Asus Eee: A Watershed For Linux?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Why falling Flash prices threaten Microsoft

The surprise success of the Asus Eee could mark a change in how people view open source — and cause problems for Windows

# Glyn Moody
# The Guardian,
# Thursday March 6 2008

It seems that the £200 ultraportable Asus Eee PC can do no wrong. The size of a paperback, weighing less than a kilogram, with built-in Wi-Fi and using Flash memory instead of a hard drive for storage, the Eee PC has been winning positive comments not just from hyperventilating hardware reviewers, but also from ordinary people who have actually bought it.

According to an (admittedly biased, because it was self-selecting) online survey of 1,000 users on the independent Eee PC site eeeuser.com, around 4% were dissatisfied with their purchase, 33% found the system pretty much what they expected and 62% thought it was even better than they had hoped.

Looking through the thousands of postings in eeeuser.com's user forums, the same comments keep coming up: it's so small, the build quality is high, it boots up quickly, it just works. In fact, it's hard to find many negative points. Most are about the placing of the right-hand shift key, the small size of the keyboard, the limited battery life and the slightly awkward mousepad. One thing that is almost never mentioned as a problem is the fact that the Eee PC is running not Windows, but a variant of GNU/Linux.

Better in store

Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the signal achievements of the Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a front end that hides the richness of the underlying GNU/Linux. It divides programs up into a few basic categories - Internet, Work, Learn, Play - and then provides large, self-explanatory icons for the main programs within each group. The result is that anyone can use the system without training or even handholding.

This combination of good functionality and out-of-the box ease of use with a price so low that it's almost at the impulse-buy level could prove problematic for Microsoft. Until now, there has been no obvious advantage for the average user in choosing GNU/Linux over Windows on the desktop, and plenty of disadvantages.

The price differential has been slight, and there has always been the problem of learning new ways of working. The Asus Eee PC changes all that. Because the form factor is so different, people don't seem to make direct comparisons with the desktop PC, and therefore don't expect the user experience to be identical.

The price differential between the basic Eee PC running GNU/Linux and one running Windows XP is now significant as a proportion of the total cost. One of the main suppliers of the Asus Eee PC, RM, sells the GNU/Linux version with 4Gb of storage and 512Mb of RAM for £199. The cheapest machine running Windows XP costs £259, 30% more, not least because Microsoft's operating system needs more storage and memory - 8GB and 1GB respectively. It is that difference, far more than any cost of licensing Windows, which means that Linux-based machines can remain consistently cheaper.

That disparity seems likely to increase when Microsoft phases out Windows XP at the end of June. Vista costs more than Windows XP and it requires a minimum of 15GB of storage for installation of even the most basic version. In order to run Vista on the Eee PC, users will need to buy models - currently non-existent - with much more Flash memory.

At least Moore's Law should mean that the price of memory chips will continue to plummet. For example, in 2001 $8 (£4)would have bought you around 8MB of Flash memory, whereas in 2011 it will buy you 8GB, according to projections by Gartner. As a result, Alan Brown, Gartner's research director for semiconductors, says the price of ultraportables like the Eee PC "could decline about 15% within three years to between £160 and £170".

The UK company Elonex has already set an even lower price point: it has just announced its own ultraportable, called The One, which offers most of the features of the Eee PC for £100. Other companies that have launched, or announced, similar machines running GNU/Linux include Acer, Everex, and the Australian company Pioneer Computers; even HP seems to have one on the way. At least one manufacturer of traditional portables is worried by the downward trend in prices. According to Cnet, Sony's Mike Abrams commented: "If [the Eee PC from] Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom."

This makes the relative cost of systems running Microsoft's products greater. The argument that its software is "worth more" because it has more features is unlikely to cut much ice as users discover that functionality of the kind offered by Firefox and OpenOffice.org is fine for most everyday uses - the target market for these new small devices. Moreover, the rise of free browser-based online services such as Gmail and the Google Docs office suite means you can get by with just Firefox.

The situation in developing countries is even worse. Not only must Microsoft and its partners compete with new low-cost portable GNU/Linux systems specifically designed for these markets, like the XO-1 from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project or Intel's Classmate PC, but they must also sell against unauthorised copies of Microsoft's products, which are routinely available on the streets for a few dollars. To combat this, Microsoft has started selling copies of Windows for around $3 in these markets.

Size does matter

Although this kind of bargain basement pricing helps make its products competitive with low-cost alternatives like open source or unauthorised copies, Microsoft's profit margin is cut close to zero. That's not necessarily a disaster for a company with huge cash reserves, but it could be dire for one planning to take on billions of dollars of debt - as Microsoft has said it will need to do in order to finance the acquisition of Yahoo. What if it is forced to extend this kind of pricing to western markets in order to match the cheap GNU/Linux systems in this "race to the bottom"?

The first effects may already be being felt. Notably, last week Microsoft cut the cost of retail copies of Vista, apparently because people don't see it as a necessary upgrade at the prices charged. While the vast majority of Windows "upgrades" will still come through people buying new PCs, as corporate customers hold back, the erosion of Microsoft's ability to set prices for its operating system - and perhaps more importantly its hugely profitable Office suite - could spread deep into its product suite.

And if people don't think that the extra features of Vista are worth the price, at least at retail, it makes the argument that Windows is "worth more" than Linux harder to sustain. It's an interesting - and, for Microsoft, critical - question just how low the price of these "basic but good enough" portables can go.

The original target price of the OLPC machine was around $100, but its designer, Mary-Lou Jepsen, already thinks she can do better. She says that a $75 system is "within reach," and she set up a new company, Pixel Qi, to help realise that vision.

In the process, she hopes to spawn an entirely new generation of computers. "We'll have decent, highly portable, rugged, multi-use computers everywhere. That poses constraints on the circumstances of use - the input aspects and the screens, the networking and the software, all will have to evolve." If they're to be cheap enough for many people in developing countries to buy, these systems will almost certainly be using open source, but Jepsen doesn't see the zero price tag as its main advantage: "The true and large value of free [software] is the ability to change and customise it."

In other words, Microsoft could give away its software, and it still couldn't compete with the truly open, customisable nature of free code. It seems that the only way Microsoft can hope to get people using its software on this new class of low-cost, ultraportable machines is by going fully open source itself.

· Glyn Moody writes about open source at opendotdotdot.blogspot.com

Having seen this in action on The Gadget Show last week against the new Vaio and MacBook Air, I am impressed by it. I believe it only lost out to the Sony on the grounds of the battery life and lack of being able to use proprietary media codecs, which can easily be remedied by installing Ubuntu, for instance. I hope this is a trend towards cheaper, well built, yet functional laptops and other computer devices not coming with MS stuff preloaded.

[Resinence]

Been planning to get one of these and dump an ultra-lite linux-from-scratch build onto it to use as a dumb XDMCP terminal at home and for simple stuff at uni, might do that this week now you reminded me. But I think these machines really are perfect for linux. You can't run games on them so the winlocked gamer market doesn't buy them, and so doesn't spam everywhere about how shit they are. And practically everything else can be done in linux these days, even people who know what they are doing will buy them for like I will, dumb xservers and as a cheap machine for when you don't need awesome grunt (all the time except games or compiling). And for the hoards of pc illiterate people, they have a nice shiny easy-to-use interface. Everyone wins. And they are CHEAP.

I too, cannot find anything wrong with them.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Also, another "Windows is collapsing" article.

Windows may be bloated crap at the best of times, but I don't see it (or in-built operating systems) vanishing. Online applications are good, especially when combined with a cheap and functional system like this Asus. I have to say, having started using Google Docs, I find it far more useful than booting up MS Office or OO.org.

[Praxis]

Windows may be bloated crap at the best of times, but I don't see it (or in-built operating systems) vanishing.

I don't think anyone thinks Windows is going to just vanish, but this is a pretty big crack in Microsoft's monopoly armor if the trend continues.

And these articles have a point- I mean, the system requirements for Vista are huge. Now that we've finally hit a point that PCs can be built for less than the cost of a retail copy of Windows, but with much lower (but still adequate) specifications, something's gotta give. Microsoft can't really strip the bloat out of Vista without crippling it, so that low-end market is pretty much off limits to them at this point in time, and consumers are going to start getting fed up with their ridiculously high price points on the retail software.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I don't think anyone thinks Windows is going to just vanish, but this is a pretty big crack in Microsoft's monopoly armor if the trend continues.

And these articles have a point- I mean, the system requirements for Vista are huge. Now that we've finally hit a point that PCs can be built for less than the cost of a retail copy of Windows, but with much lower (but still adequate) specifications, something's gotta give. Microsoft can't really strip the bloat out of Vista without crippling it, so that low-end market is pretty much off limits to them at this point in time, and consumers are going to start getting fed up with their ridiculously high price points on the retail software.

The company I work for is a world leader in the field. The area of expertise I'm in requires computers to be used for data analysis and reporting. WE have a grand total of TWO computers with Windows XP in our department, out of a couple of dozen PCs. They got upgraded only recently, and only because the previous Dell base units died. There is no intention of upgrading to XP any time soon.

I have to wonder how anyone can seriously consider upgrading to Vista when plenty of companies, like mine, use Windows 2000 for all their tasks quite happily. In fact, I don't think a lot of our lab software and hardware would work with XP, let alone that bloated dreck that is Vista.

If Microsoft think they can carry on this way, then they've another thing coming. There's already been talk of certain parts of our operation converting to Linux where they can. Big business getting sick of MS leaving them behind and personal computer users finding stuff outside of Windows and Mac (with an added cost benefit) is going to hurt them hard.

I also hope MS hasn't had any real exposure to the credit crisis somewhere down the line. They may seem unstoppable giants today, but many said the same of Bear Stearns and Northern Rock. With the Xbox and Yahoo! acquisition to think about, that warchest of cash could easily get hit.

[Hawkwings]

Apparently Microsoft is trying to talking this bolt problem in Windows 7. We'll see how well they do.

[Durandal]

Year of the Linux Desktop, Take 17.

Here's the problem with this strategy. It's meant to appeal to Linux nerds, who want their OS to be able to fit on a 1.44 MB floppy and run with 640 KB of RAM, if at all possible. Instead of taking advantage of falling component prices and the scalability afforded by multiple CPU cores, better GPUs, and growing memory availability (both in RAM and in hard disks), they want to sell a computer from 4 years ago running a current OS. A laudable goal, except that that means the OS will be stuck in ancient times, in the tech industry timescale.

While everyone else is busy figuring out how to better take advantage of increased parallelism, these guys will be sitting pretty in a single-threaded world, and they'll hit the scalability wall years after everyone else and will consequently have a solution years after everyone else.

In the tech industry, you make money by making progress. This isn't progress. This is hobbyist stuff.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Year of the Linux Desktop, Take 17.

Except, this is quite a notable event. Microsoft is feeling the pinch, a Linux based ultra portable is selling so fast it is out of stock with most retailers, and technology is moving forwards to allow for greater flexibility in how computing is done at the home and workplace.

The status quo is going to change sooner or later, if only because MS simply cannot afford to carry on as they are now.

[Durandal]

Sorry, Valdemar, my edit came in after your reply.

[Admiral Valdemar]

No worries. On to business.

Year of the Linux Desktop, Take 17.

Here's the problem with this strategy. It's meant to appeal to Linux nerds, who want their OS to be able to fit on a 1.44 MB floppy and run with 640 KB of RAM, if at all possible. Instead of taking advantage of falling component prices and the scalability afforded by multiple CPU cores, better GPUs, and growing memory availability (both in RAM and in hard disks), they want to sell a computer from 4 years ago running a current OS. A laudable goal, except that that means the OS will be stuck in ancient times, in the tech industry timescale.

I believe a big part of this project is linked to that whole one laptop for every child thing, which is obviously aimed at a fairly functional, if not bleeding edge unit for mass production and minimal cost. The Asus Eee isn't going to win any hardware awards (bar the use of flash for a main drive, which seems to be the in thing now), though as it's meant to be cheap and cheerful, the objective here is met.

But...

While everyone else is busy figuring out how to better take advantage of increased parallelism, these guys will be sitting pretty in a single-threaded world, and they'll hit the scalability wall years after everyone else and will consequently have a solution years after everyone else.

In the tech industry, you make money by making progress. This isn't progress. This is hobbyist stuff.

As this is the case with the desktops and laptops coming out today, they will need a higher tier product to appeal to those who want something that is still affordable and lacking in a licence fee from MS, but not old hat, as it were. The market seems to be children and adults not normally into computing or otherwise unable to go and get a fully fledged Mac Book or whizz bang Vaio. Think of it as an introductory device that can at least help open the eyes of those who think every PC is a Windows machine and can only do so much without paying for more.

It's a step and by no means does it imply Windows will fall, while Linux and Apple claim the throne. It does, however, signify something of a paradigm shift in how the greater public will see computers, if only as we saw them years ago.

[Durandal]

I believe a big part of this project is linked to that whole one laptop for every child thing, which is obviously aimed at a fairly functional, if not bleeding edge unit for mass production and minimal cost. The Asus Eee isn't going to win any hardware awards (bar the use of flash for a main drive, which seems to be the in thing now), though as it's meant to be cheap and cheerful, the objective here is met.

Except that the margins are probably razor-thin, and the mass-market appeal is fairly minimal. Developing countries might love it, but they're not a very lucrative market for anything but infrastructure development. So how is anyone supposed to make money on this thing?

As this is the case with the desktops and laptops coming out today, they will need a higher tier product to appeal to those who want something that is still affordable and lacking in a licence fee from MS, but not old hat, as it were.

Their current software will not scale to higher-tier customers. It is, by all accounts, very simple. So software for intermediate or advanced users will have a different feel and experience. If someone takes his first step into the wide world of computing with one of these things and then decides to upgrade, he has to learn another UI to do so. That destroys any incentive for repeat business. The customer may as well buy a Windows or Mac laptop if he's going to learn a new UI.

The market seems to be children and adults not normally into computing or otherwise unable to go and get a fully fledged Mac Book or whizz bang Vaio. Think of it as an introductory device that can at least help open the eyes of those who think every PC is a Windows machine and can only do so much without paying for more.

If their strategy is anything like what you describe, it sounds insane. It sounds like a charity rather than a money-making proposition, relying on "raising awareness" rather than actually making money.

They're apparently targeting demographics that are either cheap and diminishing (seniors who don't know anything about computers) or have no money (little kids). They want to get people into computing at a very simple level, but they don't offer anything that's a step up from that or any incentive for customers to remain loyal to the brand. So they don't count on repeat business -- they count on their machines being used and thrown away. And in the process, they'll be creating customers for their competition. So when a customer wants do move on to the next level of computing, there's nothing tying him to their platform.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Except that the margins are probably razor-thin, and the mass-market appeal is fairly minimal. Developing countries might love it, but they're not a very lucrative market for anything but infrastructure development. So how is anyone supposed to make money on this thing?

It must be making profit, else I don't see why Asus would have even considered the idea in the first place. Given the technology involved, it's not like the price is reflective of them gouging themselves. They seem to want to keep this thing going at least.

Their current software will not scale to higher-tier customers. It is, by all accounts, very simple. So software for intermediate or advanced users will have a different feel and experience. If someone takes his first step into the wide world of computing with one of these things and then decides to upgrade, he has to learn another UI to do so. That destroys any incentive for repeat business. The customer may as well buy a Windows or Mac laptop if he's going to learn a new UI.

Not necessarily. The UI is simple, but anyone with any rudimentary learning capability can go and install another OS should they wish, from Ubuntu to XP to OS X. Some already have with this unit, though the computer is perfectly capable in its current state with what is already pre-installed. The option is there should anyone see Asus bring out a beefier hardware successor, but not want to use the custom Xandros installation.

If their strategy is anything like what you describe, it sounds insane. It sounds like a charity rather than a money-making proposition, relying on "raising awareness" rather than actually making money.

They're apparently targeting demographics that are either cheap and diminishing (seniors who don't know anything about computers) or have no money (little kids). They want to get people into computing at a very simple level, but they don't offer anything that's a step up from that or any incentive for customers to remain loyal to the brand. So they don't count on repeat business -- they count on their machines being used and thrown away. And in the process, they'll be creating customers for their competition. So when a customer wants do move on to the next level of computing, there's nothing tying him to their platform.

I don't see it that way. This isn't a device for replacing your desktop or, for that matter, using instead of a full size laptop. It is an ultra portable that is more accessible than a smart-phone or PDA, just without the cost and complexity of a full laptop computer. It's something you can take with you wherever and not have to worry too much about, unlike a couple of grand worth of high-end laptop. For everyday users, there's no reason to not use something like this. For power users, well, they'll already have a company laptop most likely anyway and have the know how to get into another OS if they see advantages there too.

The market is there, because the sales figures alone prove that. What Asus does in future with this, whether they use it as a stepping stone on to better models with a similar business model remains to be seen. Even if it flops tomorrow, they've still got their traditional laptop market covered anyway and I'm sure the UN wouldn't mind taking any excess supply off their hands to complement the Pixel Qi project.

[Durandal]

It must be making profit, else I don't see why Asus would have even considered the idea in the first place. Given the technology involved, it's not like the price is reflective of them gouging themselves. They seem to want to keep this thing going at least.

I didn't say it was a loss. I said the margins were razor-thin. And when I say "money", I mean "a respectable amount". Dell makes money on razor-thin margins based on volume, support and customer loyalty. What's Asus' strategy?

Not necessarily. The UI is simple, but anyone with any rudimentary learning capability can go and install another OS should they wish, from Ubuntu to XP to OS X.

If this is what Asus thinks, they're doomed to failure. A computer is viewed by most people as an appliance. The reason there is so much frustration with seemingly trivial (to you) tasks like installing drivers, operating systems and applications is that such things don't fit into the users' mental model of how a computer should work. Meaning that it should "just work". The Linux crowd seems to want to actively fight customers on this and get people to see computers the way Linux people see them, as assemblies of commodity parts.

Some already have with this unit, though the computer is perfectly capable in its current state with what is already pre-installed. The option is there should anyone see Asus bring out a beefier hardware successor, but not want to use the custom Xandros installation.

Which is why they'll fail to retain customers. When a customer starts going shopping for a new operating system, he'll shop for a new computer just to avoid the hassle of installing it himself. "Just install another operating system" is not a viable strategy, and it's that attitude that has kept Linux from gaining any real mainstream penetration.

I don't see it that way. This isn't a device for replacing your desktop or, for that matter, using instead of a full size laptop. It is an ultra portable that is more accessible than a smart-phone or PDA, just without the cost and complexity of a full laptop computer.

So it's another Folio? Why don't you ask Palm how well that turned out for them.

It's something you can take with you wherever and not have to worry too much about, unlike a couple of grand worth of high-end laptop. For everyday users, there's no reason to not use something like this. For power users, well, they'll already have a company laptop most likely anyway and have the know how to get into another OS if they see advantages there too.

You're jumping from a strategy that I think will be a failure to one that everyone knows is a failure. Palm already tried. People are interested in ultra-portable laptops as general-purpose computing devices that do retain most of the complexity of their desktops. The "dumbed down" demand is currently being filled by Blackberries, iPhones and Windows Mobile phones. If Asus thinks that the market of people interested in a dumbed down, ultra-portable device that's not a phone has legs, they're on drugs.

The market is there, because the sales figures alone prove that. What Asus does in future with this, whether they use it as a stepping stone on to better models with a similar business model remains to be seen. Even if it flops tomorrow, they've still got their traditional laptop market covered anyway and I'm sure the UN wouldn't mind taking any excess supply off their hands to complement the Pixel Qi project.

I didn't say there wasn't a market; I said the market isn't viable in the long-term. If Asus' upgrade strategy is saying, "Buy another OS and install it" to customers that are new to computing, they'll have trouble getting repeat business. And according to Asus, the Windows XP variant of the Eee PC is more popular than the Linux variant, so I hardly see how large sales figures are a boon for the Linux desktop movement.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'll tell you, I don't actually know their game plan here. I'm going by what I've seen from the device itself and how the market is reacting. It could be that it works for Asus when it didn't for Palm; it's not the first time an idea has been implemented poorly only to later be done better and succeed. If that's the case, then Asus may be able to boost their revenue from this simply by having the appeal of a portable computer that is a fraction of the cost, but not a fraction of the capability, of a normal laptop (excluding the high-end products).

I've seen other ultra-portables before, many just don't have the technology because the price to miniaturise many components is extortion for what you get in the end. A niche market, perhaps. One that could be a nice little earner? Possibly.

Had I not already gotten a smart-phone, I'd seriously look into this as a purchase. As it stands, I don't see it offering anything I can't get off my Nokia or similar device, even the keyboard can be bettered with the fold-up ones on offer with Bluetooth now. I expect not everyone wants to go that route and there may still be a fair amount of people who don't want to spend half a grand on a phone and the associated contract, though do want something of a portable computer platform for whatever. People went and bought portable DVD players and I always saw those things as quite ridiculous even if they still earned cash for their makers.

Besides, if this is a case of someone making a faux pas that was already done years ago, then someone needs to let Dell know too (and HP, Everex and MSI). Either Dell have lost their minds by being pressured into following a fad down the crapper now, or they seriously see Asus on to something here.

[Beowulf]

The Eee PC is a laptop than can run x86 software, while not being as full featured as a normal laptop. The advantage from this trade-off is that size, weight, and cost have been reduced. It's like a Macbook Air, except cheaper and lower power. It's not supposed to be a primary PC, but it's cheap enough that people are willing to buy it as a secondary PC. This mentality can especially be shown in the HP mini-note. It's a very slick looking machine, that has tons of storage space, and a decent amount of RAM, while being lower power, cheaper, lighter, and smaller than a full-size laptop.

The advantage these ULPCs have over a smartphone is screensize and having a real keyboard. Additionally, they can run anything a PC can. So if you've got one running Windows, you can run a full copy of Office on it. Or whatever you want/need to run. Admittedly, running a video compositing app might be a bad idea.

The Eee shipped with Linux initially because of two reasons: first was the projected soon sunset of WinXP. They wouldn't be able to get licenses, which is a bit of a cramp on selling them. The second is that a custom Xandros install was cheaper. Given the the WinXP version is selling for the same price as the Linux version, both of those problems have obviously been rectified. I don't think this is the year of the Linux desktop. Sure, it may take less power than Vista, but people still want to be able to run everything they ran on Windows.

[Xon]

Also, another "Windows is collapsing" article.

Windows may be bloated crap at the best of times, but I don't see it (or in-built operating systems) vanishing. Online applications are good, especially when combined with a cheap and functional system like this Asus.

Microsoft's money train is Windows and Office (and to a lesser extent Server stuff) in a corporate environment. This crap isnt going to touch those bastions of Microsoft profits.

I have to say, having started using Google Docs, I find it far more useful than booting up MS Office or OO.org.

I find both Google Docs and OO.org pale in comparison to MS Office in a business setting. OO.org is getting there, but Google Docs isnt even in the same ballpark.

[Zac Naloen]

I don't think anyone thinks Windows is going to just vanish, but this is a pretty big crack in Microsoft's monopoly armor if the trend continues.

And these articles have a point- I mean, the system requirements for Vista are huge. Now that we've finally hit a point that PCs can be built for less than the cost of a retail copy of Windows, but with much lower (but still adequate) specifications, something's gotta give. Microsoft can't really strip the bloat out of Vista without crippling it, so that low-end market is pretty much off limits to them at this point in time, and consumers are going to start getting fed up with their ridiculously high price points on the retail software.

The company I work for is a world leader in the field. The area of expertise I'm in requires computers to be used for data analysis and reporting. WE have a grand total of TWO computers with Windows XP in our department, out of a couple of dozen PCs. They got upgraded only recently, and only because the previous Dell base units died. There is no intention of upgrading to XP any time soon.

I have to wonder how anyone can seriously consider upgrading to Vista when plenty of companies, like mine, use Windows 2000 for all their tasks quite happily. In fact, I don't think a lot of our lab software and hardware would work with XP, let alone that bloated dreck that is Vista.

I can tell you exactly why.

License agreements.

My company are a microsoft "partner" our license agreement is that we have to use the latest microsoft software at all times.

Granted we don't have Vista yet, and we only did XP last year but I can see that scaring a lot of companies into upgrading if they have that sort of agreement.

[Durandal]

I find both Google Docs and OO.org pale in comparison to MS Office in a business setting. OO.org is getting there, but Google Docs isnt even in the same ballpark.

I'm going to be honest about OpenOffice.org and why I don't think it'll ever succeed. It's trying to beat Office by being exactly like it with the same stupid "billions of toolbar icons" interface that plagued versions of Office before 2007, doesn't have any real UI innovations and can't guarantee file format compatibility. So why use the thing?

The only advantage is has is price, but most people never wind up paying for Office anyway, so they don't care. It's a consequence of Microsoft's business model that competition can't beat them on price because the average joe never really sees the cost of Windows or Office because of their OEM and corporate contracts.

And it has a stupid god damn name. Users are going to open something called "OpenOffice.org" and expect a web site, not an office application.

[Pu-239]

And it has a stupid god damn name. Users are going to open something called "OpenOffice.org" and expect a web site, not an office application.

Apparently "OpenOffice" is trademarked by someone else http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-other.html#4

Of course, they could have just named it something entirely different, after all Firefox has been through 2 name changes (Phoenix->Firebird->Firefox)

Alas, unfortunately on Linux/Solaris there aren't really good alternatives- Gnome Office (Abiword, Gnumeric, etc ) and KOffice are somewhat lacking in compatibility, and Office under Wine is fugly (although I suppose if you require it's features functionality trumps UI consistency).

Frankly I hate the ribbon UI, but that's bias towards the familiar. Frankly I don't use OO.o anymore, except for documents written by other people. Vim/LaTeX for the win (obviously not a solution in the real world, but okay for Uni students).

[Starglider]

Their current software will not scale to higher-tier customers.

Exactly what isn't going to scale? The Linux kernel is more scalable than Windows or OS-X, period. OpenOffice is at least as parallelised as MS Office, not that it really matters since we're long past the days of typical office productivity software imposing a noticeable strain on the CPU. Firefox/Thunderbird etc are at least as fast as their MS equivalents. The basic little apps like the calculator and the notepad may not be internally multithreaded, but why would they need to be?

If someone takes his first step into the wide world of computing with one of these things and then decides to upgrade, he has to learn another UI to do so. That destroys any incentive for repeat business.

This only applies to the window manger. That's a tiny part of user-interface learning. OpenOffice works exactly the same on any platform, as does Firefox and any online app.

The customer may as well buy a Windows or Mac laptop if he's going to learn a new UI.

If they can't handle learning a new window manager, they're hardly likely to be the kind of power users for whom a basic PC isn't going to be adequate.

They're apparently targeting demographics that are either cheap and diminishing (seniors who don't know anything about computers) or have no money (little kids).

Wrong. You're thinking in terms of 'people who can't afford a full-spec computer'. That's not the issue. The real news is that people are finally starting to realise how big the gap between 'full-spec computer' and 'computer that can do everything I actually want' has become (for large segments of the user base).

They want to get people into computing at a very simple level, but they don't offer anything that's a step up from that or any incentive for customers to remain loyal to the brand.

Bullshit. Why does anyone bother making cheap crappy digital cameras? Inevitably the users will want the full prosumer feature set, right? Wouldn't it make sense for everyone to just by $500 cameras from the word go so they don't have to learn a new interface later?

So they don't count on repeat business -- they count on their machines being used and thrown away.

They're probably not counting on it, but the fact is that no one knows yet exactly how many people will remain perfectly satisfied with the performance a $200 computer can give you.

So when a customer wants do move on to the next level of computing, there's nothing tying him to their platform.

Which is inevitable why?

I'm going to be honest about OpenOffice.org and why I don't think it'll ever succeed. It's trying to beat Office by being exactly like it with the same stupid "billions of toolbar icons" interface that plagued versions of Office before 2007, doesn't have any real UI innovations and can't guarantee file format compatibility. So why use the thing?

Because it's free, because you don't have the worry of 'is every copy I have licensed correctly', because it runs on anything and because so many people simply hate Microsoft? I'm not talking about Linux fanboys here, I'm talking about the directors of companies I've consulted for, two of whom have OO-only policies solely because of the degree that Microsoft has tried to screw them with licensing contracts.

The reason there is so much frustration with seemingly trivial (to you) tasks like installing drivers, operating systems and applications is that such things don't fit into the users' mental model of how a computer should work. Meaning that it should "just work". The Linux crowd seems to want to actively fight customers on this and get people to see computers the way Linux people see them, as assemblies of commodity parts.

Somewhat relevant on desktops but mostly irrelevant for laptops. Essentially no-one upgrades laptops (other than maybe adding another memory stick). For 99.99% of laptop users, the vendor sets up the OS for you and that's that. The only drivers you ever install are for USB devices.

Which is why they'll fail to retain customers. When a customer starts going shopping for a new operating system, he'll shop for a new computer just to avoid the hassle of installing it himself.

Yes, and? Brand loyalty is a would-be-nice not a must-have anyway (unless you're Apple), but if one Asus PC provides a good experience there's no reason why the consumer wouldn't start looking at other Asus PCs if they did need to upgrade. Again, the window manager design is a pretty trivial aspect. No-one buys washing machines based on how similar the controls are to their last washing machine.

So it's another Folio? Why don't you ask Palm how well that turned out for them.

Total red herring. The Foleo cost $600 (pre-rebate). These devices cost $200. Are you unable to perceive that this is a completely different purchase proposition?

The fact of the matter is that ideas on how to make consumers actually need 16-core 4 GHz computers are rather thin on the ground right now, and most of those involve 'serious' gaming. This is even without the ongoing shift to network computing, which is finally and belatedly happening via a horrible inefficient platform (HTML/HTTP) a couple of decades after Sun first started telling everyone it was a good idea. You can't get away from the fact that the cost of hardware required for the majority of user applications (or rather, their client-side components) is now in rapid decline and shows no sign of levelling out anywhere north of $100. At this price point, the question of whether proprietary gloss and API standardisation (and let's face it, that's all Apple and Microsoft have over Linux at this point) is worth a significant increase in unit cost. This is a fight you cannot win in the long term. Open source will keep copying your ideas until you run out of good ideas - and the steady stagnation of the GUI is pretty strong evidence that you're going to run out of good ideas for slick window managers and widget sets.

[Mad]

It's trying to beat Office by being exactly like it with the same stupid "billions of toolbar icons" interface that plagued versions of Office before 2007, doesn't have any real UI innovations and can't guarantee file format compatibility.

It's a tough situation. If OOo doesn't support doing everything that can be done in MS Office, then people will complain that they can't do what they need to do.

On the other hand, OOo seems to encourage using character/paragraph/page formatting styles much more than Word does. They're pretty easy to use in OOo by default, but a pain to use in Word.

And, um, OOo supports PDF export more easily than Word (where you have to print to a PDF printer).

And... okay, that's all I can think of.

So why use the thing?

The only advantage is has is price, but most people never wind up paying for Office anyway, so they don't care. It's a consequence of Microsoft's business model that competition can't beat them on price because the average joe never really sees the cost of Windows or Office because of their OEM and corporate contracts.

I've never had a home computer come with MS Office (maybe MS Works or a trial version of Office). Same for my wife. If I wanted Office on any home computer I've used, it would have to be paid for. Or I could get StarOffice/OpenOffice.org for free. Given that they do everything I need, I see absolutely no reason to get Word.

The only times I've seen anyone want Office for home use instead of OOo is when OOo didn't support a particular feature that they use with Office at work and they deemed important for a certain task. Even then, those people still typically go for the "free" price tag of OOo instead of shelling out cash for Office since the computer they use didn't come with Office.

And it has a stupid god damn name. Users are going to open something called "OpenOffice.org" and expect a web site, not an office application.

Yeah, they should have changed the name to something else when they found out "OpenOffice" was already taken.

[Durandal]

Exactly what isn't going to scale? The Linux kernel is more scalable than Windows or OS-X, period.

That's far from definite, but that's not even what I'm arguing about. I'm arguing that the user experience doesn't scale from bare-bones simple to more advanced without fundamental change.

OpenOffice is at least as parallelised as MS Office, not that it really matters since we're long past the days of typical office productivity software imposing a noticeable strain on the CPU.

No we're not. Grammar checking is going to get a lot more attention with increased parallelism because it requires more sophisticated AIs that can be written in functional languages where threading is implied, like Haskell.

This only applies to the window manger. That's a tiny part of user-interface learning. OpenOffice works exactly the same on any platform, as does Firefox and any online app.

The average user doesn't know what a window manager is. And no, Firefox does not look or work the same on every platform. Firefox 3 is deliberately breaking from this model because it's resulted in such a crummy user experience.

If they can't handle learning a new window manager, they're hardly likely to be the kind of power users for whom a basic PC isn't going to be adequate.

It's not that they can't handle it; it's that if they're going to learn a new one, there's no reason for them to stick with Linux when they can just go to Windows or Mac OS X.

Wrong. You're thinking in terms of 'people who can't afford a full-spec computer'. That's not the issue.

I was addressing Valdemar's description of their business model. Whether that's accurate is a separate issue.

The real news is that people are finally starting to realise how big the gap between 'full-spec computer' and 'computer that can do everything I actually want' has become (for large segments of the user base).

Who cares?

Bullshit. Why does anyone bother making cheap crappy digital cameras? Inevitably the users will want the full prosumer feature set, right? Wouldn't it make sense for everyone to just by $500 cameras from the word go so they don't have to learn a new interface later?

Nice strawman. I never said that all of these users would want to go prosumer; I said that some of them would eventually want more functionality.

And if you think that the learning curve for a camera is the same as the one for a computer, you're on drugs. There are so many things wrong with that analogy that it's difficult to find where to begin. For one, people buy a camera with pretty much one purpose in mind: to take pictures. No matter what camera you buy, whether it's a low-end or professional model, you'll be taking pictures with it. That is not true of computers, which have far more general usage characteristics. So when someone upgrades to a better camera, it's to take better pictures. When someone upgrades to a better computer, it could be to do something that their previous one couldn't do fast enough or just couldn't do at all.

They're probably not counting on it, but the fact is that no one knows yet exactly how many people will remain perfectly satisfied with the performance a $200 computer can give you.

It's not about performance. It's about whether people will remain satisfied with the Linux distro that comes with the Eee PC.

So when a customer wants do move on to the next level of computing, there's nothing tying him to their platform.

Which is inevitable why?

Because that's how things go with computers. As you use them, you want to do more with them. I thought this was obvious.

Because it's free, because you don't have the worry of 'is every copy I have licensed correctly', because it runs on anything and because so many people simply hate Microsoft?

Licensing is a fact of life.

I'm not talking about Linux fanboys here, I'm talking about the directors of companies I've consulted for, two of whom have OO-only policies solely because of the degree that Microsoft has tried to screw them with licensing contracts.

I'm sure there are companies out there that have moved to OpenOffice. But there are a lot more that are sticking with Microsoft Office and are happy with it. They get support for it, can easily exchange documents with their clients and can use things like Exchange and Outlook, which lots of businesses love because it's very well-integrated. Office suites aren't just about writing documents and creating presentations anymore. They're about sharing, collaboration and scheduling as well. Microsoft Office has features to facilitate these things. Does OpenOffice?

The reason there is so much frustration with seemingly trivial (to you) tasks like installing drivers, operating systems and applications is that such things don't fit into the users' mental model of how a computer should work. Meaning that it should "just work". The Linux crowd seems to want to actively fight customers on this and get people to see computers the way Linux people see them, as assemblies of commodity parts.

Somewhat relevant on desktops but mostly irrelevant for laptops. Essentially no-one upgrades laptops (other than maybe adding another memory stick). For 99.99% of laptop users, the vendor sets up the OS for you and that's that. The only drivers you ever install are for USB devices.

That's the point. The Linux crowd hates this view of computers, and they don't want to accept that that's how people see them. Trying to force customers to install a new operating system just to get some functionality or run "apt get" or whatever hasn't worked and will never work.

Yes, and? Brand loyalty is a would-be-nice not a must-have anyway (unless you're Apple), but if one Asus PC provides a good experience there's no reason why the consumer wouldn't start looking at other Asus PCs if they did need to upgrade. Again, the window manager design is a pretty trivial aspect. No-one buys washing machines based on how similar the controls are to their last washing machine.

Yet again, your analogy is totally off-base for the same reasons I listed before.

Total red herring. The Foleo cost $600 (pre-rebate). These devices cost $200. Are you unable to perceive that this is a completely different purchase proposition?

Are you aware of the follies of selling a product in a market which doesn't exist?

The fact of the matter is that ideas on how to make consumers actually need 16-core 4 GHz computers are rather thin on the ground right now, and most of those involve 'serious' gaming.

I've heard this refrain for years, and it's always from Linux people. And it's always wrong. "No one's going to need a 2 GHz processor", followed by "No one's going to need a 4 GHz processor", followed by "Who needs two CPU cores?" And guess what? It doesn't change anything. Hardware still advances, and software finds ways to make use of it.

This is even without the ongoing shift to network computing, which is finally and belatedly happening via a horrible inefficient platform (HTML/HTTP) a couple of decades after Sun first started telling everyone it was a good idea. You can't get away from the fact that the cost of hardware required for the majority of user applications (or rather, their client-side components) is now in rapid decline and shows no sign of levelling out anywhere north of $100. At this price point, the question of whether proprietary gloss and API standardisation (and let's face it, that's all Apple and Microsoft have over Linux at this point) is worth a significant increase in unit cost.

Vista and Mac OS X have plenty of other advantages over Vista beyond "API standardization", whatever that means. (What, Linux doesn't have standardized APIs? It does, at the kernel level and more or less at the POSIX layer.) Honestly, at this point, I'm wondering if you've ever actually written software or studied operating systems. You seem like one of those IT people who thinks that assembling a computer out of spare parts makes him an authority on operating system architecture and chip design.

This is a fight you cannot win in the long term. Open source will keep copying your ideas until you run out of good ideas - and the steady stagnation of the GUI is pretty strong evidence that you're going to run out of good ideas for slick window managers and widget sets.

Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that. This is the problem with so many open source projects. They say "Hey, let's just copy this and make it free" and then turn out a shitty imitation that most people wouldn't pay for anyway so it kind of has to be free.

Haven't you noticed which open source projects out there tend to be successful? They're not the ones that just carbon copy everything; they're ones that actually fill a need. Gaim and Adium have been successful because they address the need for a single IM client for multiple protocols. Samba has been successful because it allows network designers more flexibility in their designs by letting them implement Windows file sharing on any operating system.

What real innovators say is "Let's find a way to make this better." That's why Apple has been gaining mindshare while still no one knows what Linux is or why they should use it.

[Netko]

It's trying to beat Office by being exactly like it with the same stupid "billions of toolbar icons" interface that plagued versions of Office before 2007, doesn't have any real UI innovations and can't guarantee file format compatibility.

It's a tough situation. If OOo doesn't support doing everything that can be done in MS Office, then people will complain that they can't do what they need to do.

On the other hand, OOo seems to encourage using character/paragraph/page formatting styles much more than Word does. They're pretty easy to use in OOo by default, but a pain to use in Word.

And, um, OOo supports PDF export more easily than Word (where you have to print to a PDF printer).

And... okay, that's all I can think of.

Both of those have been fixed in 2k7 - styles are now significantly integrated into the process - they're on the main ribbon toolbar even (of course, in typical Microsoft fashion, it doesn't punish those who don't use them so often you still have idiots not using them which drives me bonkers whenever I have to edit a document with contributions from multiple people because I invariably have to redo the styles from the beginning for most of them).

PDF is now universally available via a free plugin which produces output on par with Adobe's and is the same first-class support offered to MS's own XPS format (and, in an interesting bow to market realities, between the two, Office defaults to PDF). You can thank Adobe's bullshit for it not being a regular integrated feature.

[Pu-239]

OO.o 3 is supposed to support PDF edit

[K. A. Pital]

There's also 300 euro «Jisus» UMPC coming from Holland on Ubuntu.