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14 03 2008

EeePC 900 to ship more XP than Linux versions

Posted by Alan in Technology

EeePCI was catching up with the ZDNet blogs I read, when I noticed this post in the Hardware 2.0 blog.

Of course, a religious war quickly erupted in the comments section. MS vs Linux. Thank God no Macs were involved.

However, despite the allegations of bias, I do think he has a point. It *is* a blow for Linux. However, its not an unexpected one. Once it was established that the EeePC could run XP, then of course Asus were going to capitalise on it. At the end of the day, put Joe Public infront of two EeePCs, one running XP and one running Linux, he’s probably going to go for the one with the familiar OS. From Asus’ point of view, it just makes sense that an XP model is going to be more popular than a Linux one.

However, it is a blow. The EeePC was a big win for Linux on the desktop, and represented a great way to get Linux to the masses. Now, I’m not getting into the argument of whether its ready for the masses or not. Its not perfect, but then, neither’s Windows, and Linux is certainly a lot better than it was in terms of desktop use. While I still open up a terminal to do some things, its not the necessity it once was.

With the XP model shipping, then its going to be the preferred choice for most people, who would’ve otherwise had to buy a model running Linux.

But I also agree with the posters who say this isn’t that bad news. The ratio shipping is still 3:2. So Asus obviously still have a lot of confidence in the Linux model, and the Linux model is also going to be cheaper and offer a better spec (I believe). What demand is like for the Linux model once a Windows version is available, we’ll see once it hits the shelves, but as it stands, yes its a blow, but I don’t think its a huge one.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 13:46 and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “EeePC 900 to ship more XP than Linux versions”
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  1. Richard Chapman says:
    March 14, 2008 at 15:03

    I’m sorry, I didn’t read AKHs post. I can’t read his words without feeling ill. I don’t know who made the decision to put XP on the EeePC, but I think it will prove to be a big mistake for Microsoft. First though, will the XP EeePCs be discontinued in June along with XP? Does Microsoft have something to replace XP on small portable computers like Singularity, Windows 7, Vista Lite (snort)? I doesn’t matter now.

    When someone tries Linux they are comparing it to Windows most of the time. Now, when someone buys an XP EeePC, they’ll be unknowingly comparing XP to Linux on the same machine. What happens to XP after six months of normal use, It gets faster right? Just kidding. Over time XP becomes a dog and needs to be “refreshed”. What happens to Linux over time? It gets faster. No kidding. How could that be? No spyware, no viruses, no lingering .dlls, and no Registry that’s sagging under the weight of excess baggage and broken links (or whatever it uses) that accumulate over time. That’s why Linux doesn’t get slower. It gets faster because the kernels get better as well as the major applications like Open Office.

    So Joe Six Pack buys an XP EeePC and his buddy, John Twelve Pack buys a Linux EeePC… and the rest will be an interesting history.

  2. Alan says:
    March 14, 2008 at 18:38

    The interesting thing, as you say, is that this announcement does seem at odds with Microsoft’s attempts to ditch XP and big-up Vista. Of course, I have heard that some people did manage to get Vista to run on the EeePC (I presume, with some extra RAM installed), but with such limited specs, I can’t imagine it’ll run well.

    I do wonder how much the XP thing is a reaction from Microsoft over the EeePC’s success. They won’t like the idea of Linux being on a big “must-have” device, so I wonder how much that influenced the decision to keep XP around for these devices (quite a bit I’d have thought).

    I completely agree though, that the Linux will probably remain the better choice of the two. Its a cut-down device, and as such, the streamlined Xandros OS will invariably be better suited than XP, to which I imagine there’s only so much streamlining can be done. There’s no doubt in my head that it’ll be the more appropriate OS for the device, offering stability and high performance on the reduced system specs.

    I do still think the XP version will sell very well though. I’d like to think the general public will see that the Linux one will be better, but I imagine the lure of the familiar blue-and-green taskbar will be too much for some. As well as the promise of it being able to run the software they’re familiar with. Which is a shame, as for what the device is intended for, OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird are really all you need.

    I’ll be very interested to see the comparisons and reviews on the tech sites once the two models go on general release. It’ll be interesting to see if the Linux one is the better as we might expect, or if the XP version has something up its sleeve.

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