Get your head out from under that rock! (or is it... Mom's basement?)
Wow, you're so cool.
So you want me to buy hardware and put Linux and VMWare on it just to buy a licensed copy of Windows so that I can run cross platform software why?
It's nice that you can insult me with no real cause but I really don't see the point of being such an ass when the reason not to do this is so obvious.
It's great that if you're not bowing to Linus that you have to get shit on by the Linux community just trying to have a straight forward conversation with them. Further proof for me that the Linux community is filled with snobs who have no real desire to do what it takes to make Linux into a first class desktop OS instead of just cawing on about GIMP and OpenOffice.
If you think I'm wrong, name one application area where you think Windows is ahead
Anything productive by Adobe? MS Office? iTunes? Cakewalk? Fruity Loops? Starry Night? How about some software for my Garmin iQue M5? There are just a few of the software packages I run that aren't on Linux and I don't see any Linux equivalent of. And please, if you're going to mention VMing I may as well just have a Windows machine. It doesn't count.
Your idea of a hobbyist is someone that lives in a single pc household? With no ability to deal with installing an OS on a computer that didn't come with an optical drive?
Wow...
FTR, you did not describe a hobbyist... you described a neophyte. (at least you did in the post I originally replied to)
No, I said single PC homes and a handful of hobbyists. Did you even bother to read my post? It's getting pretty old having to restate what was in my original post three and four times because "readers" here don't bother to read the posts.
Software support is not nor it should ever be tied to hardware sales.
Excuse me? Are you saying that when buying a PC the applications that you're actually going to use on it shouldn't be a consideration? Why the hell else would I be buying the machine?
Moreover, claiming that a user needs windows because of software support doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, because if the software that they want/need doesn't exist on Linux it makes perfect sense to buy a Linux machine instead of buying a machine that already has Windows since than you'd get the OEM cut rate on the OS and know that the hardware works with the machine out of the box. Yeah, people certainly don't want that.
And of course, the computer does have USB ports. If nowadays USB HDs are being used by everyone plus their dog, I don't see how exactly the thought of an USB optical drive is far-fetched.
The target market that needs to be reached for this is the new user. Now, when you're bringing in the new user they're not going to have a USB drive just laying about. Why would I spend 60 bucks (and that's the cheap side from New Egg) for an external when I can buy a barebones PC with an optical drive already in it for less than the PC and the external drive and just put Linux on it myself? Especially when the NewEgg PC is a much beefier machine for the money.
That may not wash with new users but neither will buying a drive that costs 1/3 the price of their initial investment AND hoping that they have a bootable distro disk on hand if there is hardware failure.
So, again, why exactly do you believe anyone would want to "end up willing to spend more"?
Software support and an optical drive. Again.
Please, stop being such a lunkhead about this. You know that there are a good number of people who do want Windows based software, you know there are people who want an optical drive and certainly some of them are going to need it over the lifetime of the machine. These machines could have put together a much better machine logistically for $225 dollars but they fumbled the ball.
Won't the target "community" be, you know, a *community*, that exchanges knowledge and tools as needed?
I'll be 100% honest with you; I don't see this being priority 1 (or 2 or 3 for that matter) in the Linux community. I've worked my way up from a n00b with a cursory knowledge of unix to where I am today and what I know about Linux mainly came from my dicking with it as the community is less than responsive to n00bs.
I'm serious, you guys really need to see what the Linux community looks like from the point of an outsider to understand what I'm talking about. It's a train wreck.
So why exactly do you believe anyone would want to "end up willing to spend more"? Because they want to top their neighbour? Because they want to burn money away? I don't think so.
I already said why: software support. And an optical drive doesn't hurt either.
When it comes down to it, though, it's the software companies's fault that the software you want isn't available for linux.
Fault? I'm just saying not to ignore it. I'm not looking to place blame on this.
Things like these low-cost PCs that allow people to do some useful computing without paying for the expensive hardware required for the latest Microsoft OS are a part of what the linux community needs to encourage people to try linux, so that software companies will have more motivation to produce software for linux, which will encourage more users to switch, and so on.
Unless you're new to the game Windows capable hardware really isn't that expensive anymore. I know of people with 500 USD Vista laptops who aren't dying an agonizing death like most proclaim around here. I'm sure that a 400 dollar desktop is probably pretty good. But yeah, 400 dollars isn't 200 dollars. Point taken.
I don't doubt this will get users. I never went in the face of this. But there are going to be problems and people are going to migrate. I don't think this venture is going to do much to bolster the Linux community. I'm sorry to say but I wouldn't buy this system for someone.
And the lack of an optical drive is going to hurt the effort too. I'd be more than willing to spend a bit of extra money to get a system with an optical drive.
The guy who spent 200 bucks on a PC is going to have another machine to get another distro from and put it on a USB drive? Don't forget that the target community for this is going to be a single PC household. This PC is mostly for the new PC owner with a handful of hobbyist thrown in.
And IBM was pretty much correct until the late 90s.
Home computing, while it may have been common to us, didn't hit hard until the internet became useful and affordable for Joe Sixpack. How many PC makers have come and gone in that time period?
Also, your analogy is bad since the PC market didn't have alternatives as they do today.
Oh well, time will tell, and I was offer up a scenario instead of a single flippant remark.
As I said, for software support. Let's face facts, there is tons of software that is not on Linux that people want. How much longer is the Linux community going to ignore this fact? That's why I a main machine that runs Windows and a machine I play around with that has Linux.
Just for the record; I'm not proclaiming any great knowledge in this area.
I just wonder if the business model won't be fruitful at first and slowly fade into non-existence.
The allure of low priced PCs for the neophyte is a great one but one of two things are likely to happen: They'll either find out that they want more and end up willing to spend more and probably choose Windows for the software support or they'll find that the machine suits their purposes and latch onto them for a larger than normal span of time and repeat customers will be next to nil.
I've found that people who pinch a penny when buying hardware are normally not good business for vendors. They'll make a machine last to their dying day.
So while the initial repsonce is going to be great but don't expect to see lots of these people as return customers in the next few years.
Whenever you go to a bar in the US, they will look at your ID before they serve booze, but if you set up a $xxxx account/load no one will ever check it.
What's worse is that if a bar serves an underager they get slapped with a fine and worse. When cashiers don't bother to check for ID and they let a fraudulent purchase get by there is no penalty for not following protocol. I know this is hard to enforce since it probably has no real legal leggings but it would seem that being able to sue companies that are negligent in this aspect would probably bring more companies inline with common sense procedures.
I wonder how much that alone would reduce the problems of identity theft. I'm certain that there is no catch-all in this era but every bit helps.
I wish you the best of luck but unfortunately you're going to see a lot of really good answers and they're all going to be right. Personally I would do whatever I like to do but become more robust with it. Knowing six languages on a beginners level isn't as good as knowing one ot two in-depth.
Knowing what Republicans think of Hillary, I can only imagine what they think of her getting super-invincibility power-up that comes ewith being a "War President."
I don't know but it would be interesting if we could see who the opposing parties would like to see as president from each others current pool. I think the Republicans might just warm up to Clinton.
I'll be deeply disappointed if the next President of the United States does not immediately divest him/herself of all these newfound powers.
Be prepared to be disappointed. I just don't see how the voting public is so easily duped into thinking that these people are going to make such swinging reforms. We keep seeing the same cycle of bad noise and people keep eating it up. But what can you expect out of a populous that has kept Survivor on TV for 8 or 9 years.
For the most part the top three aren't going to change. The media is doing their damnedest to see this holds true. The best I really hope for at this point is that some ideals sift to the top and people start to embrace candidates who don't march to the beat of a party drum. As much as I'd like to see Ron Paul at the top I think it would be just as sweet to see some more of his type of independence in the house and senate.
This is true. However, when looking at gas mileage, having a computer drive a Honda will still get better gas mileage than having it drive a GM car.
Your point being? If GM is the one producing this and if GM produces a better MPG car are you going to let a brand name stop you from embracing it? That's just as bad as the Linux crowd that slights MS even when MS does something right. That kind of petty brand loyalty doesn't serve anyone's purpose but those who are stockholders in companies.
Neither of which would come close to a human driving an electric/solar/fuel cell/hybrid(?) car.
I don't find any reason to believe that this won't be put into a hybrid. And consider hybrids often lack their true potential because drivers need to retrain themselves in order to get the most out of a car and this entire project makes even more sense.
As for the rest? As long as a viable technology for alternative fuel cars is still off in the distance I don't see what this can hurt. And don't get me wrong, I think it will be done but not in the timeframe that most others seem to think it will. I've been hearing that fuel-cell-this-and-that is just around the corner for nearly a decade now. I still have yet to see consumer product number one. I'd love to see it just as much as anyone else but I do recall claims that we'd have fuel cell cars for the public by 2010 in the late 90s. As far as I can see we're really no closer. I know the technology is certainly getting better but the fuel delivery refitting is going to take years too. I don't expect to see fuel cell being available in my market for at least 6-7 years even if the car was on the lots today seeings as where the closest E85 station to me is about 30 miles away and it just went E85 last year. The manufacturers claim to have over 4 million flexfuel cars on the road (and that's an old claim) but I'd still have to drive 45 minutes to fuel one? That doesn't sound too promising to me.
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Get your head out from under that rock! (or is it... Mom's basement?)
Wow, you're so cool.
So you want me to buy hardware and put Linux and VMWare on it just to buy a licensed copy of Windows so that I can run cross platform software why?
It's nice that you can insult me with no real cause but I really don't see the point of being such an ass when the reason not to do this is so obvious.
It's great that if you're not bowing to Linus that you have to get shit on by the Linux community just trying to have a straight forward conversation with them. Further proof for me that the Linux community is filled with snobs who have no real desire to do what it takes to make Linux into a first class desktop OS instead of just cawing on about GIMP and OpenOffice.
What an asshole.
If you think I'm wrong, name one application area where you think Windows is ahead
Anything productive by Adobe? MS Office? iTunes? Cakewalk? Fruity Loops? Starry Night? How about some software for my Garmin iQue M5? There are just a few of the software packages I run that aren't on Linux and I don't see any Linux equivalent of. And please, if you're going to mention VMing I may as well just have a Windows machine. It doesn't count.
It's a desktop.
Your idea of a hobbyist is someone that lives in a single pc household? With no ability to deal with installing an OS on a computer that didn't come with an optical drive?
Wow...
FTR, you did not describe a hobbyist... you described a neophyte. (at least you did in the post I originally replied to)
No, I said single PC homes and a handful of hobbyists. Did you even bother to read my post? It's getting pretty old having to restate what was in my original post three and four times because "readers" here don't bother to read the posts.
Wow...
Software support is not nor it should ever be tied to hardware sales.
Excuse me? Are you saying that when buying a PC the applications that you're actually going to use on it shouldn't be a consideration? Why the hell else would I be buying the machine?
Moreover, claiming that a user needs windows because of software support doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, because if the software that they want/need doesn't exist on Linux it makes perfect sense to buy a Linux machine instead of buying a machine that already has Windows since than you'd get the OEM cut rate on the OS and know that the hardware works with the machine out of the box. Yeah, people certainly don't want that.
And of course, the computer does have USB ports. If nowadays USB HDs are being used by everyone plus their dog, I don't see how exactly the thought of an USB optical drive is far-fetched.
The target market that needs to be reached for this is the new user. Now, when you're bringing in the new user they're not going to have a USB drive just laying about. Why would I spend 60 bucks (and that's the cheap side from New Egg) for an external when I can buy a barebones PC with an optical drive already in it for less than the PC and the external drive and just put Linux on it myself? Especially when the NewEgg PC is a much beefier machine for the money.
That may not wash with new users but neither will buying a drive that costs 1/3 the price of their initial investment AND hoping that they have a bootable distro disk on hand if there is hardware failure.
So, again, why exactly do you believe anyone would want to "end up willing to spend more"?
Software support and an optical drive. Again.
Please, stop being such a lunkhead about this. You know that there are a good number of people who do want Windows based software, you know there are people who want an optical drive and certainly some of them are going to need it over the lifetime of the machine. These machines could have put together a much better machine logistically for $225 dollars but they fumbled the ball.
Hmmm... odd that you didn't respond in kind to the 2 posts I had to reply to about why someone would switch from Linux to Windows.
I'm thinking that you're not getting the point or that you just want to pick a fight. Oh well, that's not too uncommon around here.
I would, and I definitely don't fit the profile of the "target market" you are describing.
If you take exception to the hobbyist tag I'm sorry. You fit into that demographic as I imagined it.
Won't the target "community" be, you know, a *community*, that exchanges knowledge and tools as needed?
I'll be 100% honest with you; I don't see this being priority 1 (or 2 or 3 for that matter) in the Linux community. I've worked my way up from a n00b with a cursory knowledge of unix to where I am today and what I know about Linux mainly came from my dicking with it as the community is less than responsive to n00bs.
I'm serious, you guys really need to see what the Linux community looks like from the point of an outsider to understand what I'm talking about. It's a train wreck.
So why exactly do you believe anyone would want to "end up willing to spend more"? Because they want to top their neighbour? Because they want to burn money away? I don't think so.
I already said why: software support. And an optical drive doesn't hurt either.
When it comes down to it, though, it's the software companies's fault that the software you want isn't available for linux.
Fault? I'm just saying not to ignore it. I'm not looking to place blame on this.
Things like these low-cost PCs that allow people to do some useful computing without paying for the expensive hardware required for the latest Microsoft OS are a part of what the linux community needs to encourage people to try linux, so that software companies will have more motivation to produce software for linux, which will encourage more users to switch, and so on.
Unless you're new to the game Windows capable hardware really isn't that expensive anymore. I know of people with 500 USD Vista laptops who aren't dying an agonizing death like most proclaim around here. I'm sure that a 400 dollar desktop is probably pretty good. But yeah, 400 dollars isn't 200 dollars. Point taken.
I don't doubt this will get users. I never went in the face of this. But there are going to be problems and people are going to migrate. I don't think this venture is going to do much to bolster the Linux community. I'm sorry to say but I wouldn't buy this system for someone.
And the lack of an optical drive is going to hurt the effort too. I'd be more than willing to spend a bit of extra money to get a system with an optical drive.
The guy who spent 200 bucks on a PC is going to have another machine to get another distro from and put it on a USB drive? Don't forget that the target community for this is going to be a single PC household. This PC is mostly for the new PC owner with a handful of hobbyist thrown in.
However, a couple of months later, the experience showed her that she needed a better computer with Windows.
I'm wondering, what exactly made her go to Windows?
And IBM was pretty much correct until the late 90s.
Home computing, while it may have been common to us, didn't hit hard until the internet became useful and affordable for Joe Sixpack. How many PC makers have come and gone in that time period?
Also, your analogy is bad since the PC market didn't have alternatives as they do today.
Oh well, time will tell, and I was offer up a scenario instead of a single flippant remark.
why would they downgrade to Windows?
As I said, for software support. Let's face facts, there is tons of software that is not on Linux that people want. How much longer is the Linux community going to ignore this fact? That's why I a main machine that runs Windows and a machine I play around with that has Linux.
Just for the record; I'm not proclaiming any great knowledge in this area.
I just wonder if the business model won't be fruitful at first and slowly fade into non-existence.
The allure of low priced PCs for the neophyte is a great one but one of two things are likely to happen: They'll either find out that they want more and end up willing to spend more and probably choose Windows for the software support or they'll find that the machine suits their purposes and latch onto them for a larger than normal span of time and repeat customers will be next to nil.
I've found that people who pinch a penny when buying hardware are normally not good business for vendors. They'll make a machine last to their dying day.
So while the initial repsonce is going to be great but don't expect to see lots of these people as return customers in the next few years.
Whenever you go to a bar in the US, they will look at your ID before they serve booze, but if you set up a $xxxx account/load no one will ever check it.
What's worse is that if a bar serves an underager they get slapped with a fine and worse. When cashiers don't bother to check for ID and they let a fraudulent purchase get by there is no penalty for not following protocol. I know this is hard to enforce since it probably has no real legal leggings but it would seem that being able to sue companies that are negligent in this aspect would probably bring more companies inline with common sense procedures.
I wonder how much that alone would reduce the problems of identity theft. I'm certain that there is no catch-all in this era but every bit helps.
We still use the print key frequently where I work. There's nothing wrong with having a few extra keys anyway.
It's called humor. Look into it.
Practice saying "Would you like fries with that"
I wish you the best of luck but unfortunately you're going to see a lot of really good answers and they're all going to be right. Personally I would do whatever I like to do but become more robust with it. Knowing six languages on a beginners level isn't as good as knowing one ot two in-depth.
I've worked at a load of places where there's insufficient resources to do things that customers actually want
As a curiosity, do you mean the companies lack talent or is there some other reasons that they fall short?
Who do you think they would choose out of the Democrat choices?
Knowing what Republicans think of Hillary, I can only imagine what they think of her getting super-invincibility power-up that comes ewith being a "War President."
I don't know but it would be interesting if we could see who the opposing parties would like to see as president from each others current pool. I think the Republicans might just warm up to Clinton.
I'll be deeply disappointed if the next President of the United States does not immediately divest him/herself of all these newfound powers.
Be prepared to be disappointed. I just don't see how the voting public is so easily duped into thinking that these people are going to make such swinging reforms. We keep seeing the same cycle of bad noise and people keep eating it up. But what can you expect out of a populous that has kept Survivor on TV for 8 or 9 years.
May the best one win!
Knowing voters? They won't.
For the most part the top three aren't going to change. The media is doing their damnedest to see this holds true. The best I really hope for at this point is that some ideals sift to the top and people start to embrace candidates who don't march to the beat of a party drum. As much as I'd like to see Ron Paul at the top I think it would be just as sweet to see some more of his type of independence in the house and senate.
A writers stirke? No. But I did hear that Mr Hitler and his army invaded Poland. It's a crazy world.
This is true. However, when looking at gas mileage, having a computer drive a Honda will still get better gas mileage than having it drive a GM car.
Your point being? If GM is the one producing this and if GM produces a better MPG car are you going to let a brand name stop you from embracing it? That's just as bad as the Linux crowd that slights MS even when MS does something right. That kind of petty brand loyalty doesn't serve anyone's purpose but those who are stockholders in companies.
Neither of which would come close to a human driving an electric/solar/fuel cell/hybrid(?) car.
I don't find any reason to believe that this won't be put into a hybrid. And consider hybrids often lack their true potential because drivers need to retrain themselves in order to get the most out of a car and this entire project makes even more sense.
As for the rest? As long as a viable technology for alternative fuel cars is still off in the distance I don't see what this can hurt. And don't get me wrong, I think it will be done but not in the timeframe that most others seem to think it will. I've been hearing that fuel-cell-this-and-that is just around the corner for nearly a decade now. I still have yet to see consumer product number one. I'd love to see it just as much as anyone else but I do recall claims that we'd have fuel cell cars for the public by 2010 in the late 90s. As far as I can see we're really no closer. I know the technology is certainly getting better but the fuel delivery refitting is going to take years too. I don't expect to see fuel cell being available in my market for at least 6-7 years even if the car was on the lots today seeings as where the closest E85 station to me is about 30 miles away and it just went E85 last year. The manufacturers claim to have over 4 million flexfuel cars on the road (and that's an old claim) but I'd still have to drive 45 minutes to fuel one? That doesn't sound too promising to me.