Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 2nd Nov 2009 23:59 UTC
Windows 7 has been out and about for little over a week now, and as it turns out, Microsoft's new baby is doing relatively well. That is, according to the figures by NetApplications: Windows 7 already reached the 3% mark this weekend, and is already closing in on the 4% mark.
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RE[16]: Windows market share
by tomcat on Thu 5th Nov 2009 08:11
in reply to "RE[15]: Windows market share"
Member since:2006-01-06
MSI claimed the return rate was high, but when MSI put Linux on their machines they used a poor implementation of SuSe with a dodgy wireless driver.
And this is somehow supposed to be a selling point for Linux-based netbooks?
Ask Dell (who used Ubuntu). The return rate for Linux was the same as the return rate for Windows, and it was very low.
Let's put this in terms you can understand. By your own admission, Dell sells Windows on about 70% of all netbooks today. That's over twice the number of Linux netbooks sold. [Personally, I think the percentage of Windows-based netbooks in the broader market is probably closer to 95%. But I digress.]
Here's what Dell says: "The number of Linux returns are approximately the same as those for Windows netbooks." Read that line carefully. He didn't say the return percentage. He said "the number of returns." What that means (to the mathematically challenged) is that more than twice as many Linux netbooks are being returned as Windows netbooks. Wow. That must burn. Kind of like a vampire getting hit with holy water.
Au contraire, it is you who have provided absolutely no backup to support your take on things.
Great. You ignore my points, erect a strawman, whip it, and then declare victory. You live in a strange world. You made NO progress in demonstrating that Microsoft impedes the ability of any OEM to install Linux on a netbook. As I mentioned earlier, MS is forbidden by consent decree from preventing OEMs from choosing alternate platforms. And if, as you claim, Linux is as good as you think it is, there's no reason why Linux can't run on any MS-spec'd hardware.
Microsoft's problems here are many ... making it inexpensive removes headroom for Microsoft to charge for their OS. Microsoft don't have a wear-levelling filesystem.
Again, so what. Microsoft's hardware spec doesn't preclude Linux from competing. It either works -- or it doesn't. If you don't think it works, then take your ball and go home. Otherwise, stop blaming MS for failure of Linux to own the netbook market.
RE[17]: Windows market share
by lemur2 on Thu 5th Nov 2009 09:58
in reply to "RE[16]: Windows market share"
Member since:2007-02-17
"MSI claimed the return rate was high, but when MSI put Linux on their machines they used a poor implementation of SuSe with a dodgy wireless driver.
And this is somehow supposed to be a selling point for Linux-based netbooks? "
No, it is a comment on the stupidity of some OEMs. When MSI designed their U90 netbook, the only OS that it would run was Linux (as XP was being withdrawn). Yet they designed in a wireless chip that had only an experimental Linux driver, even though there were plenty of other wireless chips they could have used without a problem.
How stupid was that? THEN they complained that people were returning their MSI netbooks because of flaky wireless! Der!
"Ask Dell (who used Ubuntu). The return rate for Linux was the same as the return rate for Windows, and it was very low.
Let's put this in terms you can understand. By your own admission, Dell sells Windows on about 70% of all netbooks today. That's over twice the number of Linux netbooks sold. [Personally, I think the percentage of Windows-based netbooks in the broader market is probably closer to 95%. But I digress.] "
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140343/Linux_s_share_of_net...
Nearly one-third of the 35 million netbooks on track to ship this year will come with some variant of the free, open-source operating system, ABI Research said. The exact split is 32% Linux versus 68% Windows, said Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI, which works out to about 11 million Linux netbooks this year.
68%, but we digress.
Here's what Dell says: "The number of Linux returns are approximately the same as those for Windows netbooks." Read that line carefully. He didn't say the return percentage. He said "the number of returns." What that means (to the mathematically challenged) is that more than twice as many Linux netbooks are being returned as Windows netbooks. Wow. That must burn. Kind of like a vampire getting hit with holy water.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/dell_reality_linux_windows_...
we don't see a significant difference between the return rate for Windows versus the rate for Linux. We've been quite pleased with the stability and technical soundness of the Linux machines.
Dell said "return rate".
http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/13/dell-refutes-high-linux-netbook-...
Dell's Senior Product Marketing Manager Todd Finch is refuting that last claim, saying "we don't see a significant difference between the return rate for Windows versus the rate for Linux."
Yep. "return rate" is what Dell's Finch said.
As I mentioned earlier, MS is forbidden by consent decree from preventing OEMs from choosing alternate platforms.
Being forbidden doesn't stop Microsoft from doing it, however.
And if, as you claim, Linux is as good as you think it is, there's no reason why Linux can't run on any MS-spec'd hardware.
Oh, it can. MS-spec'd hardware is actually an overkill for Linux. It actually pushes the price of netbooks up higher than it needs to be.
"Microsoft's problems here are many ... making it inexpensive removes headroom for Microsoft to charge for their OS. Microsoft don't have a wear-levelling filesystem.
Again, so what. Microsoft's hardware spec doesn't preclude Linux from competing. It either works -- or it doesn't. If you don't think it works, then take your ball and go home. Otherwise, stop blaming MS for failure of Linux to own the netbook market. "
It makes the price higher than it needs to be. That is bad for consumers.
Oh, and it makes the performance way worse. If an SSD was just flash memory with a direct block I/O to a CPU bus, with the wear-levelling built into the filesystem, then it would be far faster than a hard disk.
Instead, to accommodate Microsoft OSes lack of a wear-levelling filesystem, SSDs are built with a microcontroller to do the wear-levelling, which slows it all own.
BTW ... 32% of the worldwide market this year for Linux is hardly a failure. Now if it were only possible to somehow get through to those like you who will not listen, it would become possible to save you too a great deal of expense for your computing.
Edited 2009-11-05 10:10 UTC
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Member since:
2007-02-17
I'm sorry, but I call BS.
MSI claimed the return rate was high, but when MSI put Linux on their machines they used a poor implementation of SuSe with a dodgy wireless driver.
Ask Dell (who used Ubuntu). The return rate for Linux was the same as the return rate for Windows, and it was very low.
So was the marketing claim from Redmond, which you apparently swalled whole. The actual truth lies somehwere else entirely.
You see, Dell also point out that they still sell about one third of their netbook machines with Linux.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/one-third-of-dell-inspiron-mini-9s-sold-r...
http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/News/Dell-Linux-vs.-Windows-...
Netbooks with Linux are in no way being returned more often than those with Windows -- at least not those from Dell. This according to Todd Finch, senior product marketing manager at the world's second largest PC provider, at OpenSource World in San Francisco. Finch described Microsoft's claim that consumers returned Linux netbooks at a rate four to five times that of Windows as "making something of nothing."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/dell_reality_linux_windows_...
Au contraire, it is you who have provided absolutely no backup to support your take on things.
http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/314907/dell_looks_linux_expand_net...
I can keep going all day here.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5214623279.html
Now this is interesting.
What I think would really sell is a very low-power 11-inch 1280x800 screen (perhaps a Pixel-Qi screen) at the overall same size as current 10-inch netbook models (by removing the wide bezel). Give it 4GB RAM, and a dual core processor at 2GHz. Make it cheap, use an SSD (say 32GB, and low power ... no moving parts) direct to the I/O system (so therefore very fast) and use a wear-levelling non-journalling filesystem. With decent design choices, such a system could easily perform better than current high-end laptops, but use so little power that they would be lightweight, still netbook-class-small, hence ultraportable, and able to run for a couple of days on a single charge.
Such a machine would gut the higher-end laptop/notebook market, IMHO.
Microsoft's problems here are many ... making it inexpensive removes headroom for Microsoft to charge for their OS. Microsoft don't have a wear-levelling filesystem. There is no use case for such a machine that would mandate expensive Windows-only proprieatary applications. People might want to use copies they already own of legacy binary-only (32 bit) applications, but a 32-bit Windows OS on a 32-bit machine can't use all of the 4GB of RAM. Microsoft's bloated OS offerings wouldn't leave much room on the SSD disk for users files. Because of the complex instruction decoders, the x86 architecture uses extra power consumption per core, so a dual core x86 doesn't make as much sense in an ultra-low-power design as an ARM chip.
Linux on such a system would have none of these issues at whatsoever. It would fly.
Microsoft don't want people to know this kind of information.
So Microsoft use their existing dominant postion to preclude innovative new non-Windows designs such as these from getting a foothold.