"Asus has big plans for its little laptop and to the dismay of purists and Penguinistas, those plans centre on Windows. The company expects to sell five million Eee PCs this year, and Asus CEO Jerry Shen predicts that 'about 60 percent of these' will run XP rather than the Xandros OS with which the mini-note debuted."
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There are no bounds to Microsoft's greed and the customer loses just like with Vista Ultimate.
Except... This is Asus' asking price. Not Microsoft's. Asus gets the required OEM licenses MUCH cheaper than 80 USD.
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There are no bounds to Microsoft's greed and the customer loses just like with Vista Ultimate.
Correction - you get a 7 year old OS with no userland software to speak of for your $80. You also get all the vulnerabilities to a massive array of malware which is already "out there in the wild".
Since it is a new machine, you also have to pay again for a new license all your extra proprietary userland software applications, which is going to end up costing you a whole lot more than $80. Unless of course you use the same FOSS userland applications ... which run on the EEEPC variant with a Linux OS installed anyway.
So ... there is no upside to getting the XP variant. Only downside.
If you do get an EEEPC ... my strong recommendation is to do yourself a big favour and go with the Linux variant.
Edited 2008-04-15 02:10 UTC
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Why would you want to put XP on it?
Come one. You should know the answer to that question. Just look at market dominance in the home user and business sectors and you will see that Windows is an easy sell to people. Markets are pretty much blind. They are rules by previous learning and sticking with what is comfortable. If you want to make cash you go after the biggest markets. This is capitalism 101 my friend.
Edited 2008-04-14 19:40 UTC
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Perhaps because you can run your current Windows software? "
Read the EULA for most software that is Windows-only: it will say that you need a new copy of the software to run on a new machine.
So no ... you can't run "your current Windows software" on your new EEEPC ... you would typically have to buy a new copy for non-FOSS software.
For FOSS software such as OpenOffice and Firefox et al ... you can run that on the EEPC with Linux ... you don't need the Windows variant for that.
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Perhaps because you can run your current Windows software? "
Read the EULA for most software that is Windows-only: it will say that you need a new copy of the software to run on a new machine.
So no ... you can't run "your current Windows software" on your new EEEPC ... [/q]
Before telling someone to read the EULA, you should do it yourself! Most EULAs does NOT say you have to buy a new copy if you buy a new PC, they say the software can be installed on one computer at once. Since most people replace the old computer when buying a new one, they can just delete the software from the old one and install it on the new one.
And there's free and open software for Windows, too. And often it's the same that runs on Linux, so you can get both Windows and Linux software running... just buy Windows.
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It depends on the EULA but, if I may generalize, most EULAs allow you to run software on one machine at a time. Some EULAs permit you to install the software on more than one machine, as long as you don't use it simultaneously on those machines. The bottom line is that you can't arbitrarily say that all EULAs prevent you from reinstalling software from one machine to another. That's nonsense.
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Perhaps because you can run your current Windows software? "
If you make it run Windows, then it can only use either FAT or NTFS as the filesystem, which is very much not recommended for flash filesystems.
Explained here:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?309589
... and here ...
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?309591
You need to run a log-structured filesystem with flash memory SSDs. On Windows, the only log-structured filesystem is UDF, and AFAIK that isn't an option when you install XP to the EEEPC.
Edited 2008-04-15 06:37 UTC
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Because the XP version of the eeePC is the version which isn't pre-loaded with cruft.
A lot of computer manufacturers reduce costs by pre-installing software that gives kickbacks. And the eeePC's pre-loaded software list includes a lot of commercial interests: Google, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Skype, Wikipedia, et al.
If $80 is the tax we have to pay to not have our computers preloaded with dubious 'helpful' software and adverts that we have to spend weeks removing -- if, indeed, they can be removed at all -- then I'll pay that extra $80.
EDIT: Accursed time limit on catching errors.
Edited 2008-04-15 15:34 UTC
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do you own an eeepc now past it's week of cruft removal? i'd move too mandriva so avoiding the ms tax even for a crufty xandros pre-install would be better for me. it is a seriuos question though as you are the first mention of the eeepc needing a week's worth of cleaning. anyone else out there have xandros crufties too remove on their eeepc?
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I'm trying to persuade myself into buying an eeePC. I really want one. But do I need one? I don't travel, I have an ok desktop/HTPC for surfing, "distro-hopping", music and movies. I have a Nokia N800 just for fun.
Why do I need an eeePC?
Maybe I can buy it to get a copy of XP! You know you never know, one day I might need XP and soon I won't be able to buy a copy.
Yes I definitely need XP. Don't I?
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I thought XP was set to be End Of Lifed in the very near future?
So, why would I want to buy one of these when support is about to vanish?
Seems pretty stupid to me, unless Asus knows something the rest of the industry doesn't, but that common sense and flagging Vista sales tell us...
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I'm excited to see more XP systems because it is good for the WINE project. I don't intend on using XP, but I would really hate to see everything go to Vista quickly. If this happens it will mean that new software will start requiring Vista at exactly the time that WINE is able to run most significant programs on XP.
Thus, I'm very happy to see Microsoft dragging its feet and having to use XP.
Long live XP!
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If you need to run Windows software thru your linux Eee PC, you can always use the built in wireless capability and rdesktop to connect to your windows XP Pro machine by using ThinServer XP. That way you do not need to get the XP version
Personally I find the Eee PC screen too small
http://www.aikotech.com/thinserver.htm