“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.”
I’ve already payed the Vista/MS(Not my choice) tax this year.
Linux for me please!
$80 extra for XP is disgraceful and on top of that your getting a 7 year old OS with 2001 software.
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.
Then why are they asking more price for the XP version with a lesser spec, dont tell me MS are giving their licenses away free.
If anything it should be cheaper since XP’s support gets pulled in a few months.
Edited 2008-04-14 19:32 UTC
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
On the 900 model about to ship WinXP comes with 12GB ssd and Xandros with 20GB. That would persuade enough to buy the Linux version and copy/pirate an existing copy of XP onto it.
Why would you want to put XP on it? Granted, I’d rather put Mandriva or Ubuntu or Debian on it than Xandros, but I wouldn’t want XP on it.
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
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.
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.
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. [/q]
This is perhaps the case for Windows when you are replacing an old desktop with a new one … if you don’t buy a new Windows license, then the old machine from which you are transferring the license must be destroyed. You can’t put one copy of Windows on two machines.
Normally this isn’t done anyway … the new machine would typically already have a paid-for license on it. It is bloody near impossible to buy a new machine without such a new Windows paid-for license anyway.
Happily, in the case of the EEEPC, we can in fact do just that … we are able here to buy a new machine without Windows already infecting it.
Note also that almost no-one is going to do what you suggest with an EEEPC … that is, buy a new EEEPC without a Windows license, then wipe the EEEPC and transfer the license from an existing Windows machine they have, probably a desktop, and then destroy that desktop machine and continue all their computing on the new EEEPC.
That just isn’t going to happen. It is pure fantasy on your part to suggest it.
That is exactly what I already said.
For software that you might want to run on your new EEEPC that doesn’t require you to purchase a new copy … you can probably already run the same software under Linux anyway.
So you don’t need, or want to, put XP oon your new EEEPC. It is counter-productive. You are unnecessarily costing yourself money, and you are going backwards.
Yes, the OEM software can be installed only in the machine it comes with. But most OEM software is junk 🙂
This does not apply to Windows itself… if we buy a computer with Windows to use software for Windows, we already get Windows with it…
When you buy a new car, there are a lot of parts you may not like. But they’re part of the car, and most people prefer a complete car over an incomplete car where you need to assembly some parts.
The only thing I don’t like is that the license isn’t transferable, while you can sell the parts of a car.
For the EEE, yes. But in a general view, no.
When I buy a new car, I have a choice … I can buy one with a diesel engine, or one with an dual-fuel (LPG/petrol) capability, or indeed I can now even get a hybrid petrol/electric car, instead of just the normal petrol-engine car … if I so desire.
Typically I am not offered such a choice of “engine” when I buy a new computer. Typically I am offered only a slow-as-molasses bloatware/adware/trialware combination of Vista + rubbish … which is written for the benefit of other parties not for me, as seen by the presence of DRM, WGA, lock-in-ware such as IE, WMP and Windows networking, and the afore-mentioned rubbishware.
Happily, new offerings such as the EEEPC and the Ubuntu offerings from Dell, Zareason and System76 are just recently starting to change this situation for the better.
Edited 2008-04-16 01:00 UTC
And in what is this different from a car? A car with the engine I want may not come in the color I like, or I may not like the shape of the body, or vice versa. You have a little choice of optionals and colors, but that’s it, everything else is choosen by the manufacturer, and there is very little you can do about that. You just choose the car wich comes as close as possible to your desires.
It used to be the same with computers until the assembled market arose. It would be great to have an assembled market for cars as well (so we can scrap those petrol engines), but it is not going to happen for the time being (not that it is all bad: if your computer crashes, nobody gets hurt).
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.
… except where it isn’t nonsense … which is the case most of the time, and is particularly the case with common Microsoft EULAs.
Example?
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
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
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?
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?
Easy. You don’t NEED an eeePC. You just WANT one! It is called the CGF (Cool & Geeky Factor)
Exactly. I have a nice 13″ laptop but I’m thinking of one of these small toys for AROS or Syllable.
Excellent! The CFG is good enough, thanks! 😉
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…
Microsoft is keeping XP alive for devices that have limited processing resources like eePC is such a device.
It sure is sad to see Vista sucking so badly that Microsoft is forced to waste huge amounts of money when trying to develope new versions of XP that could run on machines not designed to run Windows, just because they know “there’s no coming back from Linux”…
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!
What happens when Microsoft stop selling XP in June ?
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