08.04.09
Microsoft Watch on Microsoft vs Google and Microsoft vs Sub-notebooks
Summary: Microsoft hates sub-notebooks but wants to control them; likewise for so-called ‘clouds’
Microsoft is against sub-notebooks and against affordable PCs, not just GNU/Linux. This is something that more and more people come to realise and I4U has just written this rant, specifically about the issues at hand.
The whole reason netbooks are attractive to customers is because they are low-cost, quick-booting, portable computers with good battery life. The ‘low-cost’ part is crucial, because it’s what has allowed so many people without the money for a new desktop or notebook to pick up netbooks. Unfortunately, that benefit of the platform may soon be fading away, leaving us with another example of why you should never trust Microsoft.
[...]
There’s still a hope for the netbook market, and its name is Google Chrome. It looks like manufacturers are backing away from Android as a netbook OS, and no Linux distro is ever going to be popular enough to draw a substantial amount of customers away from Win 7 products.
The post-Wilcox Microsoft Watch is almost always pro-Microsoft under the pen of Nicholas Kolakowski, but Goblin disagrees. Goblin says that Microsoft Watch is “returning to the good old days of Linux advocacy due to the majority of its readers being Linux users!” This doesn’t seem to agree with the evidence, such as this essay where Kolakowski quotes Microsoft booster Enderle [1, 2] on competitors of Microsoft as though he is an impartial observer.
“The public cloud is perfect for certain things but maybe not for business,” Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, told me in an interview a few weeks ago. “It’s not something you should build your business on, particularly if your revenue is based on being able to stay in contact with people.”
Isn’t it funny that Microsoft accepts the whole ‘cloud’ hype and wants businesses to eventually go there (but only if their choice is Azure)? It’s just that Microsoft is so far behind that it still needs to simultaneously spread ‘cloud’ FUD, especially against Google which the article above is all about. Microsoft is scared enough of Google Apps that its former employees seemingly join the FUD party. Google appears to have just embarked on a big advertising campaign for Apps. From The Register:
Mountain View plans to slap Google Apps adverts on billboards in major US cities from today in its latest attempt to woo businesses away from Microsoft’s Office suite.
In another new essay, Kolakowski shows a little more balance. Watch this essay which says: “Microsoft’s solution to the netbook problem – which it keeps insisting is not a problem – seems to be to try to shift the entire PC industry in a slightly different direction. Setting the monster’s lair on fire could work – if customers are willing to spend on a bigger and sleeker system. The recovering economy, as with all such things these days, could be the ultimate arbiter.”
“Microsoft has to suspend the “free” market for their own self interest”
–Fewa“That’s called monopoly abuse,” claimed Fewa, who describes the above as “[a] huge ad campaign to make people think they need expensive, heavy, low-battery life systems.”
Another reader points out that the above is “repeating the Microsoft lies about market share in sub-notebooks.” It is a lie indeed.
“Microsoft has to suspend the “free” market for their own self interest,” concludes Fewa. █
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twitter said,
August 4, 2009 at 9:29 pm
This is a half truth. GNU/Linux is taking substantial numbers of Windows XP users. There are no substantial numbers of Vista users because Vista failed in every way. There will be even fewer Windows 7 users. Each release of Windows has been met with more resistance than the last and there are not many Windows fans left. Less than 2% of the market – a fact just as valid as any of the more expensive studies out there.
zatoichi Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
“No substantial numbers of Vista users”…? Where’d you get that from, Willy?
StatCounter shows Vista with about a quarter of the market.
verofakto Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Apparently Will has been repeating the “M$ is dying” mantra for close to a decade now.
People like him live in an alternate reality where merely saying something enough times (as opposed to doing something) eventually generates the desired results. When that doesn’t work, it’s just a matter of imagining that the results were indeed generated, and insulting anyone who disagrees with that.
Remind you of someone?
Chips B. Malroy said,
August 5, 2009 at 5:55 am
Well, while twitter is as usual right. Let me refresh. I agree that eweek is paid ny MS advertising bucks and that is how it exists. Most likely that is why Nick is hired, because he is MS friendly. But still, I want to take the Goblin approach this time, for other reasons. I give Nick the benefit of gthe doubt, only because at this point, nobody reads him. I really try to b fair, but he and eweek owe it to users to do that.
Sad, be I would like Eweek to exists beyond the dinosaur MS. Somehow they cannot get beyond that MS is their advertising cash cow. Eweek,
in some ways has been a good commenting site for me.
Eweek offers something to me that you Roy and Goblin cannot. Unlike both of you they are not honest. Which I greatly, hugely, admire in both of you. But chatting with both of you, is like chatting with the choir. We know, we believe. I am an Advocate.
Why is that? Because there are so many windows users in pain. I feel their pain, I know both you, Goblin, tweeter, and all the others at BN do too.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 5:59 am
It’s part of Ziff Davis.