On Thursday 22 December 2005 14:35, Julian Hall wrote: > > Easy way to force them.. decrease the subsidies they give on new > machines if they have ATI graphics. > > Call me suspicious if you like but that's my belief.
OK - I'll bite. I call you, "suspicious" :-P > I suspect this is very near the truth. Microsoft feel threatened by > Linux. Linux users have been seen to like laptops with Nvidia > graphics, ergo if MS can force suppliers to fit ATI graphics they > think that will slow down the spread of Linux. > First off, as much as I would love to believe that MS would resort to forcing suppliers to ATi to "slow the spread of Linux", I just can't see it happening. Suppliers choose the hardware they bundle based on the simple metric of cost. Most likely ATi offers a better deal for laptops than NVidia. Who knows? Whatever the reasons, I doubt that very much that Linux even factors. Though I (like to) believe that MS is paranoid enough to feel threatened by Linux, in all seriousness do you honestly believe that MS will tell a retailer like HP something like, "we want you to switch to ATi in your *laptops* and drop NVidia because we fear Linux. ATi offers crappy Linux support so we want you use those chipsets." Really? As much as I enjoy the thought of MS fearing Linux, I suspect most of the fear is directed towards: 1. Server installations 2. Enterprise installations (which probably imply very locked down desktops) Neither of the above could really care less about the particular graphic chipset and whether or not 3D acceleration is hardware available. The reality is that the Linux *desktop* market has been hunkered down around single percent digits for some time now (comparable to Mac). And of the desktop Linux users, an even smaller percentage probably use Linux on their laptops. I don't see anyone, not MS, not HP, not Dell, not Gateway, etc thinking too much about Linux on the desktop and even less about Linux on laptops. Just my $0.02. Cheers -=R -- Rudolph Pienaar, M.Eng, D.Eng / email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] MGH/MIT/HMS Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 149 (2301) 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129 USA _______________________________________________ LinuxR3000 mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxr3000 Wiki at http://prinsig.se/weekee/
