Agreed. I live in an urban area and make do with a 16GB phone. I stream music (urban use) and save playlists to my phone (rural, train or motorway use) for day to day use but put up with carrying an iPod Classic when I'm away for any length of time, especially when going abroad, or for long train journeys. Carrying the extra device doesn't both me for the sort of trips I use my iPod for.
Who are these non-technical people who switch so easily to Linux-based OSes? I haven't met a single one.
My dad is fairly non-technical. He also go fed up with Windows. I've tried several times to see if he wants to use a Linux distro instead of Windows but something always got in the way whether that was specific Windows-only software (MS Office and it *had* to be MS Office, some video editing software that didn't seem to have a Linux equivalent at the time) or he wanted my sister's kids to be able to play games that wouldn't work with Linux. He ended up on a Mac for video editing and keeps a Windows machine for the grandkids.
My girlfriend had Ubuntu on her old laptop for a while but needed Windows put back on it to run some Windows-only software.
My mum got used to OS X eventually and won't change (even to Windows). If she goes to anything other than a Mac it'll either be a Chromebook or an iPad.
Everyone of my friends has something that prevents them from using Linux, usually some Windows or Mac only software or a device that doesn't work (iPods and iPhones that need iTunes etc).
My local cinema only has 2k projectors and I don't know whether they get 4k content or specific 2k content. Their files work out to 100GB - 150GB per hour so I'm guessing they're getting 2k.
I don't want to sound picky but my local theatre doesn't use DVDs for it's digital content. It uses heavily DRM'd files supplied on a portable HDD or beamed in via satellite. The keys are sent separately as and when needed and expire in anything from a week or more. The files can be 200GB+. I'm not saying it's impossible to get a digital copy from a theatre but it's not easy.
I've been thinking about doing this for ages. I have a machine that I run as a server. It runs SSH already. I have no problem with it not being automatic and using a SFTP client to upload and download files. I do have some reservations though.
1. I have to open the machine up to the Internet. Running the server completely behind my router means I can be a bit lax in some aspect of security but I wouldn't want to allow access to it from outside without rebuilding it to allow for that. To allow me to do it how I'd like it set up would require me spending some real money. 2. I don't have any redundancy my server. I have backups but if it dies while I'm away (which is a lot) then I lose the machine. It would cost some real money to add the needed redundancy (or better yet, replace it with a better machine that's more fit for the purpose). 3. My Internet connection is a typical home connection i.e. very asynchronous. I can't remember what my upload speed is but it's a hell of a lot less than my download speed, even when I'm away, and this speed will be my download speed when I'm away. I could improve the situation but at the cost of some real money.
Dropbox is shit from a privacy and security standpoint but I've always assumed it is and treated it as such. I'd be quite happy to put the files in my dropbox on a public web server. It's just useful to have certain files always available and automatically synced. I have 3GB of space for free on Dropbox and it's plenty for my needs. When I weigh up the DIY costs against Dropbox it's unfortunate but Dropbox wins for my use case.
They want the riff-raff to get the numbers up and lure people away from facebook. Someone's friends have to move wholesale or they have to be prepared to use 2 SNs until most of their network is on G+.
I really like G+. It's way better than facebook so I want to use G+ instead and there's enough twitter like functionality that I may stop using twitter. What Google need to overcome is facebook's momentum.
I have around 35 RL friends on facebook but only 3 have come over to G+. They're the ones who don't mind using G+ and facebook and twitter or don't have enough invested in facebook. Another 2 are on G+ but don't use it because the rest of their friends are on facebook and won't move over (I remember the comment of one such non-techy person when G+ was mentioned: "Who cares?"). I've already stopped posting to facebook and only go there now to comment of friends posts. I've made the decision to use G+ and if my friends don't want to move with me then sod them.
As for the celebrity thing, I can't understand Lady Gaga (I barely know who she is) but some celebs are worth following. Steven Fry often has something worth saying and I can find out what he's doing (new series of QI etc). I've been able to engage with some minor celebs of twitter so it can work as a tool to break down the barriers between celebs and us "normal" people.
The bottom line is, Google should do whatever they need to do to make G+ a success. It's not like I have to ready the inane ramblings of the celebs or riff-raff so I don't mind.
They may well be able to do all the things a low end laptop can do, as observed by the netbooks running Windows XP, but that doesn't mean that that's how they should be marketed. The 10" models and the WinXP models are blurring things a bit though.
I maintain that they should be set up and sold as a cheap machine mainly for Internet type tasks (email, web, chat, etc), somewhere between a smartphone/PDA and a low end 'proper' laptop. A customised Linux OS would be perfect for that and when marketed in that way people wouldn't expect Windows and could be happy with a Linux OS.
I don't know how big the market is for something like that but if someone buys one expecting to run Office or other Windows software they may be better off with a cheap 'proper' laptop anyway. I can't even imagine how usable an office suite is on the 10" 1024x600 screen on the latest Eee PC.
I agree. My local Sainsbury's are marketing netbooks as cheap alternatives to laptops. They all run WinXP but I can see how people would be disappointed that their new 'laptop' is so different from their desktop or big laptop if they get Linux without knowing what they're buying.
People don't complain that their mobile phone doesn't run Windows (unless they have a WinMo phone in which case they do complain;o)) and some of those people use their phones for more than phone calls and SMS. I think marketing netbooks as cheap devices for email, web browsing, chat, casual games and maybe a few other tasks rather than as small, cheap laptops would help people to not care that a Linux netbook isn't running Windows. I see netnooks occupying the space between smartphones and low end laptops.
My experience with UK DTV is mixed. On the one hand I get many more channels. On the other, most of the non-BBC channels show way too many artifacts, probably due to over compression. Another downside is being digital you either get a picture or you don't. During the heavy rain the other night some channels broke up horribly making them unwatchable. That should sort itself out when they turn off analogue and boost the digital signal though.
My cheap Toshiba 24" CRT TV defaults to an auto mode. If I'm watching Freeview (UK free to air digital TV) my TV switches aspect ratio as required (when watching old US shows on commercial channels the show will be 4:3 pillarboxed but the ads will be 16:9 full screen). Both my DVD players will output 4:3 content as 4:3 and my TV will switch aspect ratio.
I was only using Photoshop as an example. I haven't used WINE in a while (about 6 months to a year) but last time I used it there was a lot of messing about just to get some fairly simple apps working. I hope that's changed.
Actually, think about WINE, I'm reminded of another problem with non-techie people running Linux-based OSs. You might've had an up to date version of WINE when you installed your distro but (and I'm thinking of Ubuntu LTS, RHEL and similar users here) there can be a hell of a lot more messing around just to get the latest versions if your distro is getting old.
If you're lucky there's a package or repo for your distro to make it easy but if not it's compile from source time and how many non-techie users are going to do that? Linux package management is great but if you want the latest versions of some software Windows and OS X have it beat.
In my experience that's just crap. Some distros may require use of the CLI (I'm thinking Gentoo and Debian unstable but I haven't used those in a while) but for the last year I've been using Ubuntu and Fedora and only use the CLI becuase I choose to. My girlfriend has no CLI knowledge but can use Ubuntu and Fedora without any problems.
This may be because I've set everything up. I'll concede that on some hardware the CLI may be required to get everything set up and working but after that it's not needed at all. I believe that with more pre-installations of Ubuntu or similar distro, with eveything working out of the box, any computer illiterate Joe can use their computer just as well as they can use Windows or OS X.
In my opinion Linux-based distros are lacking the commercial software like Photoshop.
I have nothing against O2 or their price plan, especially now they're going to up the number of minutes and texts. O2 reception here is poor in the part of town I live though. I was with Vodafone for years and had no complaints. Vodafone with the same plan I got from O2 would've been perfect. I can't guarantee that I can make a call without it dropping but that's not a big deal for me and not what I use my iPhone for most of the time anyway.
My current, home built desktop PC (running Feisty Fawn) is getting old. I'm not as into researching and building PCs as I used to be. Being able to buy a PC off the shelf without paying the MS tax sounds good to me.
I bought a C2D MacBook 6 months ago because I needed a new notebook and once again didn't want to pay the MS tax or research the hardware to make sure I'd have good, solid wireless networking. I happen to like Apple machines and OS X but it's good to know I can buy a laptop running Linux in future.
I like it how it is now. If I'm working on a text file in TextEdit and I click the close button on the current TextEdit window it doesn't mean I want to stop using TextEdit. If I did I'd probably quit the whole app.
I think that users of other systems equate the window with the app. I like that an OS X app can have no windows open but still be the current app. I'm used to it but it's very different to Windows so I can imagine some people having problems with it.
Here are a few points I think are worth thinking about.
I've read a lot of comments here that talk about "Linux". "Generic Linux" doesn't exist. What we should be talking about are distros. How many distros of Windows are there? If we treat XP Home and Pro and the server Windows OSs as seperate distros then very few and they're all from Microsoft and very similar. If we compare Gentoo with Ubuntu we find that they're very different in a lot of ways. Comparing "Generic Linux" with Windows becomes pointless. We should be thinking of each distro as a seperate OS then we can compare Gentoo OS with Ubuntu OS with Windows OS and make it meaningful. It's a small difference but "Why the world isn't ready for Gentoo" makes more sense and can be extended with "but might be ready for Ubuntu".
How hard is a Linux OS to use? Let's look at what I've done today on my Fedora Core 6 system:
I downloaded and played a MP4 video podcast in Xine. I double-clicked the downloaded file to start watching it.
I was at an event last night and needed to get the photos off of my camera. I plugged it in and an app started. The app let me import my photos.
My Dad wants a copy of the photos on a CD. I put a blank CD into the drive, started the "CD/DVD Creator", dragged my photos to it's window and "Write to Disc".
I have some other video podcasts in DivX format that will play on my DVD player. I have a DVD+RW for this purpose. I followed the above procedure but this time clicked the "Erase Disc" button before burning.
I read my email in Evolution by pressing the "Mail" button on my keyboard.
I read some web pages in Firefox.
I updated a spreadsheet by double-clicking the spreadsheet file.
None of that sounds any harder than using Windows to me. My girlfriend who isn't technical at all has no problems using Fedora. All she needed were some pointers but she'd need those if I had swapped apps on Windows.
I'll anticipate a couple of questions here. How did I get Xine installed and working with various proprietary codecs? I added the Livna repository, used "Add/Remove Software" and downloaded and copied over the codecs. But how is Joe Average going to know to do that? He isn't but then on Windows he may have to install extra codecs and I've met people who give up when a Quicktime or DivX movie doesn't work out of the box.
Installation and hardware compatibility comes up a lot. I picked my hardware to make sure it works with most Linux distros. Fedora and Ubuntu detected all my hardware and just worked with my camera. Windows XP doesn't recognise my network card or sound card without me downloading and installing extra drivers. How's Joe Average supposed to do that? He isn't. He buys a PC that's been set up by an OEM that pre-configured all the hardware and provides a recovery disc that includes the drivers if he needs to reinstall. A lot of people who try a Linux distro want a dual-boot system. They have to repartition their hard drive for a start and could lose all their data if something goes wrong. Look at it the other way round though. Installing Windows on an Ubuntu system still requires repartitioning but Windows will blitz the MBR hiding Ubuntu. I'd say installing Windows on a preinstalled "Linux" system could actually be harder for Joe Average because he now has the extra hassle of booting a recovery, chroot and deal with GRUB or LILO.
We're not comparing apples with apples in these discussions. We're discussing pre-installed Windows against either some "Generic Linux" OS that doesn't exist or a user's experiences installing a Linux distro in most cases. When I give a Linux-based system to someone I install and configure the OS. I add repositories and support for various proprietary formats. They don't seem to have any more problems than they do with Windows.
How's this for complicated (system running a default FC6 install):
Download Adobe Reader RPM from Adobe's web site.
Double-click said RPM.
Enter root password.
Click the install button.
Tell it to proceed when it says it can't find a signature.
Go to Applications -> Office and click the Adobe Reader menu item.
I was as surprised as anyone when I double-clicked the RPM to see what would happen. I tried this with Opera's FC5 RPM too and IIRC it even install a compat library automatically.
PS For 3 I prefer Ubuntu's method of using the user's password rather than asking for the root password. I just think that that's more user firendly.
I used to be an avid gamer but I got fed up of the constant upgrade cycle to play new games. I got tired of new games looking or playing like shit on otherwise perfectly good hardware. I either couldn't afford or couldn't justify a high end games rig. I suppose getting older and getting into a steady relationship also helped wean me off of PC games.
Now if I want to play games I go for consoles. I can play in my living room and it's a more relaxed and social environment to play in than the home office. My girlfriend will play console games but not PC games for this reason. It leaves me free to choose to use a Mac and Linux. I'm not tied to Windows just for games any more.
Unfortunately that won't work for everyone and there will always be PC only games or games that work better with a keyboard and mouse. I was one of the lucky ones.
I'm a Linux and Mac user at home with almost no MS software (I have played with Vista RC1 recently and have Win2k in a VM for web site testing). I'm not a fan of MS or their software but I have to use XP at work. I think it's important that I say this up front because of what is to follow.
We have VS 2005 at work and I recently got permission to install it (no one else was using it as our resident Windows dev has gone back to Delphi) to create some tools to make my life easier. I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. I can make my tools very quickly indeed with C# and.NET and the IDE is pretty good.
The downside is that.NET can make you lazy because it does so much for you. It does 90% of what I need but the last 10% has me spending too long looking through the docs to see if there are properties, methods or events that let me do what I want easily. For example, I'm using a TabControl but I couldn't find a way to detect right-clicks on a TabPage's tab so I could pop up a context menu so I wrote some code to loop through all the TabPages, see if the right-click was on each TabPage in turn and if so pop up the context menu. I'm still learning the framework but that seems like a round about way to do things and something that should be there already.
Next to VS 2005, Xcode/Objective-C/Cocoa feels quite "old school" but I like that. It's more like the way I was taught. It can be hard work but it's worth it. I think Apple's approach may be less RAD but it maybe a more flexible approach. It's too early in my VS 2005 usage to be sure. At least Apple provide dev tools with their OS. If you want to attract the home coder you need good free dev tools so I'm glad MS offer the Express versions of VS and I plan to look at at least Visual C# Express to see how that compares to Xcode.
I could get XP Home SP2 OEM for ~£60 but then I have to buy a non-peripheral hardware component. A HDD would always come in handy but I don't really need one or the expense, and I'm saddled with the OEM license.
XP Home Upgrade is ~£85 and could actually be cheaper unless I need hardware but £85 just to test some web pages in IE7? I don't think so. Effectively that's £85 just for a web browser because I wouldn't use XP for anything else. £85 isn't a lot but it's money that I could put to many other, arguably better, uses.
Vista is a safer, if more expensive, bet. All MS have to do is release IE8 for Vista only (IE7 was originally going to be Vista only IIRC) and I have to upgrade again. Yes, that's probably years away but suddenly I'm on the MS upgrade treadmill just to support their browser. I'm not going to earn any money out of any personal sites so I'd rather not spend any money, say that I don't support IE7 and take pot luck that things work right.
That's exactly why I'd want it. Professionally there's no problem. My company's official line is we support IE6, Mozilla/Firefox and Safari (I test on Opera too though) and will support IE7 soon.
For personal stuff though there's a slight problem. I run Linux and OS X at home. I only have Win2k which I run in a VM so I can test for IE6. There's no way on Earth that I'm going to pay £160* for Vista Personal Basic (or whatever it's called) just so I can test with IE7. MS can either give us non-Winodws users a way to test for IE7 for free on other OSs (or a Win2k version which is never going to happen I guess) or they can go and screw themselves as far as I'm concerned and I won't officially support it.
* That's Amazon's price. I haven't looked for cheaper prices and don't have a price for an upgrade version.
Good point about the plane thing. I wonder how they'd react to someone messing with a phone during a flight though even if the phone function is turned off. I suppose once music player functionality becomes ubiquitous they'll get used to it.
I had a further thought on this today. My iPod hit the red only minutes into this mornings bus journey and my phone hit one bar about mid-morning. Had I had a phone/music player I'd never have got through the day. If I received one call too many I could've lost phone and music. I suppose you get to know your battery though like the way I know to charge my iPod if it's in the red when I get home because it won't last another day. I suppose my point is phone usage is unpredictable. Unless there's a real problem getting to or from work I can predict my music player usage and even then I have an hour to play with if my iPod starts the day going into the red.
They tested the video and still camera functions and music player functions of three phones on "The Gadget Show" tonight (UK TV channel five). For now it seems that it's still better to have separate devices. I don't think it'll take long to make a good music player/phone combo but they're not there yet by a long way it seems.
I pay extra on my home insurance to cover my phone, iPod and other devices (up to £1,000 of gear) so I don't have too many worries about that but I'd still hate to lose my phone and music player in one fell swoop (and PDA, camera and whatever else if phones ever get that good).
I certainly wouldn't discount the idea and even think you're right. I think one factor though is how many people there are like me who currently use a standalone portable music device.
I don't want a combined phone/music player because:
There are times when I want to turn my phone off, or leave it at home because I'm not going to be out for long, but still listen to music i.e. on the bus home after a really tough day or a walk to the shops and back. If I could turn the phone function off but still have the music player then fair enough but would that happen? It is a phone first and music player second I imagine.
Most important for me is battery usage. At the moment I can forget to charge my phone when it reaches one bar remaining and still get a whole day's usage if I only make a couple of calls and send a couple of text messages. If, as often happens, I'm on a late running train I'm going to need my phone to call home to say I'll be late. I also need my iPod to help take my mind off of the late train. If I only have a single device I may have to choose whether I want to listen to music more than use the phone more if the battery's running low. I can forget to charge both my phone and iPod of course and end up in the late train scenario with neither device being usable but I feel that that's less likely with two devices.
I'm still a believer in the one device to do one thing will do that one thing better than a single device that does many things philosophy. I've used PDA and camera functions on phones and neither has been as good as a dedicated PDA or digital camera. This will change no doubt and I imagine it would be easier to build in a good music player but I'd have to test a device to be sure.
Lose one device and you've lost both. This can happen anyway if your phone and music player in in the same bag, jacket or whatever and it gets lost or stolen but there's still a chance that if I lose one device I won't lose both.
I don't mind carrying two devices and I like having nearly 4GB of music available to me. For a music playing phone to work for me it'll have to offer at least 4GB storage, be as easy to use as my iPod nano and have good battery life. My nano can get me to work and back once the battery indicator turns red. If it was a phone it'd have to be able to get me to and from work as a music player and still let me make a couple of calls and send a couple of text messages. That's quite a tough one and probably not practical in the foreseeable future but I can get that with two separate devices and won't compromise just because I have a two in one device.
I doubt that I'm very typical which is why I think that the mobile phone as iPod killer idea is likely. I just won't buy into it until it's a mature market offering me exactly what I want though.
I think you're right. I buy online too because I can get almost anything I want for around £8.99. There are two record shops in town. The lowest price in the cheapest one (excluding sales of course) is £12.99 so I usually save at least £4 per CD. The major chain record shops in a nearby city sell chart CDs for £12.99 but want £15.99 for older or niche music so I'm saving £7 per CD if I use their prices.
I think the online stores have got the pricing right. Not only are they cheaper to start with, the ones I use tend to charge more for new CDs and CDs tend to get cheaper as they get older. The major chains start low (in comparison to their other CDs anyway) for new releases but the price goes up as a CD gets older! And let's not forget that a shop can only carry a limited range of CDs so if I'm after something obscure I'm unlikely to find it in a shop.
For these reasons the first place I look now is online. I only buy from a shop if I happen to walk past when a sale's on and I find a good deal. It's very rare that I think a CD is worth more than £10. I'd rather go without than pay more than it's worth to me.
I don't think P2P networks are to blame for declining sales. I think that P2P users are downloading music either to check it out before they buy and deleting what they don't like (I've done that a couple of times in the past) or they're freeloaders and wouldn't buy it anyway. Couple that with the current low standard of new releases and high prices and it's no wonder that bricks and mortar shops are losing out.
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Agreed. I live in an urban area and make do with a 16GB phone. I stream music (urban use) and save playlists to my phone (rural, train or motorway use) for day to day use but put up with carrying an iPod Classic when I'm away for any length of time, especially when going abroad, or for long train journeys. Carrying the extra device doesn't both me for the sort of trips I use my iPod for.
Who are these non-technical people who switch so easily to Linux-based OSes? I haven't met a single one.
My dad is fairly non-technical. He also go fed up with Windows. I've tried several times to see if he wants to use a Linux distro instead of Windows but something always got in the way whether that was specific Windows-only software (MS Office and it *had* to be MS Office, some video editing software that didn't seem to have a Linux equivalent at the time) or he wanted my sister's kids to be able to play games that wouldn't work with Linux. He ended up on a Mac for video editing and keeps a Windows machine for the grandkids.
My girlfriend had Ubuntu on her old laptop for a while but needed Windows put back on it to run some Windows-only software.
My mum got used to OS X eventually and won't change (even to Windows). If she goes to anything other than a Mac it'll either be a Chromebook or an iPad.
Everyone of my friends has something that prevents them from using Linux, usually some Windows or Mac only software or a device that doesn't work (iPods and iPhones that need iTunes etc).
My local cinema only has 2k projectors and I don't know whether they get 4k content or specific 2k content. Their files work out to 100GB - 150GB per hour so I'm guessing they're getting 2k.
I don't want to sound picky but my local theatre doesn't use DVDs for it's digital content. It uses heavily DRM'd files supplied on a portable HDD or beamed in via satellite. The keys are sent separately as and when needed and expire in anything from a week or more. The files can be 200GB+. I'm not saying it's impossible to get a digital copy from a theatre but it's not easy.
I've been thinking about doing this for ages. I have a machine that I run as a server. It runs SSH already. I have no problem with it not being automatic and using a SFTP client to upload and download files. I do have some reservations though.
1. I have to open the machine up to the Internet. Running the server completely behind my router means I can be a bit lax in some aspect of security but I wouldn't want to allow access to it from outside without rebuilding it to allow for that. To allow me to do it how I'd like it set up would require me spending some real money.
2. I don't have any redundancy my server. I have backups but if it dies while I'm away (which is a lot) then I lose the machine. It would cost some real money to add the needed redundancy (or better yet, replace it with a better machine that's more fit for the purpose).
3. My Internet connection is a typical home connection i.e. very asynchronous. I can't remember what my upload speed is but it's a hell of a lot less than my download speed, even when I'm away, and this speed will be my download speed when I'm away. I could improve the situation but at the cost of some real money.
Dropbox is shit from a privacy and security standpoint but I've always assumed it is and treated it as such. I'd be quite happy to put the files in my dropbox on a public web server. It's just useful to have certain files always available and automatically synced. I have 3GB of space for free on Dropbox and it's plenty for my needs. When I weigh up the DIY costs against Dropbox it's unfortunate but Dropbox wins for my use case.
They want the riff-raff to get the numbers up and lure people away from facebook. Someone's friends have to move wholesale or they have to be prepared to use 2 SNs until most of their network is on G+.
I really like G+. It's way better than facebook so I want to use G+ instead and there's enough twitter like functionality that I may stop using twitter. What Google need to overcome is facebook's momentum.
I have around 35 RL friends on facebook but only 3 have come over to G+. They're the ones who don't mind using G+ and facebook and twitter or don't have enough invested in facebook. Another 2 are on G+ but don't use it because the rest of their friends are on facebook and won't move over (I remember the comment of one such non-techy person when G+ was mentioned: "Who cares?"). I've already stopped posting to facebook and only go there now to comment of friends posts. I've made the decision to use G+ and if my friends don't want to move with me then sod them.
As for the celebrity thing, I can't understand Lady Gaga (I barely know who she is) but some celebs are worth following. Steven Fry often has something worth saying and I can find out what he's doing (new series of QI etc). I've been able to engage with some minor celebs of twitter so it can work as a tool to break down the barriers between celebs and us "normal" people.
The bottom line is, Google should do whatever they need to do to make G+ a success. It's not like I have to ready the inane ramblings of the celebs or riff-raff so I don't mind.
They may well be able to do all the things a low end laptop can do, as observed by the netbooks running Windows XP, but that doesn't mean that that's how they should be marketed. The 10" models and the WinXP models are blurring things a bit though.
I maintain that they should be set up and sold as a cheap machine mainly for Internet type tasks (email, web, chat, etc), somewhere between a smartphone/PDA and a low end 'proper' laptop. A customised Linux OS would be perfect for that and when marketed in that way people wouldn't expect Windows and could be happy with a Linux OS.
I don't know how big the market is for something like that but if someone buys one expecting to run Office or other Windows software they may be better off with a cheap 'proper' laptop anyway. I can't even imagine how usable an office suite is on the 10" 1024x600 screen on the latest Eee PC.
I agree. My local Sainsbury's are marketing netbooks as cheap alternatives to laptops. They all run WinXP but I can see how people would be disappointed that their new 'laptop' is so different from their desktop or big laptop if they get Linux without knowing what they're buying.
People don't complain that their mobile phone doesn't run Windows (unless they have a WinMo phone in which case they do complain ;o)) and some of those people use their phones for more than phone calls and SMS. I think marketing netbooks as cheap devices for email, web browsing, chat, casual games and maybe a few other tasks rather than as small, cheap laptops would help people to not care that a Linux netbook isn't running Windows. I see netnooks occupying the space between smartphones and low end laptops.
My experience with UK DTV is mixed. On the one hand I get many more channels. On the other, most of the non-BBC channels show way too many artifacts, probably due to over compression. Another downside is being digital you either get a picture or you don't. During the heavy rain the other night some channels broke up horribly making them unwatchable. That should sort itself out when they turn off analogue and boost the digital signal though.
My cheap Toshiba 24" CRT TV defaults to an auto mode. If I'm watching Freeview (UK free to air digital TV) my TV switches aspect ratio as required (when watching old US shows on commercial channels the show will be 4:3 pillarboxed but the ads will be 16:9 full screen). Both my DVD players will output 4:3 content as 4:3 and my TV will switch aspect ratio.
I was only using Photoshop as an example. I haven't used WINE in a while (about 6 months to a year) but last time I used it there was a lot of messing about just to get some fairly simple apps working. I hope that's changed.
Actually, think about WINE, I'm reminded of another problem with non-techie people running Linux-based OSs. You might've had an up to date version of WINE when you installed your distro but (and I'm thinking of Ubuntu LTS, RHEL and similar users here) there can be a hell of a lot more messing around just to get the latest versions if your distro is getting old.
If you're lucky there's a package or repo for your distro to make it easy but if not it's compile from source time and how many non-techie users are going to do that? Linux package management is great but if you want the latest versions of some software Windows and OS X have it beat.
In my experience that's just crap. Some distros may require use of the CLI (I'm thinking Gentoo and Debian unstable but I haven't used those in a while) but for the last year I've been using Ubuntu and Fedora and only use the CLI becuase I choose to. My girlfriend has no CLI knowledge but can use Ubuntu and Fedora without any problems.
This may be because I've set everything up. I'll concede that on some hardware the CLI may be required to get everything set up and working but after that it's not needed at all. I believe that with more pre-installations of Ubuntu or similar distro, with eveything working out of the box, any computer illiterate Joe can use their computer just as well as they can use Windows or OS X.
In my opinion Linux-based distros are lacking the commercial software like Photoshop.
I have nothing against O2 or their price plan, especially now they're going to up the number of minutes and texts. O2 reception here is poor in the part of town I live though. I was with Vodafone for years and had no complaints. Vodafone with the same plan I got from O2 would've been perfect. I can't guarantee that I can make a call without it dropping but that's not a big deal for me and not what I use my iPhone for most of the time anyway.
It matters to me because:
I like it how it is now. If I'm working on a text file in TextEdit and I click the close button on the current TextEdit window it doesn't mean I want to stop using TextEdit. If I did I'd probably quit the whole app.
I think that users of other systems equate the window with the app. I like that an OS X app can have no windows open but still be the current app. I'm used to it but it's very different to Windows so I can imagine some people having problems with it.
Here are a few points I think are worth thinking about.
I've read a lot of comments here that talk about "Linux". "Generic Linux" doesn't exist. What we should be talking about are distros. How many distros of Windows are there? If we treat XP Home and Pro and the server Windows OSs as seperate distros then very few and they're all from Microsoft and very similar. If we compare Gentoo with Ubuntu we find that they're very different in a lot of ways. Comparing "Generic Linux" with Windows becomes pointless. We should be thinking of each distro as a seperate OS then we can compare Gentoo OS with Ubuntu OS with Windows OS and make it meaningful. It's a small difference but "Why the world isn't ready for Gentoo" makes more sense and can be extended with "but might be ready for Ubuntu".
How hard is a Linux OS to use? Let's look at what I've done today on my Fedora Core 6 system:
- I downloaded and played a MP4 video podcast in Xine. I double-clicked the downloaded file to start watching it.
- I was at an event last night and needed to get the photos off of my camera. I plugged it in and an app started. The app let me import my photos.
- My Dad wants a copy of the photos on a CD. I put a blank CD into the drive, started the "CD/DVD Creator", dragged my photos to it's window and "Write to Disc".
- I have some other video podcasts in DivX format that will play on my DVD player. I have a DVD+RW for this purpose. I followed the above procedure but this time clicked the "Erase Disc" button before burning.
- I read my email in Evolution by pressing the "Mail" button on my keyboard.
- I read some web pages in Firefox.
- I updated a spreadsheet by double-clicking the spreadsheet file.
None of that sounds any harder than using Windows to me. My girlfriend who isn't technical at all has no problems using Fedora. All she needed were some pointers but she'd need those if I had swapped apps on Windows.I'll anticipate a couple of questions here. How did I get Xine installed and working with various proprietary codecs? I added the Livna repository, used "Add/Remove Software" and downloaded and copied over the codecs. But how is Joe Average going to know to do that? He isn't but then on Windows he may have to install extra codecs and I've met people who give up when a Quicktime or DivX movie doesn't work out of the box.
Installation and hardware compatibility comes up a lot. I picked my hardware to make sure it works with most Linux distros. Fedora and Ubuntu detected all my hardware and just worked with my camera. Windows XP doesn't recognise my network card or sound card without me downloading and installing extra drivers. How's Joe Average supposed to do that? He isn't. He buys a PC that's been set up by an OEM that pre-configured all the hardware and provides a recovery disc that includes the drivers if he needs to reinstall. A lot of people who try a Linux distro want a dual-boot system. They have to repartition their hard drive for a start and could lose all their data if something goes wrong. Look at it the other way round though. Installing Windows on an Ubuntu system still requires repartitioning but Windows will blitz the MBR hiding Ubuntu. I'd say installing Windows on a preinstalled "Linux" system could actually be harder for Joe Average because he now has the extra hassle of booting a recovery, chroot and deal with GRUB or LILO.
We're not comparing apples with apples in these discussions. We're discussing pre-installed Windows against either some "Generic Linux" OS that doesn't exist or a user's experiences installing a Linux distro in most cases. When I give a Linux-based system to someone I install and configure the OS. I add repositories and support for various proprietary formats. They don't seem to have any more problems than they do with Windows.
How's this for complicated (system running a default FC6 install):
- Download Adobe Reader RPM from Adobe's web site.
- Double-click said RPM.
- Enter root password.
- Click the install button.
- Tell it to proceed when it says it can't find a signature.
- Go to Applications -> Office and click the Adobe Reader menu item.
I was as surprised as anyone when I double-clicked the RPM to see what would happen. I tried this with Opera's FC5 RPM too and IIRC it even install a compat library automatically.PS For 3 I prefer Ubuntu's method of using the user's password rather than asking for the root password. I just think that that's more user firendly.
I used to be an avid gamer but I got fed up of the constant upgrade cycle to play new games. I got tired of new games looking or playing like shit on otherwise perfectly good hardware. I either couldn't afford or couldn't justify a high end games rig. I suppose getting older and getting into a steady relationship also helped wean me off of PC games.
Now if I want to play games I go for consoles. I can play in my living room and it's a more relaxed and social environment to play in than the home office. My girlfriend will play console games but not PC games for this reason. It leaves me free to choose to use a Mac and Linux. I'm not tied to Windows just for games any more.
Unfortunately that won't work for everyone and there will always be PC only games or games that work better with a keyboard and mouse. I was one of the lucky ones.
I'm a Linux and Mac user at home with almost no MS software (I have played with Vista RC1 recently and have Win2k in a VM for web site testing). I'm not a fan of MS or their software but I have to use XP at work. I think it's important that I say this up front because of what is to follow.
We have VS 2005 at work and I recently got permission to install it (no one else was using it as our resident Windows dev has gone back to Delphi) to create some tools to make my life easier. I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. I can make my tools very quickly indeed with C# and .NET and the IDE is pretty good.
The downside is that .NET can make you lazy because it does so much for you. It does 90% of what I need but the last 10% has me spending too long looking through the docs to see if there are properties, methods or events that let me do what I want easily. For example, I'm using a TabControl but I couldn't find a way to detect right-clicks on a TabPage's tab so I could pop up a context menu so I wrote some code to loop through all the TabPages, see if the right-click was on each TabPage in turn and if so pop up the context menu. I'm still learning the framework but that seems like a round about way to do things and something that should be there already.
Next to VS 2005, Xcode/Objective-C/Cocoa feels quite "old school" but I like that. It's more like the way I was taught. It can be hard work but it's worth it. I think Apple's approach may be less RAD but it maybe a more flexible approach. It's too early in my VS 2005 usage to be sure. At least Apple provide dev tools with their OS. If you want to attract the home coder you need good free dev tools so I'm glad MS offer the Express versions of VS and I plan to look at at least Visual C# Express to see how that compares to Xcode.
I could get XP Home SP2 OEM for ~£60 but then I have to buy a non-peripheral hardware component. A HDD would always come in handy but I don't really need one or the expense, and I'm saddled with the OEM license.
XP Home Upgrade is ~£85 and could actually be cheaper unless I need hardware but £85 just to test some web pages in IE7? I don't think so. Effectively that's £85 just for a web browser because I wouldn't use XP for anything else. £85 isn't a lot but it's money that I could put to many other, arguably better, uses.
Vista is a safer, if more expensive, bet. All MS have to do is release IE8 for Vista only (IE7 was originally going to be Vista only IIRC) and I have to upgrade again. Yes, that's probably years away but suddenly I'm on the MS upgrade treadmill just to support their browser. I'm not going to earn any money out of any personal sites so I'd rather not spend any money, say that I don't support IE7 and take pot luck that things work right.
That's exactly why I'd want it. Professionally there's no problem. My company's official line is we support IE6, Mozilla/Firefox and Safari (I test on Opera too though) and will support IE7 soon.
For personal stuff though there's a slight problem. I run Linux and OS X at home. I only have Win2k which I run in a VM so I can test for IE6. There's no way on Earth that I'm going to pay £160* for Vista Personal Basic (or whatever it's called) just so I can test with IE7. MS can either give us non-Winodws users a way to test for IE7 for free on other OSs (or a Win2k version which is never going to happen I guess) or they can go and screw themselves as far as I'm concerned and I won't officially support it.
* That's Amazon's price. I haven't looked for cheaper prices and don't have a price for an upgrade version.
I certainly wouldn't discount the idea and even think you're right. I think one factor though is how many people there are like me who currently use a standalone portable music device.
I don't want a combined phone/music player because:
I don't mind carrying two devices and I like having nearly 4GB of music available to me. For a music playing phone to work for me it'll have to offer at least 4GB storage, be as easy to use as my iPod nano and have good battery life. My nano can get me to work and back once the battery indicator turns red. If it was a phone it'd have to be able to get me to and from work as a music player and still let me make a couple of calls and send a couple of text messages. That's quite a tough one and probably not practical in the foreseeable future but I can get that with two separate devices and won't compromise just because I have a two in one device.
I doubt that I'm very typical which is why I think that the mobile phone as iPod killer idea is likely. I just won't buy into it until it's a mature market offering me exactly what I want though.
I think you're right. I buy online too because I can get almost anything I want for around £8.99. There are two record shops in town. The lowest price in the cheapest one (excluding sales of course) is £12.99 so I usually save at least £4 per CD. The major chain record shops in a nearby city sell chart CDs for £12.99 but want £15.99 for older or niche music so I'm saving £7 per CD if I use their prices.
I think the online stores have got the pricing right. Not only are they cheaper to start with, the ones I use tend to charge more for new CDs and CDs tend to get cheaper as they get older. The major chains start low (in comparison to their other CDs anyway) for new releases but the price goes up as a CD gets older! And let's not forget that a shop can only carry a limited range of CDs so if I'm after something obscure I'm unlikely to find it in a shop.
For these reasons the first place I look now is online. I only buy from a shop if I happen to walk past when a sale's on and I find a good deal. It's very rare that I think a CD is worth more than £10. I'd rather go without than pay more than it's worth to me.
I don't think P2P networks are to blame for declining sales. I think that P2P users are downloading music either to check it out before they buy and deleting what they don't like (I've done that a couple of times in the past) or they're freeloaders and wouldn't buy it anyway. Couple that with the current low standard of new releases and high prices and it's no wonder that bricks and mortar shops are losing out.
Are you saying that Apple customers have always wanted to dual-boot Windows and OS X? Is that what you were talking about?