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It just wouldn't make sense to msft financially. The sole purpose of cheap "netbook edition" is to prevent Linux installed base from increasing through OEM installations. However, they still have lots of money to make because people are ready to pay more for the full blown windows version on netbooks as well.

Even if only 20% of netbooks were running Linux, it's still a bleeding wound for msft; they were happily living in the thought that Linux is not ready for nontechnical consumers.

So you are saying MS is monopolist that uses price dumping to keep competitors out?
News at 11h.

Seriously, with more and more use cases moving to the web more custom build internet devices/computers will be needed and Windows7 even with its dozen more or less identical versions isn't flexible enough to work on those.

Android, Gnome and KDE etc. are.

Product differentiation is not price dumping. Why the hell does a home user need AD? Why does a business user need media center? I may not agree with the plethora of editions that Windows 7 or Vista have, but some product differentiation makes sense.

It would be better to just release one version of 7. Then offer the Business Extensions, Media Extensions, etc. as billable options.

All the options may be included on the install CD and/or downloaded from the Web.

If each module is licensed individually then you would need a key for each module. Thus you could purchase a key with the media from the EOM or from MSFT via the web.

This would allow a wider range of products and allow the user to get only what they want.

Perfectly true ... but it ignores the "opposition".

One can get (or leave out) whatever functionality one wants to using the alternative OS on netbooks, with absolutely no need to purchase anything at all.

All the options are available on the cd, and you can upgrade when ever you want, with Windows anytime upgrade.

It's still a rip-off, regardless of how quickly you can buy it or not. It's particularly a ripoff in the case of "starter," which it seems ms really wants to shove out to the netbook croud despite their assertions that starter will be removed from western markets. It is artificially limited, and there is absolutely no reason I should be required to pay to remove limitations that have no purpose other than to force me to upgrade.

It's still a rip-off, regardless of how quickly you can buy it or not. It's particularly a ripoff in the case of "starter," which it seems ms really wants to shove out to the netbook croud despite their assertions that starter will be removed from western markets. It is artificially limited, and there is absolutely no reason I should be required to pay to remove limitations that have no purpose other than to force me to upgrade. "

Precisely so. Exactly.

More and more, people are beginning to realise the rip-off that Windows is.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/microsoft-business-model-over...

Even some not-very-bright people are starting to realise it.

There is no problem at all with product differentiation. It makes perfect sense as you say to have different set of capabilities aimed at different users in different scenarios. Rather, Microsoft's problem on netbooks is strictly price differentiation.

How can a "product" ... which everyone knows is just a selective copy ... cost only a fraction of its normal price because one selected set contains AD but not multimedia and the other (far cheaper) selected set contains multimedia but not AD?

It would be all too patently obvious that this amounts to price dumping.

The other problem that Microsoft has is that the competing OS has true flexibility. One can install both Samba 4 (for AD) and ffmpeg (for media codecs), or only one, or neither one ... all for the same low price ($0). One can add or subtract such functionality at one's whim, with nothing to pay and no "activation" or "registration" or changed license conditions of any kind involved. There is also no risk at all of being audited and found to be in breach of EULAs or the like.

Edited 2009-03-09 23:58 UTC

When he refers to price dumping (more correctly, product dumping); he is probably meant regarding using one product to subsidise another product to undercut the competition through. To undercut and get a hold in the market then inflate the product price up once they have gained a strangle hold in the marketplace.

It would be very difficult to provide evidence of such a scheme - its one of those things that although one might 'see' it occuring, one still has to prove it with evidence. At the end of the day, however, the best way to beat Microsoft is to make Linux so easy to install on these devices that people can make the change easily.

How? release hardware specific distributions; all the building is automated so why not provide multiple builds targetting specific hardware versions; then from there provide a 'image creator' that runs in Windows, along with one click thumb drive creation tool.

When he refers to price dumping (more correctly, product dumping); he is probably meant regarding using one product to subsidise another product to undercut the competition through. To undercut and get a hold in the market then inflate the product price up once they have gained a strangle hold in the marketplace. It would be very difficult to provide evidence of such a scheme - its one of those things that although one might 'see' it occuring, one still has to prove it with evidence. "

When the ASUS EEEPC 701 first came out, it could only run Linux. Although fairly successful, it wasn't an enormous success primarily because the screen size was too small. A lot of people held out for a version with a larger screen.

When such a larger screen model came out, not only did it have a larger screen, but it now had a hard disk, and a significant price increase. Windows pre-installed was an option. On most of these newer models the wireless card was different, such that there was NO driver for that card in the then-current kernel. OEMs offered cut-down and locked versions of Linux.

As more and more models come out, they get more and more capable, and OEMs are correspondingly more and more reluctant to offer Linux pre-installed. The wireless cards keep changing as newer wireless drivers (for the older models) become supported in the Linux kernel.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23695/1154/

Hmmmmm. Consider that Microsoft recently sued Tom Tom over the long filenames for FAT patent (amongst others), and let slip that they sued Tom Tom and not other companies because other companies had done a patent deal with Microsoft (in violation of the GPL) ... and we can perhaps begin to see exactly how Microsoft are slowly eliminating Linux from being pre-installed on netbooks.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/66420.html?wlc=1236659691

"Put Linux on that machine and we will charge you royalties ... pay up or we will sue you".

But as you say ... almost impossible to prove ... apart from snippets that Microsoft themselves have accidentally let slip.



There are already specific distribution re-masters made explicitly for these devices. A google search of the model name and number plus "linux" will often bring up links to such re-masters as the top hit. People like Thom and Eugenia even know all about them, yet they still prefer instead to spread the meme that Linux doesn't install properly out of the box on netbooks.

It seems to me that the ONLY way to get Linux to the masses is to achieve a situation where a typical store is freely able to offer for sale the exact same machine with either OS and userland applications fully pre-installed in all its capability, displayed side-by-side in the store, with customers able to try and then choose, and for the retail price to accurately reflect any differences in the cost build-up of each machine, especially with respsect to the applications that are on display with each machine.

I can just see consumers looking at the exact same hardware on three machines, one running a full distribution of Linux with all desktop apps, one a bit more expensive running Windows (but slower because of the anti-virus) but with Notepad and Calc, and one three times the price running MS Windows (also slower) and MS Office.

Microsoft won't let that happen, IMO.

Edited 2009-03-10 04:42 UTC

So where does Microsoft fit into that equation? It sounds like all these decisions were motivated not by Microsoft but by decisions by OEM vendors. These were decisions made - and thus it isn't Microsofts fault for decisions made by OEM's. I hate the fact that Compaq deliberately chooses to bundle Broadcom wireless chipsets with their AMD laptops - is it Microsofts fault that Broadcom fails to work with the opensoruce community? is it Microsoft's fault because Compaq chooses to use a chipset from a company who is hostile to the opensource community?



Well I said this a while back that it was stupid to rely on Microsoft technology; FAT needs to be replaced; and a file system driver for Windows could easily be written and provided so that Windows users could access this new file system.I said this about SAMBA as well and the patent threats and it would be best to create replacement to Microsoft stack using CUPS and NFS, and create drivers/software for the Windows world so that they can access these services.

Each time I mentioned this I was shouted down and screaed at by the devotee's of such projects - well, its all come home to roost. I don't want to sound like I'm boasting but..I told you so.



By Unbuntu? where is the respin of Ubuntu specifically for Acer Aspire One? EEE PC? HP Mini? All these need to be easily accesible through one website; one should need to search - it should stand out like a sore thumb; but the fault of that isn't Linux or the opensource community but the crappy marketing by distributions.



Even if they did do that; its almost a certainty that they would stuff up the implementation just like they stuffed up Linux on the Netbooks. Maybe I'm just being a conspiracy theorist but I wonder whether Linux on the netbook was more of a way to use as linux leverage to getting a good deal on Windows.

For me, ArchLinux (which I am using right now) has provided the best experience; its required some work on my part but it does demonstrate that if the OEM is willing to do the work - Linux can be superior to Windows on the same device. What has been demonstrated so far is that OEM's don't want to do the work; they'd sooner just chuck the OS on the machine, cram it full of crapware and then shunt it off to the customer.



Name one OEM who hasn't cocked up providing Linux on the desktop. I've yet to see a single OEM vendor who hasn't cocked it up. Maybe your hatred should be directed at the OEM's instead of Microsoft because ultimately it is the OEM who dictates whether or not the integration is good or bad.

Ubuntu runs on a six-month release cycle. If <some function> wasn't in the last release, then you must wait six months as only security-critical updates (generally, not functionality updates) will occur between releases.

Therefore, the release by Ubuntu that will work out of the box with the netbooks that you mention is here:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/jaunty/alpha5
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/JauntyJackalope/Alpha5/Kubuntu
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/jaunty/alpha-5/

Be advised that it is still in Alpha release. If you want stable software, wait till the end of April before this is released.



http://system76.com/

http://www.zareason.com/shop/home.php

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&...



Hatred? What hatred?

I'm just pointing out the obviously terrible "deal" that Microsoft offers to consumers, and the utter lack of a free market in personal computers.

Where is there hatred in that? Is one who speaks up on behalf of the consumer's interest automatically a Microsoft hater?

If one is, then what does that say about Microsoft?

Edited 2009-03-10 08:33 UTC

Well? Is it?

What if, behind closed doors, Microsoft were to offer an OEM a better price for Windows if they agreed to use opensource-hostile chipsets in their product?

What if, behind closed doors, Microsoft were to offer a chipset manufacturer incentives for OEMs to use their chipsets if the chipset manufacturers in turn were to refuse to publish the specifications of said chipsets?

Are such things utterly impossible, in your view?

Do you also believe in the tooth fairy?

PS: I make the simple observation that, in the timeframe when Microsoft was only a minor player amongst any number of software vendors, chipset manufacturers would fall over themselves to publish their chipset specifications, so that as many software houses as possible would write code to support their new chips.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader's imagination to try to think of how that situation got all turned around.

Edited 2009-03-10 08:50 UTC

Unetbootin can do thumb drive creation. It's been available for some time now.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

I fully agree with you. With all the Ubuntu, CentOS, whatever Linux variants you get completely unrestricted stuff, for free.
One can only hope, the OEMs are smart enough to demand the fully blown Win7 version for a really small price, and point Microsoft towards what the competitors are offering.
Then we will all profit from competition which has been lacking for too long in this space.

It is all about price and keeping Linux out.

How can Microsoft offer a decent non-limited version of Windows 7 on a netbook at a low price competitive with Linux?

How can Microsoft offer a sufficiently crippled and cheap version of Windows 7 on a netbook to make upgrading to a non-limited pricy version attractive, yet still not tarnish the reputation of Windows 7 as being crippleware or make it look hopelessly incapable compared to a full version of Linux on the same hardware?

IMO this is "between a rock and a hard place" stuff for Microsoft. They will only get one crack at it ... muck it up with Windows 7 and they will start to lose their lock-in grip on the market.

What price? If there is only one version of Windows 7, presumably (to be legal) it would be the same price everywhere. Otherwise we are looking at a case of dumping the product on one market in order to kill competition, aren't we?

So would it be a netbook-compatible price (about $5 to OEMs), or instead would it be a "MS can make a profit" price?

Edited 2009-03-10 04:50 UTC