Hey, the price is right, and it does all that they want to do anyway, so now is the time to drop MS products.
Take a stroll through Linspire's CNR warehouse. Then scan the list of software bestsellers at Amazon.com.
Tell me again that Linux does everything the home user wants. Tell me again how much he hates Microsoft. Tell me again why Linux deserves better than a 1% market share.
I know for a FACT that people who are clueless about computers already have the idea Vista sucks and do not want to buy it. You know why? They ask US for advice and we tell them it sucks.
Facts can be slippery. The geek is mighty thin on the ground hereabouts. I can't recall the last time I saw a live specimen of the breed off campus.
There is something to be said for reading the fine article:
First-week retail sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista were almost 60% below sales of boxed copies of Windows XP in the week after its 2001 release
Retail sales of PCs, virtually all of them sporting the new Vista OS, were up 67% over the same week in 2006. While that is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison -- many stores were clearing out their XP inventory in
the weeks leading up to Vista's launch -- "it still reflects a fair bit of growth"
The good news for Microsoft: Consumers who are upgrading to Vista on their older machines are opting for pricier, higher-end versions of it. The average selling price of Vista was $207.13, up 66% from the average selling price of XP. That was due in part to the fact that more than 30% of the copies of Vista sold were the Ultimate version, which lists for $399.
Early boxed retail sales of Vista down nearly 60% compared to XP
One might, of course, have expected boxed sales of Vista to be somewhat depressed by the distribution of free upgrade coupons distributed with PCs sold over the holidays.
This would be a valid point were it not for the fact that Microsoft uses its vast market power to exclude alternatives from being visible at the point of sale.
Windows is visible at POS because Windows sells.
Walmart tried to make a go of every OEM Linux distribution known to man. Not one caught fire. Not one significantly undercut OEM Windows on price, even with Walmart's enormous purchasing power behind it.
OEM Linux at Walmart.com has shrunk to a lone Xandros box.
Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems ready for sale on January 31st, starting with a no-name Vista Basic laptop at $500.
You can't just go pick a PC and then choose between Windows and Linux, which is how it would work were there a level playing field.
The Windows PC went mass market no later than Windows 95. Linux arrived late to the party. There has never been a level playing field for Linux in the home. There will never be a level playing field for Linux in the home.
And what if that 5% of the market were the deciding part - like... a friend asks a geek - which one to choose, NV or ATI? Is he not going to trust the geek?
The geek is less visible than he thinks. I wouldn't know where to find one off-campus.
Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems ready for sale January 31st. OEM Linux at Walmart.com has shrunk to a single Xandros desktop. Not definitive, perhaps, but still suggestive.
Sims: you can play.. people, leading... ordinary (quote, unquote) lives. Doesn't look especially nice, not based on anything well-known.
Sim City in 1989 defined the Sim genre as open-ended game play with an anchorage in real life. There can be few franchises with deeper roots in PC gaming.
Sports fans obsess over details. The rules. The line-ups. The stats. The stadiums. The uniforms. The "game day" experience, at least as they know it from television.
The natural evolutionary path being that they will lose market share to users of non-Windows based platforms as well as Windows users that use non-IE browsers. That's probably a fair segment of the market.
Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems for sale on January 31st and one lone, pathetic, OEM Linux box.
Tons of free publicity. The purchasing power of the world's largest retailer --- and OEM Linux at Walmart couldn't draw flies.
IIRC, there was a big splash last year about Walmart selling Linux PC's.
Walmart tried to make a go of every OEM Linux distro known to man. Not one caught fire. Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems on sale January 31st, beginning at $500 for a Vista Basic laptop.
The American middle class doesn't hate Microsoft and it doesn't hate Walmart, as far as Linux is concerned, the middle class just doesn't give a damn. Not for free-as-in-freedom. Not for free-as-in-beer.
Hell they even get high schools and colleges to market it for them by offering "office suite classes" that are nothing more than a 10 week marketing class they get people to pay to go to( in college)
Look at the want adds in your local newspaper. The posts on the library bulletin board. Visit your state employment office. Talk with those who work with the disabled. MS Office skills are marketable.
I had left the laptop in sleep mode with the lid closed on the edge of the sofa in the living room
I'll take the odds that the sofa was the most flammable piece of furniture in his house. We do this all the time, but still...we should know better. I would probably also be asking whether there were functioning smoke detectors or a more sophisticated alarm system in place. Something very basic, but, again, too easily forgotten.
Whittle's specialty was marketing to the captive audience.
Familiar magazines disappeared from your doctor's waiting room to be replaced by Whittle's glossy, content-free substitutes. Whittle was never subtle. It was all or nothing.
Schools were offered free sattelite dishes, educational programming, VCRs, and other high-tech goodies.
In exchange, students would be required to watch the twelve minute commercial Channel One News, nine days out of every ten.
At 16, is it really that big a deal if two people saw each other naked? Even if it is a "mistake.
The kids weren't charged for "seeing each other naked." The kids were charged for exchanging sexually explicit photos by e-mail. There is a difference and it is a difference that matters.
It is some years back now, but I remember copies of posts like these being accidentally directed to my account. I was innocent enough then to be surprised by such trust in the technology.
There are far fewer unique names in China both first and last and generally no middle name. Being able to uniquely identify people in China is a huge problem for private industry and government alike.
Traditionally, China is the people of "One Hundred Names:"
In many Western countries, there is a short list of popular 'first names,' but countless 'last names.' In China, it is just the reverse. The list of last name is short, and the number of first names is in the billions. This may be the reason that in Western countries, one customarily tell strangers one's first name ("My name is Bob.") Whereas in China, one generally give out his last name instead ("Just ask for Mr. Wang.") One Hundred Chinese Names
Why not carry ads? Most high traffic sites are ad supported
most high traffic sites are commercial.
most have the good sense to be selective about advertising.
think of the problems if articles on pharmaceuticals are bound to adds for prescription or OTC drugs. the potential for abuse is altogether bad enough in the mainstream press. it is intolerable in an encyclopedia.
consider this: about 6800 people die in the US, every day, from a variety of causes. It's just a matter of when and from what. So, the question is, how do terrorist attacks rank against other causes of death in the US? They aren't even a blip on the radar.
6800 deaths. in a population of 300 million.
incidents scattered across a continental-sized land mass and beyond.
the Roman Catholic church alone has 2,000 years experience in helping individuals, families, and communities cope with these small-scale tragedies.
but hurricane Katrina should be a reminder of how fragile the social order can become when exposed to an intense and focused assault.
the Geek sees numbers, but he doesn't always see context.
They did not look like bombs in any way shape or form
What does a bomb look like?
Plastique as mailable as a child's ball of clay? The cartoonist's stock grenade or stick of dynamite? A farmer's truck, weighted down with fertilizer and diesel?
The parcel where there should be no parcels? Movement where there should be no movement? Lights where there should be no lights?
Slashdot Mirror
Take a stroll through Linspire's CNR warehouse. Then scan the list of software bestsellers at Amazon.com.
Tell me again that Linux does everything the home user wants. Tell me again how much he hates Microsoft. Tell me again why Linux deserves better than a 1% market share.
Facts can be slippery. The geek is mighty thin on the ground hereabouts. I can't recall the last time I saw a live specimen of the breed off campus.
First-week retail sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista were almost 60% below sales of boxed copies of Windows XP in the week after its 2001 release
Retail sales of PCs, virtually all of them sporting the new Vista OS, were up 67% over the same week in 2006. While that is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison -- many stores were clearing out their XP inventory in the weeks leading up to Vista's launch -- "it still reflects a fair bit of growth"
The good news for Microsoft: Consumers who are upgrading to Vista on their older machines are opting for pricier, higher-end versions of it. The average selling price of Vista was $207.13, up 66% from the average selling price of XP. That was due in part to the fact that more than 30% of the copies of Vista sold were the Ultimate version, which lists for $399. Early boxed retail sales of Vista down nearly 60% compared to XP
One might, of course, have expected boxed sales of Vista to be somewhat depressed by the distribution of free upgrade coupons distributed with PCs sold over the holidays.
and while you helped four friends get rid of Vista, how many others have chosen to stay with Vista?
the geek vastly overstates his impact on the mass consumer market.
Windows is visible at POS because Windows sells.
Walmart tried to make a go of every OEM Linux distribution known to man. Not one caught fire. Not one significantly undercut OEM Windows on price, even with Walmart's enormous purchasing power behind it.
OEM Linux at Walmart.com has shrunk to a lone Xandros box.
Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems ready for sale on January 31st, starting with a no-name Vista Basic laptop at $500.
You can't just go pick a PC and then choose between Windows and Linux, which is how it would work were there a level playing field.
The Windows PC went mass market no later than Windows 95. Linux arrived late to the party. There has never been a level playing field for Linux in the home. There will never be a level playing field for Linux in the home.
What if everyone else votes with their dollars for the proprietary solution?
The solution that outperforms Intel at every turn. Linux gets mediocre on-board video. OSX and Vista 99% of installs above entry level.
Power has no meaning unless it can be applied to some purpose.
The geek is less visible than he thinks. I wouldn't know where to find one off-campus.
Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems ready for sale January 31st. OEM Linux at Walmart.com has shrunk to a single Xandros desktop. Not definitive, perhaps, but still suggestive.
Sim City in 1989 defined the Sim genre as open-ended game play with an anchorage in real life. There can be few franchises with deeper roots in PC gaming.
Not sad. Predictable.
Sports fans obsess over details. The rules. The line-ups. The stats. The stadiums. The uniforms. The "game day" experience, at least as they know it from television.
Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems for sale on January 31st and one lone, pathetic, OEM Linux box.
Tons of free publicity. The purchasing power of the world's largest retailer --- and OEM Linux at Walmart couldn't draw flies.
Get real. Walmart is the world's largest retailer. Coldly realistic. They know their market. It's the Geek who gets the CHOP.
Walmart tried to make a go of every OEM Linux distro known to man. Not one caught fire. Walmart.com had thirty Vista systems on sale January 31st, beginning at $500 for a Vista Basic laptop.
The American middle class doesn't hate Microsoft and it doesn't hate Walmart, as far as Linux is concerned, the middle class just doesn't give a damn. Not for free-as-in-freedom. Not for free-as-in-beer.
Look at the want adds in your local newspaper. The posts on the library bulletin board. Visit your state employment office. Talk with those who work with the disabled. MS Office skills are marketable.
the Geek buys the $15 smoke detector...he does not pay $30/mo to Brinks or Time-Warner for a pro install and 24 hour monitoring.
I'll take the odds that the sofa was the most flammable piece of furniture in his house. We do this all the time, but still...we should know better. I would probably also be asking whether there were functioning smoke detectors or a more sophisticated alarm system in place. Something very basic, but, again, too easily forgotten.
Many here will remember Whittle Communications.
Whittle's specialty was marketing to the captive audience.
Familiar magazines disappeared from your doctor's waiting room to be replaced by Whittle's glossy, content-free substitutes. Whittle was never subtle. It was all or nothing.
Schools were offered free sattelite dishes, educational programming, VCRs, and other high-tech goodies.
In exchange, students would be required to watch the twelve minute commercial Channel One News, nine days out of every ten.
The kids weren't charged for "seeing each other naked." The kids were charged for exchanging sexually explicit photos by e-mail. There is a difference and it is a difference that matters.
It is some years back now, but I remember copies of posts like these being accidentally directed to my account. I was innocent enough then to be surprised by such trust in the technology.
Traditionally, China is the people of "One Hundred Names:"
In many Western countries, there is a short list of popular 'first names,' but countless 'last names.' In China, it is just the reverse. The list of last name is short, and the number of first names is in the billions. This may be the reason that in Western countries, one customarily tell strangers one's first name ("My name is Bob.") Whereas in China, one generally give out his last name instead ("Just ask for Mr. Wang.") One Hundred Chinese Names
China has had a highly centralized, bureaucratic, form of government for over 2,000 years.
Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer 7
most high traffic sites are commercial.
most have the good sense to be selective about advertising.
think of the problems if articles on pharmaceuticals are bound to adds for prescription or OTC drugs. the potential for abuse is altogether bad enough in the mainstream press. it is intolerable in an encyclopedia.
just who do you think you're kidding? no asbestos suit required. you got the predictable +5 mod and are wholly in sync with the group think here.
6800 deaths. in a population of 300 million.
incidents scattered across a continental-sized land mass and beyond.
the Roman Catholic church alone has 2,000 years experience in helping individuals, families, and communities cope with these small-scale tragedies.
but hurricane Katrina should be a reminder of how fragile the social order can become when exposed to an intense and focused assault.
the Geek sees numbers, but he doesn't always see context.
What does a bomb look like?
Plastique as mailable as a child's ball of clay? The cartoonist's stock grenade or stick of dynamite? A farmer's truck, weighted down with fertilizer and diesel?
The parcel where there should be no parcels? Movement where there should be no movement? Lights where there should be no lights?
What does a bomb look like?