How ever we have a sample notebook over here, how about I walk you through using it and you make your own judgement.

1/2 hour passes

Customer: WOW! I never new a computer could run fast, have great free software and not crash or fill up with Virus's, I'm taking the Linux computer, I finally have a computer I don't hate to use, Thank!

That would be MUCH more likely.

Re:Yes

[qzzpjs]

Unfortunately it's not Torvalds you should flip the bird to.

Linus does hold some responsibility in this. The ABI starts at the kernel layer and it certainly isn't stable. It seems like every time the kernel updates on a point release, a.b.c to a.b.d, something in the kernel has changed.

Have you ever tried to run VMware as a host, or even the guest tools? Or the Hyper-V guest tools? You update the kernel once and all of a sudden you get compilation errors because of missing functions because things in the kernel have changed. I wouldn't mind if it was a major release like 2.36 to 2.37 or 2.x to 3.x, but a point release should not be changing the ABI. I gave up on using VMware to host machines on a Linux server because it broke so often. I'd have to wait days or weeks for someone to create a patch or for VMware to release an update.

At the least, it should never remove a public function in a point release. Microsoft never removes functions in updates, it just adds new ones with the new feature. Yes, that is messy, but they never break user or driver code! I thought this was Linus' mantra as we've seen in the audio patch issue a couple months back. He needs to make this apply to third party kernel modules and drivers as well.

Re:Yes

[qzzpjs]

We've been patching XP monthly since 2002 and I'd bet that 99% of us have never had an app or driver break on us. Graphics, sound, or network didn't disappear all of a sudden. All my productivity apps kept on working.

There were some issues around SP1 because of the whole network security change with the new firewall, but most software handled that fine. In the worst case, you either turned it off or apps updated to work with it.

Re:Yes

[Lodragandraoidh]

/agreed Mr. Torvalds is not the problem - if anything, he has held Linux together under outrageous intrusions from application space.

I perceive what is happening as signaling a sea change. Comercial interests (Redhat, Canonical, etc) see now as the time to push their agendas - if they control something - then they can control it's evolution. However, they are forgetting one thing: linux users want results. It is plain to me that most of these large distros don't give a rat's patootie about the average user.

I think the time is ripe for new distros to emerge - and if they address a number of key issues for the users they can cause the big boys problems they may be institutionally incapable of resolving. Time for a shake-up in the Linux space.

Re:Yes

[Crosshair84]

What really pisses me off about the whole thing is that having a properly designed ABI makes development EASIER, not harder. An ABI allows you to completely gut and replace subsystems with it having no effect on anything else. Once you have one system working you NEVER have to touch it again.

Let me give an example from work. The Inmate telephone systems we run have 3 basic components, the PBX, the recorder, and the line controller. The ABI between them is a telephone circuit with DTMF in band signalling.

We have used at least five different makes/models of PBX, three different types of recorders, and three types of line controllers. However, since all of these interface though one standard ABI we can mix and match them with no problem whatsoever. Converting a Samsung i100 KPBXwith a Kaltech recorder on a Defender 2000 controller to a newer Teleserver recorder? No problem. Just change a couple parameters in the programming of the PBX and line controller and you're back in business. These parameters are also the exact same for every site, only difference is the number of phones and outbound lines.

Just this week I went in and gutted one system, replaced the decade old PBX and recorder with a brand new system. Did the line controller crap itself and die because of these changes? No, we simply changed the inmate PIN numbers in the database and it went on like nothing happened.

The only reason I can see for Linus NOT to use an ABI is because he is too lazy to do so or he doesn't have a clue how to do it.

Another example I just thought of. Firearm cartridges. In this case you have a list of physical dimensions and max pressure as the ABI. Gun makers then have a base from which they can design a gun around. A 22 Long Rifle revolver made in 1890 will chamber and fire ammunition made yesterday and a gun made yesterday willfire wiht amunitoin made in 1880. These sorts of standards do not restrict gun designers, it liberates them because they can design their gun for one specific standardized cartridge and know that it will work 100 years from now.

Having an ABI liberates software developers because they never have to worry about their software breaking under that ABI. Now, maintaining that ABI may be difficult for someone like Linus, but guess what? IT"S YOUR JOB to maintain that ABI compatibility. If Torvalds operated an ammunition plant his ass would be in prison for the sort of things he does to his software. Hell, if Torvalds operated ANY business other than open source he would be living under a bridge for such shoddy workmanship. Now that I think about it, Microsoft could put Linus out of work instantly if they actually priced Server CALs reasonably.

Re:Yes

[vilanye]

Dell's immanent failure has everything to do with hitching their wagon to MS.

It is not a coincidence that the only OEM that is currently successful, and has a future in Apple.

Why? They built their own OS from a solid foundation, and while they are not a hardware company, they tightly control what components they use.

Dell and its ilk, use a substandard OS built on sand, and buy the cheapest hardware they can. The punchline is that someone with a little computer knowledge can build a machine that is higher quality, lasts longer, and outperforms a Dell machine that costs twice as much .

Re:Yes

[Kjella]

Well VMware is not anything like a normal application since it doesn't want to run that way at all, it gropes deeply into the internal structures of the kernel. Which rather brings us to:

Microsoft never removes functions in updates, it just adds new ones with the new feature. Yes, that is messy, but they never break user or driver code! I thought this was Linus' mantra as we've seen in the audio patch issue a couple months back. He needs to make this apply to third party kernel modules and drivers as well.

No, it is to never break the userspace API or the drivers in the kernel. Anything else, the policy is that they'll break it as often and as much as they like, either you keep up with the changes or you opensource your code, get it in mainline and let the kernel maintain it. Pretty much the entire core development team is in agreement on this, if third party kernel modules or applications they depend on fail they don't care. Linus wants you to be able to run that Linux application you wrote in 1995 today, but if he broke the VMware kernel module three times last week he does not care. One of the reasons they dislike them so much is that modules can barf all over the kernel, at least before they refused to look at any bug report with the nVidia blob loaded.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Well for that entire rant of nothing you put up I can tell you that you know nothing of how to install, configure, use or enjoy Linux.

That proves you don't understand drivers on Linux and you have no idea on how drivers work.

Linux requires you to understand the basics on how a computer functions

All you've proven in your rant is that your a dumb ass, you have no clue on how a computer system works

These quotes show that you know nothing about the users hairyfeet is talking about. Do you think they know what a driver is? The only thing that they will understand when a new computer's sound, WiFi, etc. doesn't work is that it is broken and needs to be returned to the store.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

You have got to be the most ignorant MS fanboy that posts on /.

Show me a Windows that 1.- Cost less than Linux, 2.- Can be installed NOW and have full functionality WITHOUT jumping through CLI hoops or registry hacks, Googling for fixes, or playing forum hunts on 8 year old hardware

Show me a box built for Windows, 8 years ago that won't run flawlessly, out of the box, with modern Linux distros with all the graphical bells and whistles. The number that won't is much lower for Linux than it is for with Windows 7 or 8.

Just because you are a clueless fuckwit, doesn't mean that Linux is not a great desktop. I use it as a desktop everyday and it does every thing I need it to do and does much better than Windows. Then again, I use my desktop as a tool to do work, not as a toy.

Just because you enjoy the taste of Ballmer's asshole doesn't mean you know anything about computers. Stop spreading FUD.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been patching XP monthly since 2002 and I'd bet that 99% of us have never had an app or driver break on us. Graphics, sound, or network didn't

Posting as AC to avoid losing mod points.

Almost every month. The day after Patch Tuesday was a nightmare, especially where I worked we seemd to have alot of Wednesday meetings. I supported a lot of conference rooms, and typically would lose codec, or DVD support, sometimes audio. I was at about the 50 percent break level.

Now there were support people who only did Office apps. They swore there were never any problems with drivers or apps. And their graphics apps alawys worked. Unitil I got called in to fix them. It just wasn't noticed very often.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

A few hours? I could have Linux running on that flawlessly in half and hour.

Re:Yes

[qzzpjs]

Linus wants you to be able to run that Linux application you wrote in 1995 today, but if he broke the VMware kernel module three times last week he does not care. One of the reasons they dislike them so much is that modules can barf all over the kernel, at least before they refused to look at any bug report with the nVidia blob loaded.

And that is why Linux on the desktop will fail. If he and the community don't care about 3rd parties adding capabilities and features to the kernel (the equivalent of drivers in Windows), it will never be mainstream. No company is going to waste their time and money to develop for the Linux platform if they cannot expect reliable support for their efforts. Can you imagine that Windows would have ever taken off if they didn't care about making sure other company's code worked on the system reliably over time? I'm surprised the nVidia was even gracious enough to provide a driver given the hostility toward them. The users's and gamer's are begging nVidia for it, and the kernel team couldn't give a care less about providing a stable system for them to work on. Windows had graphics drivers in the kernel from NT4 through XP I believe, and I'm sure Microsoft put in some effort to help make sure that 3rd party drivers worked reliably. They didn't just tell them to go away.

VMware is a user based application that does require some kernel modules to operate. In 13 years, I've never had a single problem with them adding their 3rd party drivers to the Windows OS, and patching Windows afterwards has never caused those drivers to fail. If Linux cannot provide this same reliability, nobody is going to accept it on their desktops on a large scale. I can just imagine how scared a helpdesk in a company would be the day after Linux desktops all do their scheduled "apt-get update".

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

/agreed Mr. Torvalds is not the problem - if anything, he has held Linux together under outrageous intrusions from application space.

I perceive what is happening as signaling a sea change. Comercial interests (Redhat, Canonical, etc) see now as the time to push their agendas - if they control something - then they can control it's evolution. However, they are forgetting one thing: linux users want results. It is plain to me that most of these large distros don't give a rat's patootie about the average user.

I think the time is ripe for new distros to emerge - and if they address a number of key issues for the users they can cause the big boys problems they may be institutionally incapable of resolving. Time for a shake-up in the Linux space.

Well, at one time, Ubuntu was seen as the one that would bring balance to the source... but they've since gone to the dark side.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

The public facing kernel API's are extremely stable. So much so, that shit written for Linux 15 years ago will still compile with no fuss.

Try compiling Windows 95 app that makes kernel calls and otherwise just uses the C standard library that hasn't changed in eons for Windows 7 or 8.

You are an ignorant fuckwit that doesn't understand even the simplest programming concepts.

It is Windows that breaks public facing API's constantly, but you are too ignorant to know that.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

And this is what piss me off about the FOSSies, they act like anybody that isn't slurping the GNUkoolaid HAS to be some dirty shill.

You know how many damned years I been trying the Hairyfeet challenge just trying to find ONE, just one, that would pass? Going on 6 years. How many years did I use Linux as my personal OS? 3 and a half, trying over a dozen in that time as one would break shit and I'd move to another, just a glutton for punishment. Know how much Windows licenses eats into my bottom line? Sometimes as bad as 35% of a sale will be the cost of Windows licenses...now does anybody REALLY think I wouldn't fucking jump at the chance to keep that money for myself?

But after years of seeing what frankly should be the simplest things to do in Linux land, since they all have the source, things like updating the OS, updating the software, adding some new USB device...fucking bog standard shit that ANY USER should be reasonably expected to do....breakage. Mickey Mouse amateur hour breakage. Think that made me cheer, knowing after wasting hours I ended up with a broken mess? That builds are still gonna be having serious license costs? No it did NOT make me happy, I WANTED Linux to work, but it don't, not on the desktop, not with the same Plain Jane bog standard hardware...I mean for the love of God, we ain't talking exotic hardware here, Via and Realtek sound, Intel, AMD, and Nvidia IGPs and cards, SiS and Realtek networking, broadcom and Intel wireless....for fuck's sake, this hardware is in like 80%+ of the PCs out there! Is nobody doing any testing? How in the hell could updates get out the door that break hardware that is so damned bog standard?

So I'm sick of it, I'm sick of FOSSies telling us retailers its OUR FAULT that nobody sells their OS on systems when they are breaking shit and being a fricking joke. Seriously how are we supposed to sell Linux desktops and laptops when you can't even keep the most common drivers going? Hell you don't even provide a system restore or roll back drivers button so that users that get in trouble can roll back the system quickly and easily....that shit has been in Windows since fricking 2000! And you are gonna blame US that nobody wants your OS when its a mess? Sorry but its your fault for putting up with that broken mess and then expecting grandma and Sally secretary deal with pages of CLI, googling for fixes, and forum hunts. No, sorry, unacceptable.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

Thank you...is that really so damned much to ask for? i'm not asking to run in the RAM of a watch, drive 6 monitors, all I want it to do is be just as functional when the patches are over as when they began...is that REALLY too damned much to ask for? Because the way some of them are acting here I just beat their mothers for DARING to ask that the damned thing keeps working after patching!

After 3 years of using Linux the only conclusion I could take away from it is...Linux IS Windows 98. its buggy, patches break as much as they fix, things that worked today may not work tomorrow, all that shit was what I dealt with with Windows 98...it ain't 1998 anymore guys, things HAVE gotten better. I can take XP/XP X64, Vista, or Win 7 and go from RTM to current and gasp! all the drivers work! The software I installed still runs!

Nobody is asking for miracles here guys, just that the devs can get their shit together and stop breaking as much as they fix, give us the ability to go from RTM to EOL and not end up having to wipe the system and start over...is that REALLY so damned much to ask for in 2013?

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

What pisses ME off is it has become a religious thing to the FOSSie faction, you even dare speak the word "ABI" and they instantly shut down, no discussion allowed, St Torvalds has said its verbotten so no thought shall be given and you are a dirty shill for daring to break the silence with your filthy ABI idea.

Do they think ALL those other OS designers were making ABIs just to be douchebags? that Torvalds is REALLY smarter than ALL OF THEM combined? As you said better than i ever could everybody uses ABIs for a REASON, so you don't end up with a house of cards when you change something.....which is exactly what happens in Linux. Change ALSA for Pulse? KDE 3 for KDE 4? Enjoy your broken mess.

I mean for fuck's sake Crosshair I'm a little shop owner in the middle of nowhere Arkansas...you think ANY exotic hardware is coming through here? Hell no, we are talking about the same damned hardware you have seen a billion times before, intel, realtek,via, nvidia, amd, sigmatel....this shit is as common as the damned dirt and they STILL break the damned drivers on update? WTF?

I mean if me, with the most boring hardware on the planet is seeing all this breakage...what is grandma and little Johnny gonna see? Think they would EVER buy from me again if I sold them a laptop that went black screen of death the first time they let it update? Or if their desktop lost sound and their WiFi card just from updating? They can dress it up any way they want but when you are breaking hardware as bog standard as the stuff in my shop then you are a hobbyist OS, you don't deserve to be considered a contender when you can't even keep the boring stuff working.

With an ABI they wouldn't have this problem but as long as Torvalds is in charge it'll never be, and so Linux will never be shit on the desktop.

Re:Yes

[Areyoukiddingme]

Huh. Now that I think about it... Add that to your list of distributions to try. Chromium OS is what Google calls the freely available version of ChromeOS. Maybe the geniuses at Google have their shit together enough not to break drivers? Might be worth a try. Since you seem determined.

Re:Yes

[graphius]

OK, I have not done this over 12 years, because I have changed a few things over that time, drives have died etc, but I have rarely had a problem upgrading my linux boxes.
I have had drivers break, hardware become flaky etc with windows. Hell, I recently had a new windows 8 machine bluescreen continually because the antivirus that worked very well in win 7 broke during an update.

Re:Yes

[vilanye]

LOL That wasn't even a good troll, try again.

Re:Yes

[vilanye]

Microsoft breaks API's and ABI's constantly. Try using something simple like a generic keyboard driver written for Windows 95 and try to compile it for Windows 7 or 8. That is called breaking public API's and that is what Microsoft does, not Linux. You can compile code written in 95 and it will most likely compile and run. Especially if it makes public kernel calls. The Linux public API's do not change very often. If a driver or some other kernel or user space module breaks because of a kernel update, the "programmers" screwed up and called private API code that will and does change often. Don't program like an idiot(if you do the PHP and .NET worlds will welcome you with open arms) and you will never get your app broken by a Linux kernel update.

Re:Yes

[vilanye]

Linux is already mainstream. They own every market except desktops, which is really the only market MS owns. and is in decline.

Their attempts to take over, or even get a foothold in emerging markets have been laughable.

Virtualization on Linux is something that NEVER happens. /sarcasm alert

I have an NVidia card and its Linux drivers have never caused a problem. They not only work, I get much better performance running in Linux on a dual boot machine. And network latency? MS has yet to match the rock solid networking stack that Linux provides.

I use VirtualBox every day and yet to have it break because of a kernel update, it will need to be recompiled, but Yast does that automatically without issue.

If you are having these issues you are using a crap distro that is or is closely related to Debian, or you simple don't know what you are doing or are simply spreading FUD. Funny how a non-mainstream OS has caused MS to want to spend hundreds of millions of man hours spreading FUD and they talk about it every chance they get.

You shouldn't bring up MS, their insane attempts to keep older software running(with goofy hacks like loading in the buggy memory behavior if it detects SimCity which stupidly relied on said bug) has resulted in a bloated OS that using significantly more resources, is less stable, far less secure and is a nightmare to maintain it. The smartest thing Steve Jobs did was forget backwards compatibility for OSX and build on a solid foundation, instead of going the MS way, patch what you can of the flimsy foundation and pile more and more crap on top of it.

The ability to mold OS X, while not as flexible as Linux, is the key reason why MS has lost all the new tech markets forever, the bloated pile of fail that MS squeezed out can not be easily converted to other uses.

The fact that Linux runs the world seems to be lost on some of you.

Re:Yes

[vilanye]

Ubuntu has always been crap. I first tested them out in 2006 and their dumbed down, almost make MS seem competent, almost, approach meant it lasted 4 days on my machine, Since then every other attempt to try Ubuntu hasn't lasted a day.

Ubuntu has done more damage to Linux that all the millions that MS spent to try and squash it. Makes me wonder if Ubuntu is a shadow MS project. Its love of Gnome is evidence of that since Ballmer's favorite whore Miguel has been running Gnome into the ground, not that Gnome was ever very good, but the direction of Gnome can only be in the direction of suicide.

Put me down as a hater of Debian and all its demented siblings. The best thing that could happen to Linux is for Debian to die, along with all its demon seed distros.

Re:Yes

[Dog-Cow]

I can practically see the froth from here. You need real help.

Linus doesn't want his, or any kernel developers' hands tied when it comes to changing the kernel. He doesn't break userspace. That's his hard and fast rule. If you don't like his rule, fork the kernel and freeze the driver ABI. The fact that no one has done so, including Red Hat, IBM or Dell, should tell you that it really isn't important enough to anyone that matters.

Re:Yes

[Patch86]

What does that have to do with Linux? Simple your drivers are deep fried shit (thus showing that yes you DO need a stable ABI, if you didn't then your drivers wouldn't be getting crapped on so damned often) and your updates remind of Win9X in that they break more than they fix. Don't believe me? Step right up and take the Hairyfeet Challenge!

...

You take ANY user friendly distro, PCLOS, any of the *Buntus that has what a Linux users considers to be a normal release schedule which seems to be anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half, take the one from 5 years ago (because as a retailer I can tell you the typical lifespan of a PC now is 5 years) and update it to current using ONLY the GUI, just as the customer who has bought Linux for the first time would be expected to do.

What a load of nonsense. I stopped reading after these bits.

Drivers on Linux have been fine for years. The Nvidia binary graphics driver works better on my desktop's Ubuntu dual boot than it does on the Windows 7 one, and was selected by default when I installed it. I haven't had a wireless or sound issue since about 2008; they always work fine out of the box. Plug and play plugs-and-plays exactly as you'd expect.

Ubuntu releases regular as clockwork- 6 months for their "bleeding edge" release, 2 years for their stable release. It is trivial to update to the latest version with GUI only; open Update Manager (it pops up on it's own every time there's an update, otherwise it's right there in the menu), in the banner that says "New Version Available" click "upgrade now" or whatever the button is, let it do it's thing.

Linux has plenty of issues that prevent it breaking through into the mainstream, but you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Mostly they're to do with software compatibility; Linux netbooks were killed off by the number of people taking them back saying "it won't run Microsoft Office or The Sims, it's rubbish!", and the lack of native versions of certain industry standard software (Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc.) keeps it out of many offices.

Re:Yes

[unixisc]

I also wonder whether PC-BSD has been subjected to the Hairyfeet test or not. I'd be interested to see the results.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed his point (which was easy to do, hidden as it was in his rant). It is easy to upgrade from the GUI, but it frequently breaks. Just one example:

I installed Ubuntu two or three years ago. It worked splendidly. After a few months a message popped-up telling me that the next version was available, so I clicked the button and it installed. And my wired ethernet stopped working. (This was a desktop, so no wifi either.) So now my computer was stuffed and I couldn't get on the internet to find out why. But I do know my way around UNIX and I determined that the kernel was recognising the ethernet port and it was functioning. But the GUI didn't think I had ethernet. So I started looking at the network configuration files and I eventually found something that looked broken, which I fixed. Back online I found that the way Ubuntu configured its network settings had changed, and the upgrade had borked my config files (which were vanilla, I'd had no reason to tinker with the network settings). So the network broke.

What you say is literally true: Linux does not have a driver problem. In fact Linux, the kernel, is rock solid. But there's a lot more to a distribution than a kernel and applications; there's a lot of configuration and OS user-land software (e.g. the sound and printing stacks). These parts are essential to a functioning system and in my experience, and the GP's, upgrades frequently break them.

Re:Yes

[Crosshair84]

Not breaking userspace doesn't mean jack when he breaks everything else.

The market doesn't like don't like his rule and guess what? That's why Linux is stuck at 1% market share.

Nobody is going to freeze the kernel and ABI for PC use because you can't make money on that work. Thanks to the GPL any work they do will simply be stolen by the leeches. Had there been a "free for non-profit use" pay to redistribute" clause then you bet your ass the Kernel would have been forked a good decade ago.

The fact that no one has done so, including Red Hat, IBM or Dell, should tell you that it really isn't important enough to anyone that matters.

It doesn't matter to anyone ON THE SERVER MARKET. Servers have both extremely limited hardware variation and full time staff paid to put up with Torvalds's monkey code. Linux would be wiped from the server room in a week if MS priced Server CALS reasonably.

On the desktop? Microsoft and Apple spend hundreds of millions on maintaining the ABI of their operating systems. Guess what? Both have way more market share than Linux does. So for CONSUMERS, you bet your ass it matters.

It's not that I LIKE Microsoft, It's that your product can't even compete with Windows freaking 98 in terms of reliability. Linux today MIGHT give Windows 95 a run for it's money, as drivers there were kind of a crapshoot still, but that's about the best it could do.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an ordinary user. I stopped purchasing from HP and Dell, because they do not work. They are filled with crapware, and their computers sold to us ordinary people are just crap. They don't work. This time I purchased a netbook from Acer, running Windows 7, and it's fine. Most other people gave up on the laptops also, and are buying Tablets instead. It's the crapware. The laptops do not work out of the box, they are a complete nightmare. It's not the Windows. Windows 7 is not garbage it is ok. It is the crapware.

Re:Yes

[cthulhu11]

How much different would the situation be if balkanization weren't so encouraged, if humans could spend time fixing stuff instead of reinventing the wheel? Eg. consider the number of tools for managing disk partition tables. Consider how many of them can't handle everything, are hobbled with an X11 interface (gparted), or simply are broken (cfdisk). Now look at Solaris where 'format' does it all and more.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk about Pulse being broken and on it's way out, Pulse is a better sound system by FAR then anything offered on Windows and Mac. Windows loves to bring flat sound and dead sounds environments, Linux brings a live environment and options to the music / audio lover.

Pulse is better? Yeah, that's why all professional audio recording/editing work of any consequence is done on Windows or Mac platforms. The only substantial Linux offering in that space is Ardour, and I challenge you to find ANY professional studio that uses it.

The original poster was 100% correct, and you have no fucking clue of what a distro needs in order to be successful on the desktop.

Re:Yes

[Areyoukiddingme]

Bizarrely, open source works against itself. Open source, and the GPL in particular, was supposed to discourage balkanization. With the source to your tools available, if you found a problem or needed a feature, you could fix it or add it, and the terms of the GPL meant everyone else would (usually) benefit. There Should Be Only One.

Where does the idealism fall down? Humans. Politics. Assorted bullshit. There's no question we wouldn't be where we are without Stallman and the GPL, but he reckoned without human nature. Only to fall victim to it himself, and the emacs/xemacs fork is one of the oldest open source forks around, all because of Stallman's ego. Eric Raymond said one of the fundamental motivations keeping open source going is ego—being known for one's contributions. Unfortunately, he didn't address the flip side of ego-driven development, which is politics, fiefdoms, infighting, and forks.

That, if you like, is irony.

Re:Yes

[kermidge]

Well, ok. I downed an iso for Ubuntu 7.10 (32-bit), burned it, and installed as a vm under VirtualBox, host being Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit. Fine. Upgraded to 8.04, worked fine. Then it hit me, half the repos I'd normally use - restricted extras, backports, third-party, partners - weren't there for versions that far back.
      Whoops. Next upgrade offered by GUI updater was 10.04. Don't know what happened, was off re-packing my wounds (aftermath of blood clot, _not_ fun, it's been three months now....), got back and machine wouldn't wake up. Killed it by closing the window, re-started to a kernel panic: couldn't find fs.
      So, ok, that didn't work.
      But I have taken several of my Linux machines through the process - as the updates and upgrades were offered - without much hassle. That's a qualified "much", of course. Sure as tootin' all OS's suck, just differently. I've had the same ease, mostly, with my Windows systems, including the gotchas.
      Often as not, I've found that when doing an upgrade, it's better to save the docs, software keys, what have you, and do a clean install, then re-install apps. And I do hate the extra time this takes.
      I've had about as many driver problems in Windows as in Linux - both have gotten better since, say, '01. (I had _one_ driver problem in Linux since '09, but I haven't had that many systems to play with, not like you, having a store and all, and yeah, I helped out at a store here in town for three years, mostly OS, software, file recovery (testdisk is your friend), dis-infection, re-installs, etc. I know some of the hassles.)
      Sum up, my own limited experience says I prefer the ease of use and fewer hassles of doing updates via GUI on Ubuntu to doing updates on Windows (including apps and drivers.)

      I figure it's use what works for you - and in your case, for your customers. For me it'd be a toss-up which I'd rather do: handhold people through Linux probs (wouldn't be me, I'm too stupid) or keep fixing those brought by Windows users who refuse to do updates and just "have to click" on every damn thing they see on screen and browser.

Re:Yes

[dunkelfalke]

It worked just fine right after the OS installation. The installing of all the patches that came out in the last four years took so long. Slipstreaming the patches into the install medium would have got it running with the latest patches even faster, but it was late and I didn't bother, just started the Windows update and went to bed.

Re:Yes

[Murdoch5]

improve tech support so people can actually get help, listening to an Indian talk broken English well they rant about what they don't know isn't customer service.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

Again you see what I mean? No real discussion allowed because St Torvalds says its verbotten so he MUST be right, they won't even entertain the idea that he could POSSIBLY be wrong on ANYTHING.

But one important thing you missed about servers Crosshair is they don't have to deal with a LOT of shit that is 100% REQUIRED to have a functional desktop. I know several Linux server admins...think they have sound on a server? a full DE? WiFi? Multimedia support? Hell most are running headless and just using CLI to run the show. That is about as opposite as you can possibly get from a desktop yet the FOSSie faction thinks this is somehow "proof" that Torvalds is right? That would be like saying "gas trucks use too much fuel, we should be using more diesel" and some numbnuts chimes in with "My moped gets 60MPG!"...WTF does THAT have to do with anything? Its two completely different use cases, has little to nothing in common other than both have wheels and a motor yet that would be considered "proof" that gas is better than diesel?

at the end of the day that is why I've blocked all Linux articles because common sense and logic need not apply, you go to any Linux article and its a total circle jerk and ignores reality completely. I've been selling systems since the days of the 486, have used and serviced just about every OS out there, from System 7- OS/2 and LINUX IS BROKEN when it comes to the desktop. It can't update without breaking shit, drivers that work in foo don't work in foo+1, hardware is a game of roulette, its a bad joke and blaming us retailers for their shitty numbers is just passing the buck.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

Can't use it, the drivers are built for a VERY limited amount of hardware, more like a Hackentosh than a windows replacement, and its still almost completely focused around online which means your laptop is a brick if you lose your net connection. There are plenty of places here with no free WiFi so the users HAVE to be able to have 100% functionality when out of a hotspot and Chromium doesn't allow that.

Sorry i don't have the complete list written down but so far I've given my challenge to Ubuntu, mint, Fedora (I know but some guy kept insisting Fedora could pass), PCLOS, Knoppix, close to a dozen all told and so far NONE of passed the challenge. And its not like I'm asking for miracles here, just that the system have the same hardware working after patching that it did before patching and so far no dice, the QA and testing must be really piss poor.

Re:Yes

[The Snowman]

I use Linux, I use Windows, and I like them both. Both have their fair share of issues, but you are right: Linux is too fragmented, and "death by committee" is literally just that: it is going to kill it.

Someone needs to focus on a Linux desktop for the masses. It needs to be backed by someone like Google (think Android) who has the resources to do it right. Stable ABI, maybe fork the kernel and core libraries, and make it just work. Ripping out the UI every few years and smearing poop all over it (I'm looking at you, Ubuntu) is simply not acceptable. Breaking backwards compatibility is not acceptable.

Re:Yes

[Crosshair84]

You're wrong..............my moped gets 160 mpg. :P

Re:Yes

[The Snowman]

It is Windows that breaks public facing API's constantly, but you are too ignorant to know that.

Actually, Windows still has tons of crap left over from Windows 95 still hanging around. Part of the problem with Windows is the API has grown tremendously while keeping the old stuff around (which is why you have stuff like CreateWindow and CreateWindowX as API calls) that it can be confusing to figure out the right way to do anything unless you are writing on top of a GUI framework that abstracts all that crap away from you.

The proper way to do this is to deprecate old APIs when a new one comes out, then remove it in the next major revision. For example, if Vista introduced some new API intended to replace, not supplement, an old one, Windows 7 would remove it. This would also assume that application developers would maintain their code and update it. This may not be a safe assumption.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Linux daily since 1993. And it always worked great for me. I was looking for the Unix workstation experience at home, and therefore Linux worked out great for me.

"Desktop" linux was never going to be what you want. That's not about Linux, that's about a moving target and marketing.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

The problem is they wouldn't be able to use Linux and still keep the doors open, look at how Canonical has been reduced to begging and trying to latch onto every fad in the hopes of making a cent. If they would have had a "free for personal use, pay for commercial use" model frankly Linux would have been fixed half a decade ago and that would have even covered RMS' printer story scenario, since he could fix the code, modify the code, and share the modifications online, just not give away the whole OS.

I used to think that Canonical could have done that and had dropped the ball but now I know I was wrong, there is simply too much that needs fixing for the GPL model to work. GPL only works for the "blessed three" use cases, sell hardware, sell support/services, or holding out a tin cup. None of these will provide the good 100 million plus required to fix all the broken buggy shit like the wiFi, sound, graphics, and of course writing an ABI and forking away the kernel so I honestly think Linux is ultimately doom to failure on any job that doesn't fit the blessed three. Servers? You can sell support/services and you can sell hardware. Phones and tablets/? You are selling the hardware. see what I mean? this is why you see no AAA games that are FOSS, because despite companies giving the community powerful game engines for over a decade games don't fall under the blessed three so it will just never happen.

Ultimately if we are ever gonna get a "third way" it'll have to be based on BSD where you can actually sell the OS to make your R&D back. People point to Google but its no accident that ChromeOS ONLY works online, because Google is a datamining company and by forcing users to be online all the time they make more money by datamining the users who are NOT their customers and selling that data to their customers the advertisers. So what we need is someone who will put the users FIRST, copy what Jobs did with NeXT and take BSD and make a user friendly OS out of it.

But sadly I doubt that will ever happen and as long as Linux development is "welcome to bizarro world" you can give up on Linux ever doing squat on the desktop.

Re:Yes

[hairyfeet]

Look up "Ulrich Drepper is an asshole" to see EXACTLY what is wrong with FOSS and the GPL model, because GPL doesn't have a "free for private use, pay for commercial use" clause so that those that get tired of the bullshit can fork and make their time/money back you end up with a billion Ulrich Dreppers. Look up the chat logs, its sad how much control the little dipshit had, people would ask for what should have been obvious, things like "We could use an ARM branch" and his "response" would be just a heap of insults, he would literally write shit like "You're an idiot, you don't know anything, piss off'. It finally got bad enough Debian paid to fork just to get away from the prick.

For Linux to work as on OS you need cooperation, you need everyone working together to fix instead of reinventing the wheel, instead you get the maladjusted like Drepper being pricks just because they can. And the worst part is without the redistribute clause, which is a boat anchor on the GPL? The printer story would STILL be fixed, he could have the code, modify the code, and share his changes without sharing the entire OS.

Re:Yes

[The Snowman]

Good points, although it is difficult to say exactly how Linux dropped the ball.

I think the licensing is part of the issue, but a small one. While the GPL is viral and licenses such as BSD and Apache are friendlier to business, I'm not sure that it matters just how the kernel is licensed (keep in mind it is not strictly GPL, it has some slight but important modifications).

Linux has one key feature that sets it apart from most other operating systems. Some argue it is good, some argue it is bad. I say it is what it is, but it explains why things unfolded the way they did. There is no Jobs or Gates. While Linus may have control over the kernel, that is the extent of his domain. He can yell at the KDE or Canonical people until he is blue in the face, and may as well fart in the wind. Likewise, Shuttleworth can yell at Linus all he wants, but cannot do what he wants to the kernel outside of his own distribution.

This is both a strength and a weakness. It ensures that one person cannot sink the ship (Xfree/Xorg is a good example), but it also ensures that one person cannot unify it and make it stronger. I believe to succeed outside of the data center, Linux needs that unifying force to make decisions and force people to abide by them. But it will never happen.

Sometimes I wonder if Red Hat should just fork the whole damn thing and make their own OS. They are the closest Linux vendor to having that critical mass, but probably still don't have enough market share to make a dent.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Just offer options that customers want! For instance don't only offer Windows's based notebooks, offer Linux as an option, improve tech support so people can actually get help. Offer GREAT hardware, not just the cheap crap.

===
How long after purchasing a Windows xx license will support be dropped? For XP it was 10 years, For Vista it was 3 years, For W7 it is about to disappear, after 7 years and for W8, probably stop after 3 years.

Linux is a good solution. It is stable, has thousands of help, and like the car industry, you have many models from which to choose. With Linux, you will find freeware, opensource freeware, and commercial software. It is a good long term product that will run on hardware that is 15 years old. Can you do that with Windows?

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the same experience he has, and I am a Network Engineer. I mostly work with Windows Servers (responsible for about 40), but I do have 10-12 linux servers in production for clients, and do after hours support for another 20. I've used Linux through high school, CS degree, and off and on in my 9 years of IT professionally. I'm no Linux expert, but I can tell you I've felt his experience with drivers and updates. I used to manually edit x configs to get shit to work at all. Generally speaking, things are better the last few years from my experience with the desktop, but MANY wireless cards still won't work easily (or at all). I'm sure that with tweaking and better knowledge a lot of the issues we've run into can be resolved, but that really is the heart of the issue. In my job, I've done the hairyfeet test with Windows at least 25 times each with XP/Vista/7 because I couldn't find an up to date disk, and it was just as easy to run updates than download a new ISO, burn/install. No/rare problems updating from RTM to current. I don't think that is true of Linux AT ALL. Try 2 years of updates at best without issues, not 10 years like Windows. That is with NO special knowledge or work arounds being needed. Just windows update, install, reboot, repeat. Any idiot can do that, and you have to realize that 90% of the OEM customer base are idiots! Saying that the issue is vendor support is a joke. That vendor support is what puts them out of business. Do you have any idea how expensive that support is? If I sold 1000 computers this year, and each one needs 3 hours of support for upgrading Linux/Issues, that's 3000 hours! That's nearly three new full time employees who know Linux enough to run a support desk. The saving from not having to pay the MS Tax will not cover that!.

I'm a little confused

[Anonymous Coward]

when they're referring to Dell & HP as "major PC manufacturers", is this for the home-PC or the business-PC market ? I always thought that when John Doe visits a PC store to buy a PC, he'll probably buy a custom PC that this store assembles & sells rather than a Dell or an HP. OTOH a company will strike a deal with Dell or HP because they'll probably offer extra support etc. That's the common "practice" in the european market at least. Is this true for the US market too? Is Dell's or HP's market share in the home PC larger than that of the custom built PCs ?

Re:I'm a little confused

[masternerdguy]

No most people in the US who are not enthusiasts will buy a name brand OEM PC from a Best Buy or Staples or maybe even Walmart. People who build their own rigs or even are interested in custom ones are enthusiasts.

Re:I'm a little confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, people in the US work almost 2000 hours a year or something like that, significantly higher than folks in Europe. We don't have time to have partly assembled PC's lying around the house.

Re:I'm a little confused

[jbolden]

In the USA, much larger. Custom PCs are rare. Most consumer PCs are bought mail order from the big manufacturers or store bough mass manufactured models.

Re:I'm a little confused

[bbelt16ag]

says you! i just threw out like 5 a few months ago since i could now buy better hardware that costs less then it does to run them or buy parts for them.

Re:I'm a little confused

[Anonymous Coward]

The US consumer market is probably 75% laptops -- where name brands rule the roost.

The only people still buying desktops for home use are PC gamers -- and they usually BYOB.

Re:I'm a little confused

[hairyfeet]

Just the opposite, the little shops like mine sell the custom rigs while the big chains all sell "store brand" Dell and HP units. the reason i put store brand in quotes is often you can't go by model numbers as Best Buy and Walmart will often have "special" models built just for them that are frankly crippled all to hell to save every cent, for example I have pulled the side off a Best Buy Dell and found the PCIe slot to be missing, just the solder points sitting on the board, and other very basic features removed so they can squeeze every cent out of every sale.

On the upside it only takes most customers getting fucked like that once before they start coming to guys like me exclusively and while we can't sell systems quite as low as a "Best Buy special" our systems last past the warranty and can actually be upgraded, most of the big chain OEMs are so crippled what you see is what you get. This is why I wasn't shocked at Intel talking about going to soldered on CPUs (although I will stay with AMD where I can change chips) because for the big chains that would fit, that would be one more place they can save a couple cents per system and maximize profits.

Re:I'm a little confused

[spire3661]

I dont think it even occurred to him how many whiteboxes are out there, especially in small businesses. To him its probably 'brand name' or custom uber gaming rig only.

Buy Direct

[ISoldat53]

"You can't get good chili in Taiwan."

Re:Buy Direct

[burisch_research]

That is so pathetic

Re:Buy Direct

[ISoldat53]

That was a marketing slogan PC Limited used before it became Dell.

Uh... that container ship sailed decades ago

[ElectricTurtle]

The summary seems oblivious to the ODM/OEM relationships that have existed for decades. Dell and HP don't *make* anything, they just rebrand things made by Arima, Compal, Uniwill, Quanta, Clevo, etc. Taiwan designs and manufactures everything, Dell and HP simply slap some stickers on them and retail them with the addition of whatever service/support package.

The whole market has belonged to Asia for a generation, and it's not going to change.

Re:Uh... that container ship sailed decades ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this. No matter what the brand on your device claims(Apple, HP, whatever) it was probably made by Foxconn.

Re:Uh... that container ship sailed decades ago

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more ODMs and ECMs than just Hon Hai.

Based on revenue - you have about a 1 in 4 chance:
http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/company-search.html?nvind=1228

Re:Uh... that container ship sailed decades ago

[retroworks]

BINGO. Japan and the USA gave up on defending displays over 20 years ago, depending on software as the chip technology leaked away.

And I tire of the Slashdot anti-Asian chatter, sounds like the old men who complained about selling "scraps to Japs" in the recycling business in the 1960s, as if Japanese steel mills use of USA scrap in the 1960s had something to do with WWII. That may sound off topic, but if you are my age you remember all the anti Japanese drum beating, how threatening Japan was to the USA.

I live on a street where I am happy if my neighbors are doing well, improving their houses, their children doing well in school. Having my neighbors do better raises the value of my property, and the potential friendship my kids will find in the neighborhood. Having the world do better works the same way.

Re:Uh... that container ship sailed decades ago

[sethstorm]

Those aren't "neighbors" to be trusted given their attempts to take over First World companies and enslavement of their own people - or to otherwise slight the US.

The Tiananmen Square Massacre sealed China's fate as a forever-despotic country. Other countries just use the cover of offshoring by multinational companies to further their whitewashed despotism.

Those arent neighbors that you want, but neighbors you want to remove.

Re:Uh... that container ship sailed decades ago

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this racist bullshit modded at +2?

The US has sabotaged its own economy, transferring trillions of dollars of public wealth to a tiny group of incredibly rich people, both directly (misappropriation of public funds) and indirectly (making investment banks and others immune to risk at the public expense).

US CEOs are directly responsible for offshoring - what rationale can you possibly have for blaming foreign governments for this?

Re:Uh... that container ship sailed decades ago

[unixisc]

The summary seems oblivious to the ODM/OEM relationships that have existed for decades. Dell and HP don't *make* anything, they just rebrand things made by Arima, Compal, Uniwill, Quanta, Clevo, etc. Taiwan designs and manufactures everything, Dell and HP simply slap some stickers on them and retail them with the addition of whatever service/support package. The whole market has belonged to Asia for a generation, and it's not going to change.

This is the most obvious point about this story that I'm surprised that everybody above overlooked it. None of the US PC makers - Dell, HP, Acer et al have made their PCs in quite a while. As ElectricTurtle pointed out, they just rebrand systems made by the likes of Arima, Compal, Quanta, et al w/ their logo. So this is really more of a cosmetic change, w/ truth in advertising finally arriving. In fact, it makes more sense to by a laptop from Acer or Asus, since they in fact do make their own PCs, which is why one doesn't see the mark-ups that Dell & HP are forced to do.

Of course, w/ Microsoft entering the market itself, looks like Asus and Acer will have to look for alternatives to Windows. They'd be better off talking to Google, or having teams to talk to the BSD guys and get something like PC-BSD working on their systems so that they have fully functional units. That way, they won't be hostage to Microsoft, and BSD can get more market exposure.

Not really new news

[Kjella]

The components have been made in the East for a long time now, particularly Taiwan was famous long before China. For those that missed the memo, the recent HDD crisis was due to floodings in Thailand which is in SE Asia. All sorts of optics and related electronics is heavily centered around Japanese companies like Canon, Nikon and Sony. The OEMs have mostly just been assembling systems from standard parts which is a commodity service.

Re:Not really new news

[UnknowingFool]

Remember the capacitor plague of the early 00s. It was due to faulty capacitors coming out of Taiwan. These capacitors were cheaper than Japanese ones and worked as well . . . for a time. What wasn't known was that industrial espionage had allowed the Tawainese to copy the chemical formulation. But they didn't get the entire formula. They lacked a part that provided long term stability.

Re:Not really new news

[Anonymous Coward]

People are confusing the definition of "OEM". OEM is what Foxconn is to Apple, not vice versa. OEMs are the companies upstream providing a finished product. That needs to be made clear.

You are 100% correct about this being true for a very long time. It's been true since the 1990s. US PC companies long ago started having their OEM's even do the design of their products.

Companies like HP do NOT design their consumer PCs themselves; HP provides "marketing specs", the product logo and that's where it ends - everything else from components to final assembly to even shipping to distribution channels is what OEMs have been doing for the last decade and a half. Neither HP nor Dell can really be called "tech" companies any more. HP makes more money from ink and paper than they make from printers and computers so they have more in common with Dow Chemical or Georgia Pacific than they do with Silicon Valley.

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[masternerdguy]

So you're ditching the Windows frying pan and jumping into the tablet volcano? Just load a Linux distro. Tablets can't get real work done without add-on peripherals anyway.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

linux sucks for pretty much everything except servers.

Any neckbeard using linux for desktop use has ego problems and is unwilling for his lordship to use a real productive desktop like windows or even osx. Instead they while away the hours mucking around with dependencies and half assed broken-source software poorly trying to imitate real functional windows software where even the original developer has long abandoned the sinking husk of a project.

But I guess this isn't really an issue because the average linux desktop user has little productive work to do but masturbate to cartoon ponies while leeching off their parents retirement money.

Dell will probably exit the consumer business

[Anonymous Coward]

That's believed to be one of the drivers for them going private... so they don't have to answer to Wall Street when they unload businesses they don't want to be in, like HP had to when Apotheker made the announcement.

Irony.

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony here is the outsourced labor formed their own companies and are now directly competing with their "partners", and beating them.

The natural state of Capitalism is tyranny; capitalism forces companies to reduce the cost of services and products, and all products and services are a function of labor. The easiest way to reduce cost has, and always will be, slavery; there are many synonyms we call it to make it sound polite. It's only when managers can come to some degree of agreement about what the cost of labor actually should be that actual innovation and progress occurs, as measured in less man-hours spent creating X products. China does not recognize the pricelessness of life, and without that recognition to guide its decisions, ruin is inevitable; You can improve economic efficiency but without a place for that efficiency to go, you end up in a viciously deteriorating economic cycle of debt, corrupted price signalling, and malinvestment that kills you when resource scarcity catches up.

In the last 15 to 20 years we've seen a dramatic shift in the way that innovation occurs away from think-tank research centers and towards placing staff in universities and on the factory floor producing incremental upgrades instead of groundbreaking advancements. Companies used to recognize incremental upgrades was a war of attrition and masturbation, now it's "how fast can we half cost and double performance?"; the problems from this way of thinking is piling up as STEM workers put forth the least innovative horseshit.

Re:Irony.

[Anonymous Coward]

The easiest way to reduce cost has, and always will be, slavery; there are many synonyms we call it to make it sound polite.

You're full of bullshit.

http://www.umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/slavery2/adamsmith.html

Re:Irony.

[bbelt16ag]

Tt may not be slavery as adam defines, but low wages and externalizing the housing and food of the slaves and paying them pennies is what we are doing now. I have to disagree that the worker is free to do what they want. They are limited by their status, funds and education to say the least. So they are not free to do what they want, they do what they must to survive, just as everyone does today all over the world. You may be free to starve or walk to work each day, but given the option you would not do it if there was another option.

Re:Irony.

[masternerdguy]

This just in, income and ability are limiters!

Windows 8

[jbolden]

Up until 2011 Microsoft's strategy was to drive up PC marketshare but controlling the low end. Microsoft was very worried about initiatives like Sun/Oracle's Java Desktop to use thiner client distributed software and lower end machines. Their strategy was to push the price of PCs down low enough so that there weren't meaningful cost saving is just using server based architectures and local program execution was the norm. This is the same reason they focused so heavily on getting control of web technologies and tying them to Internet Explorer / Windows.

With the success of open Web Standards the move towards server based services is happening. This has required a strategy change. Windows 8 systems to work well require more expensive hardware. Microsoft is reintroducing margin back into the business and driving the cost of hardware up. They are willing now to sacrifice the low end so that the total experience on rich clients is much much better than on thinner architectures. Dell and HP sell mainly to corporations. Corporations are still years away from migrating to real Windows 8 hardware as a norm. I think this is short sighted on Dell/HP's part because in 5 years there is likely to be margin in the business. They've now gone through most of the lean years and just as the market is going to go back to being high profit they are exiting.

Once other companies get the experience in making powerful multi paradigm machines it will be hard for these companies to reenter the market. That being said I think Dell isn't existing the PC market, rather I think they going private so they can undergo a restructuring without having to provide regular public scrutiny.

Re:Windows 8

[ljw1004]

Windows 8 systems to work well require more expensive hardware.

How so? I thought Windows 8 had lower hardware requirements than Windows 7. The windowing system for WinRT apps is certainly much less CPU-intensive than WPF was for the desktop. And lots of Windows Store apps will be aimed to work on much lower-powered devices (e.g. ARM) than Win7 desktop apps were.

Re:Windows 8

[masternerdguy]

You need to buy a touch screen to get the best experience.

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

Touchscreen. And more expensive than touchscreen a hinge to move from laptop to tablet form. Generally a far better touchpad. And I suspect input is going to get more versatile more cool and more expensive during 2013.

Re:Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually pay attention to what dell is doing and not just what you think dell is doing, you would notice that a. dell is well aware of the shifts in the pc market and b. their new long term strategy is _not_ the pc market.

Re:Windows 8

[UnknowingFool]

Win 8 requires the same hardware as Win 7. There have been a number of improvements which have made it faster and more stable than Win 7. Win RT is not Win 8; it is specifically designed to run on ARM. Any programs compiled for RT will run on Win 8 as well; however, legacy x86/64 programs or programs today written for Win 7/Vista/XP will not run on RT. This is confusing and I anticipate many consumers being equally confused.

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

Dell's restructuring strategy is private. For the last 10 years or so they've been trying to move up the value chain but still be selling systems. I don't know what their current private strategy is.

Re:Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm talking about the public releases coming out of dell. they _aren't_ buying pc making companies...

Re:Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Their strategy was to push the price of PCs down low enough so that there weren't meaningful cost saving is just using server based architectures and local program execution was the norm.

OK, you got me. How did Microsoft push down the cost of PCs?

I think you have them confused with Intel.

Re:Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff like this:

http://www.thevarguy.com/2012/11/13/exclusive-michael-dells-grand-plan-partners-included/

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

OK, you got me. How did Microsoft push down the cost of PCs?

Not pushing up requirements and keeping licensing costs low. For example the original goals for Longhorn were:

a) Built in security system (palladium) for video control and manipulation.
b) A database filesystem like you have on minicomputers
c) A new GUI making use of faster video.

That is to say hardware capable of running a database server, while doing video manipulation and on a day to day basis using animated 3D effects (i.e. expensive video cards). On (a) and (b) they dropped these. On (c) they released Vista in a way that worked with much lower end machines and made 3D graphics support optional. Had they not done that Longhorn / Vista machines would have cost quite a bit more than XP machines and prices would not have come down.

Take that example times 10 others and that's how Microsoft drove down prices.

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

I understand that. They already are a huge PC making company. They are moving up the value chain. But that's very different from getting out of selling PCs.

Re:Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

i never said they were getting out of selling pcs.

Re:Windows 8

[Lodragandraoidh]

From the interview - Michael Dell lumped tablets into a bucket called 'PC'. If they are selling more tablets, that means the cost of their Desktop PCs will have to go up given slackening volumes. Volume of demand sets price - particularly if the business becomes a non-volume business.

Let's face it - if you want to have a desktop system, while its price may be less than a server with the same capabilities (you are really paying for redundancy and maintenance with servers), it will cost more than we are used to paying today - regardless if you build your own, or buy a name brand (and given the downgrade on performance and expansion capabilities of most desktops - you'll probably want to build your own).

Re:Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

As it was, Vista did not run well on lower-end machines (esp laptops) and the OEMs didn't care and sold them anyway. And WinFS had other problems than hardware requirements, the entire architecture was broken.

In any case, most users seem to want an OS that runs as quickly as possible. MS (or Apple or Ubuntu) really cannot get away with artificially boosting the requirements.

Re:Windows 8

[vilanye]

You seriously brought up point B?

That vaporware(and a stupid idea) has been worked on far longer than Duke Nukem 3D, and I bet if it ever does see the light, that game will be better.

Let's see if MS can come up with a file system that doesn't require defragging, that would be a major advance for Windows users. It would put them in the late 80's IIRC.

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

I've worked on systems with that "stupid idea". It is fantastic. Microsoft knows how to implement it, desktops and laptops of the mid 2000s were easily fast enough to support it and it would have been a huge upgrade.

Incidentally it is not vaperware. Many of the technologies are now bundled in with SQL Server. The partially implemented version shipped many years ago

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

I'm not talking about artificially boosting requirements I'm talking about allowing requirements to go up as demands go up. Of the 3 aspects of longhorn the one that boosts requirements without getting new functionality is the new interface, aero.

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

I think this reply was meant for me (up one).

I think this is a slightly different argument. Clearly there are some cost savings from the scale of the PC industry. A drop off of 20, 50, 90, 95% is unlikely to have a huge impact on prices because where I think the compensation will come from is in the area of diversity. I.E. there will just be far fewer hardware available. For example when Intel made the 8088 it came in one speed 5mhz. Later they brought out an 8mhz version and you could get it in two speeds.

The 386 came out in: 16, 20, 25, 33 mhz (later called the 386DX) 4 models.
When the chip became far and away the most successful chip ever there were more variants.

We likely return to a situation more like that 95-99.9% drop off. The real issue is whether the rich phone / tablet market then makes PC architecture cost inefficient for the same performance like what happened to SGI, DEC and later Sun. And I don't think so. I think the server market is doing so well that this is unlikely to happen for a very long time.

Re:Windows 8

[vilanye]

Partially? LOL Almost 20 years later and partially is the best they can do? And yes it is a stupid idea, the fact you need systems "fast enough to support it " show how stupid it is.

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

No partially is the best they decided to do. Project was killed.

As for believing that 0 overhead is the best, that's an argument against GUIs, against hardware abstraction, against OO programming, against dynamic languages... You want maximum hardware efficiency use punchcards or dip switches no OS and program hardware directly in assembly.

Re:no

[Loki_666]

I just modded this funny, then discovered that someone has modded it insightful! LOL.

I mean, Ubuntu is not my choice of distro. I'm currently switching to Mint, and yeah, its going to be a games box, playing mainly older windows games and some linux ones, but meets my needs.

The funny mod point was mainly awarded for the Aliens: Colonial Marines comment though, which is getting totally panned by all the games reviewers. You'd probably be doing yourself a favour by switching to Linux. :-P

Anyway, mod point gone now.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

You just don't Aliens: Colonial Marines. If you understood it you'd like it.

It's because they're crap

[slashmydots]

I've built around 150 PCs at my shop thus far and had 1 part failure ever in around 5 years. My computers are absolutely perfect and a 120GB SSD + Pentium G860 + 4GB of RAM system runs around $475, data transfer included. Good luck competing with that. I think people like me are in every town and we're putting HP and Dell out of business. Oh, and if you didn't hear, Best Buy is closing all retail locations over the next 5 years. Yay, we crushed them. Inferior products and services fail in free markets.

Re:It's because they're crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I've built around 150 PCs at my shop thus far and had 1 part failure ever in around 5 years. My computers are absolutely perfect and a 120GB SSD + Pentium G860 + 4GB of RAM system runs around $475,

Jesus Christ you must have a mountain of debt to still be in business.

Re:It's because they're crap

[gander666]

Why oh why did my mod points expire yesterday?

Re:It's because they're crap

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you stay in business? Even at 20% margin(generous), 150 PC's at $475.00 each = $71,250 gross incoming. Assuming the 20% margin, that leaves you $14,250 gross income over *5* years. Even then, after taxes, your net income at 30% tax rate is only $9,975. I can't live on that.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I really don't understand how that is a successful business model. Are you selling support to increase your margin, or perhaps some other value-adds to keep you going? I love the small guy competing with the big guys, I am just wondering how you stay afloat if that is your primary income.

Re:It's because they're crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously he's working out of his Mom's basement. So virtually no overhead.
The other thing is yeah he's building good machines here in USA (I think or out of his dorm). But he's using parts made in Taiwan, China, Korea, Thailand, India... etc
Like the last desktop built in 2004. Top end parts, motherboard, processor, power supply, 2.HD slots for removable drives, CD burner/drive, floppy DD, modem cards, USB cards...all from made in Asia. Shipped to US and sold in Fry's. Which incidentally from what I've seen the last couple of years seems to be manned by people from Asia.

Re:It's because they're crap

[sesshomaru]

Hi main job is probably fixing computers, not building new ones.

Re:It's because they're crap

[DigiShaman]

You don't. Not unless you're in High School looking to make beer money on the side. There is no money in building PCs. Even high-end PC gaming is lost among the youth these days. I suspect the consoles and lack of jobs (high youth unemployment rate and debt) are the factor here. Those that want them are generally going to build their own rig anyways. The support system is vast both on-line and via local communities.

Basically, the "PC" will be replaced with mobile phone's that doc to a wireless KVM of some sorts. Tablet and Notebooks for the more serious power users. Everything else "cloud centric". Any remnants that constitute a PC will just be a Workstation/Server laying under the desk for vertical market applications such as video production, CAD, and geo-science type work (big oil).

The PC as we know it is on the way out. Technology changes and so do paradigms.

Re:It's because they're crap

[slashmydots]

I make $100 profit on every single PC. What are you, stupid or something? I can finish an entire install from parts to done in 2 hours tops. Have you considered you're just not good at your job if you're slower or stupider or get your parts from a more expensive vendor? I buy and sit on any PC parts discounted by my major vendors. On average, it drives down the cost of the PC by $50. My software logs what I paid for parts so I know the minimum a vendor will eventually mark it at and when it's marked up. For example: if I pay more than $87-90 for a Samsung 840 120GB SSD, I'm wasting money because that's the official minimum for any vendor after the discount deals they do behind the scenes this month with Samsung. Even paying over $17 for an ASUS DVD-RW drive on newegg (the 3,300 reviews one) is a mistake. None of my Windows OEM licenses cost more than $80 because they're on sale once a month at newegg. Hey look, we're almost at $50.

Commitment of a Leader

[BoRegardless]

In very large public corporations the CEO is concerned with "managing numbers & people".

To lead in a technology arena, you need to really focus on long term strategic leading edge R&D.

I don't see evidence of that at HP & Dell. It is too easy for their CEO to say "We are acquiring our technology by buying companies." Has that worked out well?

Re:Commitment of a Leader

[jbolden]

Michael Dell invented a whole new method of manufacturing. He's still alive and he's the one taking it private.

HP has moved away from its engineering roots, no question. But yes it does a lot of R&D.

Re:Commitment of a Leader

[BoRegardless]

Dell may not go private with 2 large stockholders resisting the deal. I still see no evidence of total commitment to unique products @ Dell, so they are just a commodity business. I hear no raves about Dell as a technology leader.

HP used to be that way. Carly essentially tossed a lot of engineering and development overboard.

Can HP save itself with a robust and market leading memristor technology, like ink-jet printing once did?

Re:Commitment of a Leader

[jbolden]

Dell never had unique products. What Dell had was a unique process for building products that allowed them to offer customized systems at commodity prices. They were a technology leader in how their computers were assembled not what was in them.

I agree that HP moved from a technology company to a services company. I don't think any particular technology can save them, they are too big. Technologies now exist to help them sell services. But I can see lots of areas where HP could be very very successful in selling services.

Re:Commitment of a Leader

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. Michael had to be dragged forward through every evolution of PCs.

Re:Commitment of a Leader

[unixisc]

Essentially, you are saying that HP is becoming EDS, almost like AOL became Time Warner. Could be, but what it means is that HP has over time morphed from a technology company (which today is Agilent) to an IT services company (which previously was EDS). Dell could almost do the same thing, since they acquired Perot Systems.

Re:Commitment of a Leader

[jbolden]

Yeah that's a fair characterization. Dell is morphing into 2000 HP. HP is morphing into 2000 EDS.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

You just don't understand Aliens: Colonial Marines. If you understood it you'd like it.

Now that I've fixed your dyslexic sentence I'd like to say that if you can't understand A:CM you have bigger problems.

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

So you bought a PC, which implies to me that it was a pre-built computer. Now I know what it takes to set up a modern PC in a box having done it recently for my parents. So as far as I can tell, you find simple shape/color matching, and pushing a button too difficult? Wow, people really are getting dumber.

And if you built your own computer, well, I have no pity for you, because as somebody who works in the embedded space, I promise you, that embedded device was a hell of a lot harder to get working than putting a PC together, you just didn't have to do it.

Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't all

[bogaboga]

Asia-Pacific manufacturers are more focused on the consumer electronics market and better able to cope with low margins thanks to rapid adoption and huge potential customer bases.

How about:

(1) Less greed,

(2) Being nimble

(3) Proper labor relations and management?

(4) The sense that, "We can beat them at their game?"

(5) Proud citizenry - Those Asians usually patronize Asian
    made goods. You ask a Japanese what the best car is.
    They'll tell you it's a Toyota! They then buy that!

Yes.

[Kostic]

Find a new market. I for one would llike to have a truly open box (with coreboot and other free/open shit). And make it hacker-friendly. Hard to brick etc. And cheap. And kittens (or a piece of RMS's beard).

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

back in your cage, aspie

Re:Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't

[Moridineas]

I'll give you 2 (nimble), and 4+5 (local pride), but how does (e.g.) Foxconn exemplify less greed and proper labor relations and management? I guess for certain values of "proper labor relations" you could be right, but probably not what most people think of!

No.

[kurt555gs]

See above.

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're ditching the Windows frying pan and jumping into the tablet volcano? Just load a Linux distro. Tablets can't get real work done without add-on peripherals anyway.

I find tablets quite adequate for research: reading Wikipedia and other sources. And the iPad's Safari's "reader" is awesome for just giving you the text of a website (the important stuf) without all the irrelevent shit that web developers/designers insist on using. - it's makes for less stress on the eyes and brain.

But that may not be real work and I'm not a real Scottsmann either.

But if I have to write or crunch numbers a lot - Desktop - better erognomcs. I can't fit it in the john, though.

Laptops, at least for me, are becoming the useless peice of equipment.

Then again, I'm an outlier, don't do real work, and not a real Scottsman.

Re:Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't

[masternerdguy]

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-03-31/

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[masternerdguy]

You said the magic work so many times: reading. Try to use a tablet for software development, graphic design, creating 3d models, writing a story, creating a presentation, mixing down audio and / or video, or crunching numbers in a spreadsheet. Touchscreens so far are terrible at these things, you'll want a mouse and keyboard (at least a keyboard).

Re:PCs are dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't say Macs are dead, I just said the glorified game consoles otherwise known as "PCs" are long past their relevance.

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[wisty]

> Tablets can't get real work done without add-on peripherals anyway.

A desktop can't either.

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[masternerdguy]

That's dumb and you know it, it's understood that a desktop includes a keyboard at minimum as a component. When they start selling you tablets with no screen let me know.

Try selling computers people want

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a new laptop 2 months ago, I searched for ages looking for something adequate. I settled on a Lenovo x230 for the ability to have 16GB RAM, mSATA SSD + HDD within a 12.5 inch frame 2kg. Spent USD$1000. I had reservations about Lenovo (Chinese company) but didn't really see many alternatives.

I don't think any other company sells anything anywhere near these features.

Re:Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't

[neurocutie]

less greed? I doubt it...

proper labor relations?
you mean that workers are crammed into sweat shops, making $1/hr or less, no benefits or health insurance/care, sleep on cots and don't see their families for a month at a time... Here is where the real difference is...

Look for the problem within you

[Anonymous Coward]

Your rant was pretty comical. Evidently you can't see what is probably obvious to everyone else just by reading your own description, namely that you have been so strongly programmed by your favorite operating system that you can't cope with any different one.

Just a moment's thought should have been enough to convince you that it's not the Linux distros that are broken, but you. The reasoning is extremely simple, but probably beyond you. It's that each Linux distro has umpteen thousands of fans who totally love it and for whom it works just fine. The fact that you've tried a dozen and judged them all to be unusable is therefore a dead giveaway that the problem lies within you, and nowhere else.

Re:Look for the problem within you

[Lodragandraoidh]

I think you're lumping everyone into the same boat. I love Linux - but not really happy with the way most of the UIs on top of it are going. I also am not a fan of Windows. I also have Macs - and OSX's UI is close - but I'm not really happy about the iron-fist Apple has over it (e.g. I would prefer to hover my mouse pointer and have the window become active - but not bring to front - like I've done with every Unix/Linux system I've ever used).

I've finally come to the conclusion that the only solution for me is to build my own distribution that has all the best parts that I do like - and some things that I want that no distro has today.

I'm not broken - I'm just hard to satisfy. Of course, that is what leads to innovation. I guess the difference is, don't just sit there and complain about it - do something about it!

Re:Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't

[DNS-and-BIND]

When Americans patronize American-made products it is a sign of bigotry.

Windows Number 2

[tuppe666]

...and Linux can't get real work done, ever. Sorry, almost no pro apps of any value run on Linux.

LOL ironically this year Android will have sold become most used OS in the world. Perhaps those "pro apps" you were talking about aren't that pro.

Re:Windows Number 2

[dunkelfalke]

First you don't run professional applications on Android, only consumer stuff. Second, Android is not really Linux and Android applications do not run on pure Linux.

Re:Windows Number 2

[Lodragandraoidh]

I run Linux at work - and here is what I would classify as my Pro Applications:

Emacs
Eclipse
Codeblocks
GCC suite
Python
Perl
Bash
Open Office

I can also handle email from my Android based phone.

Our servers are also running Linux.

Therefore the argument that Linux can't get real work done is silly to the point of absurdity.

Re:Windows Number 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Android apps can run on a Linux DE.

Just because you are retarded doesn't mean it can't

Re:Windows Number 2

[vandamme]

No no, they are referring to the Profressional applications, i.e., the ones you have to pay big bucks for, like Ofice, Matlab, and Photoshop. LibreOffice, Octave and Gimp are No Good because they don't cost money.

By law, the cannot

[Anonymous Coward]

Extra! Extra! Fundamental law of the universe predicts demise of American tech giants! Dell and Hewlett Packard preemptively declare bankruptcy! Assets liquidated and majority stakes acquired by Asia-Pacific manufacturing firms.

What does it matter?

[symbolset]

There is no profit in PCs anyway.

Already there...

[El Rey]

Every HP desktop I've bought in the last 10 years contained an ASUS motherboard.

There is lots of profits in PC's

[tuppe666]

There is no profit in PCs anyway.

Just most of it goes to Microsoft :).

Re:Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

(3) Proper labor relations and management?

By this I suppose you mean "Unions are prohibited". That sounds like a mercantilist's dream come true. And less greed? Are you kidding me? Is this an excellently crafted troll? Poe strikes again...

Re:PCs are dead

[Lodragandraoidh]

PC roles that other devices can't currently do:

Cost effective software development/compilation *check*
Cost effective scientific computing *check*
Hard core simulation/gaming (high fidelity/realistic MMO Combat/FPS, flight simulation, etc - where you need more commands than are available on a common game controller - and where the graphics go beyond anything a game console can currently deal with while also providing large maps and large user bases sharing the same spaces) *check*

Can other devices do these things - yes if COST or other limiting factors are not an issue for you (Angry Birds on tablets, or console versions of various FPS titles are not at all comparable to a complex 3D simulation on a dedicated general purpose PC in any way shape or form). For those of us without a silver spoon in his/her mouth - that is not an option.

For most of us - buying a server grade system at $5000+ to do hobby coding isn't worth it - nor is springing for an equivalent cloud based VM to do the same. If it is over $1000 USD over the course of several years, it is too much.

Lumping desktop/server PCs in with laptops is not useful - laptops are not meant to run 24/7 and have automation for doing infrastructure things - like nightly builds, automatic updates for repositories, or other automation (spidering etc). Laptops are made to be mobile, and don't make good servers due to constraints placed on energy consumption and processing power. As for other devices - due to DMCA regulations - there are no legal means of turning them into general purpose devices any longer. That only leaves the PC as the bastion of general purpose computing.

Too many people don't realize what they would be giving up if cheap PCs are not available - they will be limiting the options of small developers (who historically generate more creative output - and the next big thing [e.g. Linux wouldn't exist if Linus didn't have access to a general purpose PC]) while strengthening the strangle hold large companies have over software development (app stores barriers to entry).

Re:Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey man, they're just doing jobs Americans don't want. I mean when Mexicans started washing dishes 16 hours a day for $50 everyone said that no American would work for that so the Mexican was just doing a job Americans don't want. Well, Americans don't want to work for 16 hours days in a sweatshop for 50 bucks a day...

When is a Monopoly not a Monopoly

[tuppe666]

First you don't run professional applications on Android, only consumer stuff. Second, Android is not really Linux and Android applications do not run on pure Linux.

There is no first, there was, an Abusive monopoly...and now its still just a less valuable one, as applications go cross platform. Your arguments are kind of out of date. Applications aren't Microsoft exclusives...and those that are have less value. Microsofts OS is some kind of tablet/destop hybrid nightmare I want nothing to do with...and don't have to, Alternatives are here and more popular, and however you try to spin in the Linux in Android is the same Linux[ish] as the Linux in...Ubuntu.

Re:When is a Monopoly not a Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

> however you try to spin in the Linux in Android is the same Linux[ish] as the Linux in...Ubuntu.

well that sure sounds like....a tablet/desktop hybrid nightmare!

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty funny considering I can go from blank hard drive to usable Linux(currently using OpenSUSE 12.2) system with KDE 4 and all my programming tools and drivers in less than 30 minutes.

Meanwhile the poor sap installing Windows has to spend the next 5 hours constantly rebooting and chasing down software and drivers online and from a huge pile of disks.

The whole market?

[Sycraft-fu]

Not really. The case/layout is some of the least of the technical parts of a computer. All the components inside are the higher tech bits and you find they come from all over. The big daddy, the CPU, is usually from the US. Most of Intel's fabs are in the US, and their design centres are in the US and Israel. Same deal with the motherboard chipset, though their Ireland fab does quite a few of those. Assembly largely depends on where you are, they have packaging facilities in the US, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Malaysia, and China.

The graphics card, if there's a separate one, was fabbed in Taiwan by TSMC, at least for now (both AMD and nVidia re displeased with them) but designed in either the US or Canada since that's where nVidia and AMD respectively have their design centers. All development is done there.

For memory it really runs the gamut. Depending on the company the chips can get fabbed in the US, EU, or Asia and final assembly of the sticks is often done elsewhere. Some places, like Micron, like their own modules, others buy from other companies (Kingston favours Hyynix these days).

Storage it varies. HDDs are all Asia all the time. Final assembly is pretty much Malaysia or China. Components come from various places, motors notably from just one firm in Thailand. For SSDs it again depends on the company. Samsung is all internal and does their own flash, CPU (though it is based on an ARM core) and construction. They do final assembly in Korea, the flash itself is sometimes fabbed in Korea though a lot of it is fabbed in Texas (Samsung has a big plant there). Intel buys their controllers from Sandforce, a US company, but they are fabless so Intel fabs the ones they use. Their flash they make themselves mostly in their Utah but also Singapore (the facilities are co-owned Intel and Micron).

For discrete components, like caps and so on, then Japan is usually the big supplier. It varies some, China is used as well, but Japan is still real, real big in the discrete components game.

Power supplies? That's all China all the time. There are only a couple companies that make them, and they do the design work too. They put out a PSU design, companies then alter the specs to their liking (upgrading components for better reliability or whatnot) and then they are built to order.

LCDs are mostly Korea in terms of panels, though China is in that market too, and nearly all China for final assembly.

Computers are really quite an international production. They use parts form all over, and designs from all over. Remember that the place that produces a part isn't necessarily the place that designed it. This is not only true for fabless companies like nVidia, but even for companies like Intel. They don't do design, fab, packaging, and all that in one facility, they are all over the place.

To say the market belongs to Asia is rather silly. It belongs to the world.

Oh and with regards to Dell? Have a look at the systems you get in the US. Mexico and Brazil are the usual sources for final assembly, not Asia.

I do it all the time

[Sycraft-fu]

Windows support is my profession and working at a university I get to deal with old systems, and old OSes. It isn't a big deal. I've installed XP, a 12 year old OS, loaded drivers, and patched it to current all from the GUI, and without any real amount of trouble.

MS really does support their OSes quite well and it really isn't a big deal to get them working and up to date, so long as they are still under support (2000 is not patched anymore, for example).

Re:no

[vilanye]

Ubuntu sucks, has always sucked and is not in any way representative of Linux.

Rosy for who?

[spasm]

"..things aren't as rosy as they used to be. ... the entire PC industry could move to Asia in the next few years."

So a shitload of people who live in places called "third world" only a generation ago are now making their living doing something better than stoop labor in a paddy field, and this is "not as rosy as [it] used to be"?

Come up with a new and better technology if you don't like being undercut by the up-and-comers.

Re:Rosy for who?

[sethstorm]

The problem is that they're still despotic junk pushers and not being punished for it.

How about being willing to protect our own and not selling our country's sovereignty to the highest bidder? Then again you would try to split the audience and pit it against our country by using the word consumer. In another era, McCarthy would have made it living hell for businesses to deal with Asia as closely as you wish.

Yeah Linux :)

[tuppe666]

> however you try to spin in the Linux in Android is the same Linux[ish] as the Linux in...Ubuntu.

well that sure sounds like....a tablet/desktop hybrid nightmare!

No that is what you call a modular OS :)

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

worst arguement. "Google Glasses", when connected to the "phone" of the future. No need for a screen. Use a forward reflecting ir/green light amplifier and reader, no need for the keyboard, add in the subvocal mike, and add a bluetoth mike with earpiece, see what i'm getting at.

agreed, Unix Desktop Environments suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that Linux did well because big companies needed a reliable Unix like OS for their industrial computers, and didn't want to be at the mercy of any Microsoft like company. Paying the linux kernel guys, and sending in their own coders from time to time worked out quite well. It also worked with Apache. The Desktop Environment, and all its little devices, was not as important, and it shows. The architecture of KDE and Gnome as of several years ago, show they did not learn the lessons of the 80s and 90s. I wish the FOSS world would be honest about its suckiness.

Fortunately, FOSS works good enough to make dedicated web browsing machines.

Asia-centric means deliberately made junk

[sethstorm]

Given the general low quality from the Asia-specific machines(aside from Japan home-market-only hardware if you want to count them as such), this means attention to hardware quality goes out the window. It will be made with no attention to First World concepts such as quality or performance.

That and expect more Engrish in GB2312 to accompany that junk - since we couldnt pursue a national security exception when this started with IBM's spinoff with their PC division.

Re:I bought a PC yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume everyone needs a pc to do work. Vast majorty would just need a browser for email, facebook etc.

Re:Rapid adoption, huge customer base? That isn't

[tlhIngan]

(1) Less greed,
(3) Proper labor relations and management?

You're kidding, right?

Asians are some of the MOST greedy people around - you've never done business until you've done it in Asia.

They will bulldoze a seller to save a few pennies - paying full price is for chumps. Ever wonder why people use the crappy capacitors that'll fail early? That's why - unless you demand top quality components, they'll sub in the cheapest.

And labor? Really? You think Apple demands that Foxconn mistreats its workers?

It's just the long term results of outsourcing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those MBAs filled their pockets while outsourcing production to China, tech support to India and finally R&D to China.

The logical next step is for consumers to outsource the management and buy directly from the factories in China.

The industry didn't learn a thing when Ford rocketed Toyota onto the global stage by outsourcing to them in the 70s and 80s. Toyota passed Ford years ago.

Then Apple did it to themselves outsourcing iPhone production to Samsung.

Take a long hard look at the companies created by engineers, programmers and inventers.

Then take a long hard look at the companies destroyed by MBAs.

What is the USA doing that others do not?

[hessian]

When USA goes back to a peaceful nation and starts cooperating with other countries instead of competing with them, I'll start buying American again.

Serious question here. What is the USA doing wrong, and what of that are things that other countries are not doing?