Print This Article Print This Article Email this article Email this article

An unfortunate event – Linux losing to Microsoft

Big Laptop, Little Laptop

photo credit: geognerd

Netbooks are the class of laptops that have screens measuring from 7″ to 10″, have no CD or DVD-ROM and use a specially designed low power processor. Initially, these small and inexpensive laptops were released with different versions of Linux on them and they ran fast and ran well. Microsoft saw a huge potential loss in their market share and quickly used their muscle to interject themselves and Windows XP into this genre of computers.

In my opinion, Windows has no place in a netbook for the following reasons:

  • It adds cost to the machine. Although reports indicate that Microsoft has been losing money just to get their system installed on these machines instead of Linux.
  • It adds complexity to the machines by requiring users to keep up with endless security updates and configuration from Microsoft and other vendors. Linux, on the other hand, requires almost no maintenance once the initial setup is finished.
  • Windows requires as much RAM and processing power as you can throw at it…even XP now with Service Pack 3 plus all the security software that has to sit on top of it.
  • Linux offers a fast, safe, and customizable environment for netbook users.

Here’s the article that teed me off.

Linux losing ground on netbooks | Tech News on ZDNet.

Related articles:

  1. Asus started a whole new trend
  2. Demand compensation from Microsoft
  3. Netbooks are NOT made for Windows XP or Vista
  4. New Dell Mini laptops
  5. Lazy computer users

Tags: , , ,

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Tech News. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

4 comments

  1. Jack Hill
    March 19, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    I love my Linux OS on my Netbook. It’s about as simple as simple gets! No fancy stuff just what you need with no fear of virus, spam, and all those other bad things. When traveling, you can get all the essentials, such as E-mail, picture editing, and checking on the news at home. Last time through security at the airport, they didn’t even make me open it up. I guess it was too simple to be a threat (;o)

    Reply
    • Rick
      March 19, 2009 at 9:17 pm

      Or they thought it was toy! I’m glad you are a convert and enjoying the Linux Jack. I truly feel that computer users who give it a chance find that it is actually equally as productive and easy to use as Windows, and certainly safer as you mentioned!

      Reply
  2. Joe Mason
    March 22, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    Hey Rick,

    What about that linux users group you were talking about a little while ago. I’m eager to share my knowledge of linux with others as well as learning what I can as well. Lets get together for coffee this week if we can and talk about it. Lugs are great ways to learn about the OS and what’s being done with/on it, as well as the help that we could offer the community buy giving them a viable way to use the old hardware that would otherwise end up in a landfill, and who could complain about the extra security and control parents will have over what the kids can do on the computer and the internet (it costs a fortune to accomplish the same level of controls on windows!).
    Look forward to hearing from you soon,

    Joe

    Reply

Leave a comment