http://www.firingsquad.com has been running a very thorough series of columns on PC component cooling. It's worth a look if you are interested in this kind of thing.
You mean like Compaq does when they let you choose to set up either Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 on first power-up? In that case you're only getting one OS because the other one is blown away during install.
Selling laptops that dual-boot between Win95 and Linux, or NT and Linux, would require more setup at the factory to manage the boot partition and multiple installs, would probably be of little demand, and knowing Microsoft, would most likely violate their license agreement. Also you'd be paying for support on two operating systems for the first 30 days.
It would be much easier for them to just certify a laptop as Linux-compatible and let the user do the dual-boot setup.
The article didn't mention this old classic of his, which is still in print! Shel Silverstein definitely fits under "Stuff that matters." Thanks for posting the article.
About a month after getting my cable modem (without cable TV), I received a fairly polite note from a local MediaOne technician along the lines of "the former resident of your apartment must have left your cable service hooked up accidently. If you would like to be a subscriber, please call so-and-so." In other words, they thought I was pirating service and were giving me a chance to "go straight."
One phone call resolved this, however. Not like the poor guy in the story.
Thank you for mentioning SCO VARs. I hope they all switch to Linux. Here's why:
Last month when I attended SCO's quarterly VAR briefing in Minneapolis as an end-user guest of our reseller, I was astounded by how little regard SCO had for these people who presumably are making them money. We sat through a long, inaccurate PowerPoint presentation on the Y2K problem, presented by "someone from corporate" who had no idea what he was talking about. Then they explained how SCO was going to charge several thousand dollars to evaluate legacy SCO UNIX systems for Y2K compliance, effectively cutting out the VARs from this source of income. You could hear the grumblings getting louder as his talk went on. The presenters were aware of this; midway through, they switched from talking about SCO as "we" to SCO as "them."
My reseller and I walked out before the end. It was a waste of time. There was no talk of new products, not even their "Tarantella" product which appears to do most of what Citrix MetaFrame does. There was no talk about what SCO was doing to compete against Linux or NT. There was nothing to give me confidence that SCO will exist as a company after the year 2000.
With Linux, VARs can be as independent as they choose. They can be their own developers, or they can resell Red Hat, Caldera, etc. They don't have to worry about being the only "SCO-authorized" training center in a 300-mile radius or whatever the limit is.
Thanks, SCO, for spreading FUD about Y2K and FUD about Linux. You've ruined the attitude of this once very happy customer.
Very sincerely,
Carl Patten Systems Administrator Trimodal Inc. (cpatte@trimodalinc.com)
/. is in my "top three" list because the quality of the links and stories is generally very good. Unfortunately, the moderation system failed in this case. I hope the generally negative reaction to this poor guy's story leads to an improvement in the system. Would segfault.org have let this get through?
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.firingsquad.com has been running a very thorough series of columns on PC component cooling. It's worth a look if you are interested in this kind of thing.
(And no, they didn't pay me to say that.)
--
Carl Patten
You mean like Compaq does when they let you choose to set up either Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 on first power-up? In that case you're only getting one OS because the other one is blown away during install.
Selling laptops that dual-boot between Win95 and Linux, or NT and Linux, would require more setup at the factory to manage the boot partition and multiple installs, would probably be of little demand, and knowing Microsoft, would most likely violate their license agreement. Also you'd be paying for support on two operating systems for the first 30 days.
It would be much easier for them to just certify a laptop as Linux-compatible and let the user do the dual-boot setup.
The article didn't mention this old classic of his, which is still in print! Shel Silverstein definitely fits under "Stuff that matters." Thanks for posting the article.
About a month after getting my cable modem (without cable TV), I received a fairly polite note from a local MediaOne technician along the lines of "the former resident of your apartment must have left your cable service hooked up accidently. If you would like to be a subscriber, please call so-and-so." In other words, they thought I was pirating service and were giving me a chance to "go straight."
One phone call resolved this, however. Not like the poor guy in the story.
Thank you for mentioning SCO VARs. I hope they all switch to Linux. Here's why:
Last month when I attended SCO's quarterly VAR briefing in Minneapolis as an end-user guest of our reseller, I was astounded by how little regard SCO had for these people who presumably are making them money. We sat through a long, inaccurate PowerPoint presentation on the Y2K problem, presented by "someone from corporate" who had no idea what he was talking about. Then they explained how SCO was going to charge several thousand dollars to evaluate legacy SCO UNIX systems for Y2K compliance, effectively cutting out the VARs from this source of income. You could hear the grumblings getting louder as his talk went on. The presenters were aware of this; midway through, they switched from talking about SCO as "we" to SCO as "them."
My reseller and I walked out before the end. It was a waste of time. There was no talk of new products, not even their "Tarantella" product which appears to do most of what Citrix MetaFrame does. There was no talk about what SCO was doing to compete against Linux or NT. There was nothing to give me confidence that SCO will exist as a company after the year 2000.
With Linux, VARs can be as independent as they choose. They can be their own developers, or they can resell Red Hat, Caldera, etc. They don't have to worry about being the only "SCO-authorized" training center in a 300-mile radius or whatever the limit is.
Thanks, SCO, for spreading FUD about Y2K and FUD about Linux. You've ruined the attitude of this once very happy customer.
Very sincerely,
Carl Patten
Systems Administrator
Trimodal Inc.
(cpatte@trimodalinc.com)
/. is in my "top three" list because the quality of the links and stories is generally very good. Unfortunately, the moderation system failed in this case. I hope the generally negative reaction to this poor guy's story leads to an improvement in the system. Would segfault.org have let this get through?