Comments

• twitter

  2011-02-09 20:17:36

  On another front, it looks like Microsoft has ruined the market for netbooks. Microsoft boosters are blaming the demise of sales on iPad or the form factor on the form factor itself as Windows 7 fails to sell them [2]. As noted at the time, once buzzing netbook departments quickly became customer free dead zones when Microsoft got in. Finally, the channels are stuffed and sales are reflecting it. One article perceptively notes that back to school sales did not lift Windows netbooks out of their funk and predicted that Christmas sales would be equally bleak.
  
  While both of these articles doubt $600 hype pad sales and netbook buyers inhabit the same demographic, it should be noted that both are ultramobile platforms which still commands a price of over $1000 on "traditional notebooks," aka notebooks without Microsoft's obnoxiously imposed hardware limitations. Neither article mentions how the 2007 EEE promise of a sub $200 notebook with Skype, Open Office, Firefox, tuxpaint and other great software was quickly corrupted into disfunctional, $400 XP and Vista computers. As predicted, Windows netbooks quickly broke down and left users with a sour taste. Customers won't be back soon.
  
  Nor does either article mention the sad story of the OLPC or the harm done to Asus' bottom line by Microsoft's blatantly anti-competitive behavior. The battle is not lost, it has simply shifted away from losing ground, x86, to ARM where Microsoft has less pull. Microsoft might still have some retail block power, but it can't last forever. At this point, retailers must be up to their eyeballs in Vista/Windows 7 failure debt. They will have to look for something else or go the way of CompUSA, Circuit City and others no longer with us. Analysts predict a flood of tablet computers that will blow out netbooks but they don't mention what an uneasy slaughter it will be when cheap Android or gnu/linux tablets are pitted against $400 Vista 7 netbooks.
  
  As a side note, I actually bought a Vista 7 netbook from Toshiba for my daughter. It came with a dual core processor and Intel graphics that are excellent performers under the Squeeze version of Debian GNU/Linux. All of the hardware including the microphones, web cam, network card power management and accelerated graphics work smoothly and well. She now has a beautiful, composited E16 desktop with Cairo Dock shortcuts to the games and other things she likes to do. Windows 7 stickers were pealed off and the noxious original software was dd'd and gzipped without ever having been booted, just in case we decide to sell it to someone who insists on Windows. It did not perform as well as gnu/linux in the store. I'd gladly delete the image if I could get part of the nearly $400 purchase price back.
  
  Store staff seemed to think the next batch of these notebooks, which came with built in cell phone data modems and cost $100 more would be good sellers. I doubt it. Windows does not do what most people want an ultramobile computer to do and it is so restricted and bloated with DRM that the situation won't change soon. The data plans are are the most expensive and restricted kind of internet access available and few people actually need it. If money starts to flow that way, it won't last long as Google rolls out TV white space access.

• TemporalBeing

  2011-02-10 18:32:50

  Microsoft's tactics won't necessarily work this time around...
  
  In the past, Microsoft quashed competition by either buying them out, copying functionality enough to put them out of the market, or outright blackballing them in the market place.
  
  However, with Linux any company that wants to do anything in computerized technology can use it. So now, instead of having a single company to destroy, they would have to take on the world to win - even Microsoft's pockets are not that deep.
  
  So stay tuned to watch Microsoft self-destruct as they dump money into guaranteed losing businesses in order try to save their own monopoly. Or will their stakeholders realize the problem first and oust the management?

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-02-10 19:25:40

  Or will their stakeholders realize the problem first and oust the management?

  
  
  There is hardly a need for it because the management is already leaving voluntarily, except Mundie the lobbyist and Ballmer the brute.