At 07:35 AM 11/15/2007, Robert G. Brown wrote:
On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Mark Hahn wrote:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=203100228&printable=true
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614#Specifications
I'm a little surprised by this - personally, I think there's a large,
under-developed market for minimal-function PCs. haven't we all
met people who think that the web browser _is_ not only the
internet, but also the computer? but I wonder whether there aren't some of you
out there buying up these boxes to make clusters.
Damn, I jumped Universes again. No wonder I have a headache -- it
always happens when I pass through one of the wandering
eight-dimensional singularities and wake up in a different quantum
timeline. In my old one we just had a really long discussion on this
last week, and now it, and the list archives from that manifold -- all
lost.
It is really interesting to see that they've sold out. I do agree that
there IS a vast potential linux desktop market out there -- never moreso
than today, when Vista of Evil is "mandatory" on all new computers, is
expensive, and truly, truly sucks. Dissatisfaction with Windows has
probably never been higher, and I observe cover stories on computing
magazines that have traditionally loved advertisement-buying Microsoft
over decades trumpeting the fact that Mac OS's Cat of the Month
(Leopard?) is banging Vista in the marketplace as a consequence.
That dissatisfaction is among the small subset of consumers who read
Slashdot or this list or who write for and read those magazines. For
them Vista is a pain.
However, among other consumer populations, Vista may not be such a
pain. For example, my younger daughter is enamored of a website (and
corresponding collectable "baseball cards") called Bella Sara... It
has lots of flash based animations. On her laptop (with XP SP2,
etc.) it has periodic "issues" where something hiccups and it wants
to send an error report to MS. On my wife's laptop (with Vista), it
runs seamlessly with no problems.
So, as far as user experience goes.. a consumer who buys an
inexpensive Vista laptop today will probably have a better experience
(watching DVDs, loading their iPod, webbing, emailing, etc.) than
they are having with their 3 year old laptop running XP. partly it's
just because of more CPU HP, etc. But partly, it's because their XP
installation is now 3 years old and has accumulated 3 years of
program installs and removals, a couple or three dozen updates from
Microsoft, etc. As generally troublefree the Windows Update process
is (if you have a vanilla install with a few games and MS Office and
aren't in there hacking around, it works pretty well), it's
inevitable that there will be some incompatibilities, etc.
At
home I predict that their biggest drawback will be the usual --
printers, cameras, other consumer peripherals that require device
specific drivers, and the lack of media codecs. We're rapidly
approaching a time when the latter is a show-stopper. MP3 and DVD may
be encumbered, Linux may be allergic to encumberance and have excellent
reasons for being so, but without a pre-installed, fully functional
music player that can manage the encumbered formats and without a
perfectly smooth and functional DVD player preinstalled and ready to
roll, a lot of people will end up unhappy with them.
indeed.. this is a deal-killer for most consumers. Remember, the PC
isn't perceived as a general purpose computing device. It's a DVD
player, CD to MP3 converter, and email/IM access device. A fancy
TV/VCR/Stereo/Game console, or appliance, if you will.
Most consumers do not buy a PC for software development or office
functionality. They buy it for entertainment.
_______________________________________________
Beowulf mailing list, [email protected]
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
