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Major PC Makers to Ship PCs Sans Windows
z@ph0d writes "This article tells how Dell, Compaq, and Gateway could announce soon they will be shipping low cost PC's without Windows. No word yet on what they'll ship with, but who knows? "
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This is a pretty vague article, with hardly any specifics. It doesn't state which OS these companies might be using:
:)
"The makers are taking a variety of approaches, the paper said. Gateway Inc (GTW) is building a line with no Microsoft software whatsoever, and may jointly market it with America Online, Inc (AOL), which recently invested $800 million in Gateway, people familiar with the plans were quoted as saying."
While I wish I could say linux would be the obvious choice, I don't think that would be the case with these two companies. They're not going to go for an open-source OS just because they don't like microsoft. I think they'd rather give themselves a better cut of profits while keeping prices low, which means they'll probably go for some proprietary OS that they control. For all I know AOL may have made it's own proprietary OS. Somehow that idea doesn't impress me much, even if it is cheaper. I don't know if companies like Dell and gateway "mark-up" the windows OS at all, but given the low margins on computers, I doubt it matters anyway. Sure, you can make money selling a linux OS as well, but how much will it bring you when you are selling low end machines? By using their own proprietary OS they can remove a factor of control from microsoft and increase their profit margins while they're at it. Linux would only remove the microsoft factor. They'll just have to hope microsoft doesn't threaten them for this, which I wouldn't count on. Of course I could be totally wrong. I hope I am
I like this idea on the surface, but one thing scares me a bit. If Dell decides to ship some of these machines with Windows, and some without, the ones using Linux/BSD/BeOS or whatever they use will undoubtably be cheaper. If I were a clue-free end user, that would imply to me that they were inferior OS's, since the hardware was identical. Now, we all know it's not true, and we've fought similar battles before, but for this to be a positive for us, we need to be very vocal about the fact that just because these machines are cheaper does not mean they are inferior. I mean, if I saw two identical guitars, one of which was made in China, and the other in the US, and the one made in China was cheaper, I would assume that the one made in the US was of higher quality. This, however, is a result of my lack of knowledge. For all I know, China has better processes in place, and the only reason it's cheaper is that they have cheaper labor. I think we must tread carefully into this area, and it can really pay off.
If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,
Along this line, consider: There are two free versions of (yes, I know it sounds goofy, but think about it) MS-DOS out there. Some sort of simple GUI (GEM? an OEM GUI) that provided only a browser and an e-mail app? That wouldn't be that hard to write if you just made it a context switcher instead of a multi-tasker. Kind of a beefed-up PalmOS. I'm not seriously suggesting this is the case, but I feel like Linux/*BSD would be overkill for a machine like this.
/etc/passwd and there you have it. The /etc/skel would give each new user an account the fires straight into Netscape. The users would never see a shell.
OTOH, it would be easy to hide all the complexity of Linux/*BSD by having accounts that add users, start-up and shutdown the machine, and dial-in and disconnect. Just specify the appropriate commands as shells in
I don't know what it is. Its just kind of fun to know the market is changing.
Diversity is good. Whatever they're going to use, it's better than no choice at all.
If AOL's involved, maybe it will be the old GEOS/Geoworks Ensemble OS from back in the day. That's what AOL was originally developed on (After they stopped being Q-Link, that is.) That OS was written after the popularity of it on such machines at the Commodore 64, 128, etc. AOL liked it, and used it right away. Then Win 3.1 came out, and GEOS died. (Even though GEOS was by far superior. It was a full multi-tasking OS on even XT's... though it was slow on them:) But it screamed on a 286, even, and Windows could never claim that. It had a nice application package with it as well. The only reason they didn't become popular, is they were totally concerned about bug zapping. (The beta test lasted forever) My dad was a beta test, and they even started paying him $50 for every bug they found. Now you can only find them on palm type computers.. oh well. Maybe that's what will show up, because that would be a perfect choice for an Internet PC.. they could revive the original AOL for GEOS, and go from there. It all waits to be seen.
The Wall Street Journal had two articles on this today (no, they only have a paid site - I read the copy we get in our non-profit's library).
The first one said that they estimate 30-40% of all boxes shipping for consumers this year will be Windows-less, but this includes BeOs and Palm type boxes which are bailing from WinCE, as well as set-top boxen. Some of them were going to use Apple/iMac (kind of confusing, that one).
The second article said that some MSFT technical indicators indicated, for the first time in decades, that forward revenue (upgrades for Windows, Office, etc) at MSFT were down a very large amount (10-20%), whereas the stock has counted on these increasing every year and thus commands high P/E ratio as a result. Which means that the end may be nigh.
Figure in mid-January they'll release stats showing that MSFT boxen were a drastically smaller (70%) amount than usual.
Will in Seattle
You thought getting those little AOL disks in mail was annoying!
Just imagine when AOL started UPSing whole computers to everybody, with 20 free hours of AOL-OS!
101010.org
the simplest answer
If you compare MSFT's proxy statements from two
years ago to the Sept 1999 one, you find that the
directors of the company as a group have reduced
their ownership stake from 35.8% to 25.7%.
The breakdown by person is:
Gates 22.3% -> 15.3%
Allen 7.6% -> 5.0%
Ballmer 4.9% -> 4.7%
Others 1.0% -> 0.6%
Are they getting out while the getting's good?
Microsoft uses unearned revenue to smooth income. Basicly the reported revenue (sales) on Microsoft's income statement is a weighted average of the sales over the past 18 months. Each year Microsoft recognizes most of the money they get for selling office etc. but puts the rest on the balance sheet as a liability (unearned revenue). Then over the next 18 months, they take the liability off the balance sheet and recognize the revenue. The reason the number on the balance sheet is smaller now (this unearned revenue) is that Microsoft reduced the % of revenue that was postponed. I think this change is a respones to the the SEC investingating Microsoft for "cookie jar reserve accounting." At the end of the year the reserves were $6 billion and I doubt that this indicates that Microsofts sales are falling.
Most average people aren't really going to be interested in installing a different OS. In fact, most people fear installing an OS period, even Windows. They want it already there, already set up so they can start frantically double-clicking all the icons.
/. early in the summer describes a plot by AOL-Sun-Netscape to render Windows obsolete. There is also talk of "AOL Everywhere", as if the AOL interface (God forbid) would become the operating system. Ellison and McNeely's vision of ditching all your locally installed software for web apps is likely what they are talking about.- ----------------
Alternatively, though, perhaps an OS in the traditional way we think of an OS is not what they're looking at. The article describes a PC that would mainly just be able to surf the web. The article mentions the fact that AOL invested $800M in Gateway, but does not mention the Netscape-AOL-Sun deal. Likewise, an article on
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I'm worried.
Note that the article states low cost, Internet machines. I'm thinking a strange AOl OS, so you have machines that are all-AOL, all the time.
Is it possible for this to happen?
Frankly, I have no idea, but Gateway will certainly include AOL. Is AOL avaliable for Linux or BE or any of the non-Windows, non-Mac OSes?
This is incredible and I wonder why I didn't see it coming sooner. It makes perfect sense for PC OEMs, in this era of shrinking profit margins, to do all they can to eliminate costs. If the consumer wants a only a simple word processor and web access with email, why do you need a huge OS? Why incur a hundred-dollar cost*? Why not use a $$$-free OS? And while you're at it, why not make it easy to restore the system to the original configuration without destroying user data?
From the article, it appears that MS is trying to develop a similar solution, but here's where the backlash kicks in. (I am so tickled I am laughing as I write this). Microsoft is known for their predatory pricing practices and their bullying behavior. If you've been burned by them before (and EVERY PC OEM has), and if you don't have to deal with them, why bother? I suppose Microsoft could, say something like "If you ship those Browser PCs without an MS OS, we will increase your MS license fees." That would be corporate suicide, given MS's current legal situation.
I have no idea how this will be implemented, but here's how I would do it. Create a "system" partition to contain the OS and software, a swap partition, a config partition, and a data partition. Only give the user access to the data partition. Store application configuration information on the config partition. If the OS dies for any reason, boot to the special CD that ships with the PC, and the "system" partition will be wiped and reloaded. On the software side, it would be virtually maintenance free, and user data would not be wiped out if you had to delete the system partition.
*Those familiar with MS licensing practices surely realize that PC OEMs are not charged the retail price of ~$100 for each copy of Windows they load. However, when considering the cost of Windows, you'd be a moron to leave support costs out of the equation.