Will there be a specific windows 7 SKU tailor-made for netbooks, or not? Until recently, that seemed very likely, but as time went on, the answer to that question got muddy again. During the past few weeks, Microsoft has been very adamant to reiterate that all Windows 7 SKUs can run on netbooks, and that it will enable customers to upgrade to higher SKUs easily. Recent comment by Steve Ballmer, however, indicate that Microsoft is still thinking about a specific netbook edition.
Ballmer made his comments during an analyst meeting last Tuesday, but only recently detailed transcripts [.doc] have become available. A J.P. Morgan analyst asked Ballmer about it, but the CEO remained rather vague about the subject. “I think we have an opportunity when we ship Windows 7, which will fit on a netbook, we have an opportunity to rethink the product lineup for netbooks, product lineup and price lineup, and we get a chance to engage in that dialogue, both with the OEM, and potentially with the OEM and the end user,” Ballmer “explained” – politicians’ talk.
What followed provided a clearer picture of where Microsoft stands on a netbook edition of Windows 7. “I think it’s important for us, we have some time before we are actually in market, and as we have more to say you’ll hear it, but we have a real opportunity given that Windows 7 fits on netbooks, to think about having a special netbook edition, but maybe somebody will want home, or maybe somebody will even, for example, want the business edition of Windows 7 on a netbook,” Ballmer said, “I want to make sure we facilitate letting the customer, OEM or end customer, trade up if they want to trade up.”
Ballmer later also said that the company does intend to deliver a version of Windows 7 at the same price of Windows XP today, so that netbook owners can trade up. Exactly what version that will be remains unknown. There’s no upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7, so how exactly this trading up would work remains unknown as well.
Microsoft’s vagueness on the subject is telling. Windows 7 runs fine on netbooks, and the company doesn’t want to give consumers the wrong idea by insinuating that “normal” Windows doesn’t work on a netbook, but a “special” version does.
I would be happy to see a single Windows 7 version instead of a home basic, home premium, home ultimate, home body, home core, home cute rate, then the business versions, then the other versions, etc. Of course if it can run on a netbook then why won’t it run on my 486.
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.
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 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
I’m looking forward to their release, although I tend to want to sit back and wait for GNOME to stablise given there are some big changes that I’d prefer waiting till 2.26.1-2 or 3 is released.
The two top ones aren’t available outside the US, and the Dell use ATI and Nvidia which rely on proprietary drivers which lock you into a particular version of Linux and at the mercy of whether AMD survives. I’d sooner go and get a Intel everything laptop (intel wireless, chipset, processor, wireless) and load my own version of Linux on it.
Of course Microsoft gives a terrible deal but the average end user is pigsh*t ignorant of that fact because their expectations are so low they don’t know whether there is something better out there. Its like living in North Korea and an outside goes, “I can’t believe they can’t see the propaganda!”. The reality is that if that is all you have been exposed to – that is all you know.
I’m not too sure about this any more.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342703,00.asp
Even some pig-ignorant people, who previously were inclined to believe the fact that Linux didn’t run on some hardware was somehow the fault of Linux (and not the fault of manufacturers who had refused to publish publish chip specifications), have apparently started to come around to see the plain truth.
(Even if they apparently haven’t yet tried the Windows-7-looks-like-it Kubuntu yet, they may yet one day get to see Linux desktop glitz).
It is an amazing world, really. You never can tell what is going to happen.
Edited 2009-03-10 09:44 UTC
I wouldn’t use Dvorak as a source of enlightened opinion – its like using Bill O’Reilly opinion on politics as a reference point. Dvorak is a website hits whore – tapping the nerves of given groups to gain website hits and justify his pay packet.
Regarding hardware – I reward vendors who work with opensource programmers by buying their hardware; hence the reason I have gotten behind Intel over AMD. AMD has mandated that their wireless component of their laptop platform is supplied by Broadcom which makes their hardware off limits for me; so I choose Intel.
If AMD turned around and make Atheros or Realtek as their wireless chipset, I’d use their hardware along with an ATI graphics card.
That was my point. Even he can begin to see the truth. If enlightenment can come even to Dvorak, it surely cannot be out of reach for too many people.
Dude, are you a computer enthusiast or a fanatic priest? I seriously can’t tell anymore. “Enlightened?” “See the truth?” Come off it, the existing religions cause enough problems already. What next, you going to declare war on all those who don’t bow down to Richard Stallman?
I seriously think you need a life.
Deflection.
Ad hominem.
Online Microsoft apologists are, I find, ever more and more, resorting to tactics such as these.
PS: “Enlightened” wasn’t my choice of word, and it wasn’t introduced to the thread by me.
Edited 2009-03-10 12:22 UTC
Might be, but that doesn’t make his comment any less accurate.
Hahahahahaha. You call me a ms fanboy? Roflmao! That is the funniest thing I’ve heard so far today. Me, who does not use Windows at all and won’t allow it on any computers I have? I won’t even give ms the respect of pirating Windows or Office. I’ll be snickering about that for a while.
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
What if….dinosaurs control the financial markets?
What if….the earth really is flat, and we have been lied to?
What if….maybe you could just use FACTS, instead of your obsessive paranoid rantings? Don’t they have medicine for your condition?
Excuse me? What has upset your little applecart?
From my earlier post:
Is this not a fact?
Actually … to help you out just a little, because you are obviously struggling here … yes it is a fact.
Example: CPU manufacturers would even publish the complete and quite thorough descriptions of the instruction set, simply in order that software authors would be able to write compilers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_set
This is the way that gcc got started.
Before Microsoft gained prominence in the marketplace, all chips were released with accompanying specifications such as these. Chip salesmen used to come around to companies and give away bound volumes containing detailed specifications and application notes on how the chips worked, and how to write software to drive them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_note
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DatasheetArchive
http://www.datasheetarchive.com/datasheet/
http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Technology/Electronics/Reference/Applic…
Edited 2009-03-10 12:08 UTC
Dude, the time Microsoft got popular, I totally grew older! OMG! It’s Microsoft’s fault I’m growing older!
I gather you never had a scientific education of any kind, otherwise you wouldn’t be spouting such hilarious nonsense.
There could, possibly, be a connection between the two movements, but just because both happened din a similar timeframe is no proof WHATSOEVER.
You are hilarious.
I might be hilarious to you, but at least I can read.
Where in any of my text did I claim there was proof?
In fact, I said exactly the opposite:
Quote from me in this very sub-thread:
No proof at all, I agree. All we have is a warehouse full of smoking guns.
Now Thom, when it comes to trying to win an argument, here is a very handy tip that you might keep in mind for the future. Tip: Read what the other person said. Read it again. Then argue against those points, and not against something else that they didn’t claim.
There is even a word for the false strategy of argument you have fallen into here Thom. What you have tried to use here is known as a “strawman argument”.
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&oi=definer&q=define:strawman+…
Thom, whenever someone is shown to be using a strawman argument, it actually lends strong support to the case that they were trying to debunk. So my advice for you Thom is to watch out for that in the future, lest you once again tear apart your own points.
Unetbootin can do thumb drive creation. It’s been available for some time now.
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
they are currently in talks with the OEM’s to see if they would even suport or sell this product since it would be slightly funtionality reduced compaired to the other versions. with new netbook processors comming out from both intel and VIA, both of which much more powerfull than their current offerings, it wouldnt make sense to limit the finctionality.
as the fab process goes doesn to 32 and ultimatly 22nm you will be able to squeez out more power and therefore beable to run more than, oh say, 3 apps at once (the theoretical limit to the “netbook” SKU). MS knows this and is talking things over with the major retailers. so far, unofficially, most retailers said they would offer it (about 75%) but ALL of them have said that they would push or “recommend” the more feature complete versions.
Either you get a full functioning laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium, or you get a neutered one that can only run 3 apps at a time, regardless of how much memory/cpu they use, so that MS can profit off of the customer even further when they upgrade to something usable.
Though I’m a Mac and Linux user mostly these days, I really do like the 7 beta a lot. But this crap of shipping artificially limited OSes is moronic. And when I say “artificially limited” I don’t mean the differences between Home and Professional, I mean limiting users to using only 3 apps at a time, which I feel is absurd.
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.
…it will help Linux to gain market share!
Windows 7 isn’t that resource intensive to begin with. I’ve ran the beta on a single core pentium 4 with 768mb of ram with no problems. So if Windows 7 can perform acceptably on that machine then there is no reason to have a specific netbook edition. Netbooks are only going to get faster as technology gets better. The next round of netbooks with dual core atom processors and 2 gigs of memory should have no problem running a full version of windows 7. The only thing Microsoft could add would be netbook specific optimizations and gui tweaks to compensate for the small screen size.
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
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6695/1/
Well said, Carla Schroder.
As a bonus, Carla gives us a useful link that I did not know about before:
http://www.linux-netbook.com/
Thankyou once again, Carla. This site might be of some help to people who are trying to buck the attempted smothering of Linux on netbooks by large corporate interests, people who might come to OSAlert in the hope of finding just such information.
Edited 2009-03-10 22:30 UTC