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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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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
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.