Microsoft can't even give it away
Eee proving to be a pain in the Vole's Asus
THE MANCHESTER GRAUNIAD'S Glyn Moody has suggested that even if the mighty Vole gave Windows away for free, it would still not be able to compete in the ultra-portable laptop market. He reckons that the tiny, new, less than a kilo, £200 Asus Eee, with its nine inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi and Flash memory, which also (listen closely, Mr. Gates) happens to actually work, could be a right pain in the Vole’s asus.
The Eee runs a variant of GNU/Linux, which for years has been the proverbial monster under the bed for regular computer users who imagine that it would be far too complicated and scary for them to use. But the Asus is now showing people that there is really nothing to be afraid of, and in fact, it’s easy. Programs are divided into only a few simple categories like Internet, Work, Play and Learn, with big colourful picture icons to help those who flunked out of kindergarten early.
To sweeten the pill, there is also a considerable price incentive in buying a basic portable with GNU/Linux installed as opposed to one with Windows XP, which not only costs about 30 per cent more, but also has the nerve to require more storage space and memory. The situation gets even worse for the Vole when it phases out XP for Vista in June, bringing basic storage requirements, just for running the thing, up to a whopping 15 GB. Free browser-based online services like Gmail and Google Docs make life even more arduous for the Vole, allowing users to get by quite happily just using Firefox.
But lets say the Vole did decide to try and compete. Well, it would now have to set its sights on prices much lower than £200. According to Moody, UK company Elonex has already launched its own ultraportable, 'The One', offering most of the Eee’s features for half the price (£100). They’re not alone. Acer, Everex, Pioneer and HP have all declared that they will soon be offering little lightweights running GNU/Linux. Even the designer of the OLPC machine, Mary-Lou Jepsen, reckons that prices still have a long way to fall, noting that a $75 system is already within reach.
The new lightweights could also have implications for the future price of memory chips, which are also seeing their prices hit the floor lately. Gartner's research director for semiconductors, Alan Brown, reckoned in a recent Gartner report that 'the price of ultraportables could decline about 15% within three years' due to the falling cost of Flash memory.
So, even giving away their software wouldn’t help the Vole now. The only way it can even enter this particular race, is to join the ranks of open sourcery and allow users to experience software touched by the magic and beauty that is customisable free code. µ
L'Inq
Manchester
Grauniad
Comments
Vole die in wHole!
I saw this process gearing in acceleration. I tried linux and found out it is a cry of vengeance from the former favourite computer "Amiga" (or other unix based machines)About linux, I urge distros to keep the differences alive which adds security by default due to those differences.
Goodbye Microsoft on Security!
Manchester Grauniad...
Perhaps the Inq would care to explain to its US/foreign readers, who are unaware of the libel-suit plagued (?) Ingrams/Hislop edited rag (shurely shome mishtake?), the relevance of 'Manchester Grauniad' link when the linked pages says "the Guardian".....AT adds: The Guardian started in Manchester and is fabled for its relaxed attitude to typographic accuracy, hence it is known to all UK hacks as The Grauniad.
you call yourself a journalist?
wow, that wasn't a biased article at all. great reporting.Interesting
Nice article. I'm genuinely curious to see what Microsoft do about this as by killing XP they are killing their only (vaguely) viable ultraportable OS and they can't be left out of that market.It's all very well and good using XP for this now but that's obviously not sustainable in the longer term as it's on the way out.
So, the alternative is Vista but how do you get it to run properly on such low spec machines? I reckon the answer is that you can't, simple as that. So, Vista can't do it and XP is legacy (and we'll assume that Windows Mobile is just too light).
So, are we looking at a "new" OS, a bastardised XP-Vista hybrid? I reckon we are, there's just no other way for MS to compete here. Anyway, it'll be an interesting one to watch.
Amazing
The Inquirer has just about become unreadable these days. Did you guys fire all your journalists or did somebody spike the coffee with LSD?AT adds: Get someone to read it to you if you're having trouble with the big words.
Try again...
"To sweeten the pill, there is also a considerable price incentive in buying a basic portable with GNU/Linux installed as opposed to one with Windows XP, which not only costs about 30 per cent more, but also has the nerve to require more storage space and memory."Storage space, maybe. Memory, no.
My XP install uses less RAM at idle than the included Xandros install did.
No swap, and a properly stripped XP install (could have been made even lighter, but I'd like to retian SOME functionality) is what I've got on there. Runs like a dream, except that old games that want to run at 640x480 can't due to the driver not supporting that res on the internal LCD.
I used the default linux install for awhile, found it cumbersome compared to even stock Debian stable. XP install runs great, and I'm really not looking back.
Try again... again...
"My XP install uses less RAM at idle than the included Xandros install did"That's pretty extraordinary and counter to my experience.
Couple of things though - if you're running XP without swap, even if you have stripped/stopped a lot of the services from running, you will still need a lot of ram. If you're also running the 32bit version of XP I think you'll find that it can't address more than 3GB, so if you've got more than that I believe it just won't be used.
Linux, on the other hand (and the distro is pretty irrelevent) will use all of the free ram as cache and unless you can breakdown memory utlisation by type it will appear to be more memory hungry.
Funnily enough, you mention Debian stable, same as what I use here, and on the one dual-boot system I have (512MB ram) XP needs 800MB, swapping out 300MB as soon as it starts up whereas Linux needs about 200MB and then gradually uses the rest up as cache once I start accessing data.