It is a good idea

I recently bought an eee pc 1000HA and I find it an excellent tool. Laptops have always suffered from having short battery life and being heavy. Netbooks are light, and the eee pc 1000 series demonstrates that battery life can be 5 or 6 hours. The machine can do voip/skype/whatever and it runs a browser and SSH client nicely. Heavy word processors are over-rated, a lightweight word processor is good enough for most purposes.

Way, way, way, way back in the day there was a competition between x86, RISC, SPARC and PPC for the desktop: x86 won then but this is a market where competition could again have an effect and drive the price/performance ratio. Linux has an advantage over Windows in that it runs on x86/x64, also ARM, also pick your CPU. So do the vast majority of KDE & Gnome apps.

Therefore Linux has a competitive advantage in a market - netbooks - where the CPU price is extremely sensitive and (IMHO) there is real reason for competition against Intel & AMD processors. A portable OS applied to heterogenous hardware competing in a fairly common form factor could cause a (I hate to use jargon) paradigm shift.

Netbooks are already extremely successful, it would be very nice if they were adopted as value added marketing tools. Certainly with Linux there would be little likelyhood of vendor/OS lock-in: people would make RPMs or distros for the little beasties. A telco giving me a netbook with an ADSL contract would have a hard time stopping me or charging me for installing GCC, for example.

Problem is, they'll eviscerate the high margin Core2 & Phenom market. Then again, with 32 nm process tech soon ready and the small size of a netbook CPU, margins on netbook CPUs could be high enough to make up the difference.

If that is actually the case, who wants to bet a beer that Intel executes, AMD vacillates, and ARM & Fujitsu (sparc) & co. retrench ;-(

spending money?

Every idiot can spend money, but they should start making money anytime soon for a change. Real money not the phoney stuff the FED is printing at the moment. Because our Chinese friends aren't going to give the mericuns a free ride for ever.

Horned Jobs for obvious reasons.

It is not what you've got, its how well you use.

Do not be fooled into thinking that a hardware device is the great white hope answer to present ills. And by a hardware device, I would class any consumer product in that bracket whether it be electronic, electric, mechanical or even static decorative possession. They are merely means of temptation to encourage you to spend Cash and enrich Capitalism and especially those who would have the Currency flow through their System of Banks/Laundries, for whenever you are sitting in charge of the Flow and Currency Distribution, are you able to Invent more Currency and choose to whom it should Flow/Go ........ which was the Old [Analogue] Way of doing Big Business.

Things have Changed Fundamentally and QuITe Radically of Late, as you may have Recently Noticed and the Old Way of Doing things,.......[ with its Usury Banking Systems and Discriminatory and Subjective Discretionary Services in Exclusive Supply of Cash Reserves/Sponsored Credit from Businesses which Easily Print and Mint Money, which is a Public Convenience Used as a Reward/Carrot/Stick to Generate Product and Industrious Energy with Spend/Turnover, which returns the Cash/Credit back to the System for ReUse,..... but with the System ALSO expecting the Return of the Sum Creditted/Spent to be Returned again, together with an Added Sum of Arbitrary Interest, which Creates an Additional Unnecessary Burden on they who are Generating the Currency Flow with their Industry and/or Intellectual Property Conversion into Product for Cash Spend, and which keeps the Banking System alive] .... is Dead in the Water, is it not, as IT has been found to be both Predatory and Cannibalistic and a Self Serving Payola Ponzi Scam?

And I do apologize for the unusual and quite excessive length of that sentence. It does though contain and explain all that is Wrong and Toxic in the Present System, and that which would need to be Quickly Discarded and thrown directly into the Trash, and left behind in the Past for a Dim Memory to Remember as being Recorded in History , in the Future.

The Future is Formed, and such is the Ubiquitous and Smarter Invasive and Inquisitive Nature of Information Technologies and Intelligently Designed Processing Architectures, also Naturally Phormed by what One would do with hardware devices, which are Better Utilised with their Owners Plugged in/Turned On and Tuned In/Connected to Networks InterNetworking in Clouds and/or across Global Intelligent Information Grids, Sharing Ideas for a Greater Mutual Intelligence, which Leads a Following Building the Future by Virtual Means and Intellectual Property Share....... and Currency Distribution and Free Flow rather than Banking Management and Administrative Blockage.

And you can be assured/horrified/informed that the System is being/has been BetaTested in a Running Pilot of the Free Flow Credit ControlLed System to ReGenerate and Energise Economies and Industry.

And More on that, later.

And Paris, because she is a hero to those who haven't a lot but know very well how to use IT to Create a Perception of Definitive Real Advantage ...... to Disadvantage Puerile Indifference and Macho Competition.

And all of the Above is what IT is all about, ma cherie, n'est ce pas?

Hang on a minute.....

Big company bribes resellers to install the O/S of its choice in an attempt to tie the users in to its own software suite and freeze out any opposition sales.

Haven't we been here before?

Hmm, this might need a clue for the hard of thinking......need a suitable icon.....aha!

Initially Money to those who can Spend IT 42 Create DisProportionate Wealth for Novel Distribution.

And for all you Doubting Thomases and/or Moribund Thinkers out there, not thinking and thinking "It is not what you've got, its how well you use." ... Posted Wednesday 4th March 2009 08:06 GMT, is an alien rant, here is something similar from someone you might consider more earthed? ..... http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/239/1051239/eu-president-calls-intellectual-property-rights-rethink ....... except he's quite a bit further behind the Curve and nowhere in Sight of those out in the Front and at Point and on Master BetaTest Pilot Duties. But at least he's got Vision.

@ffrankmccaffery

And those problems would be....?

And they compare to Windows' countless problems how....?

I have some problems with the Linux distros I have tried (KDE is unstable...the window managers are confusing...) Some of this comes down to my ignorance whilst I fiddle about and learn. A few are genuine issues (i.e. KDE 4.2 - it is actually rather flakey). But these issues are no more than I experience on Windows on a daily basis.

I have lost count of the number of times on Windows I have had to play "kill the process" or just rebooted to get a USB device to a state where I can unplug it. Very frustrating. Or a file is locked by something and I have no idea what. Or having to manually search for, download and resolve compatibility issues with drivers. Then there's the lock-ups, virii, trojans, bloat, cost.....

I like this idea and I will be interested to see how it pans out. Hopefully it will bring more quality into the Linux arena, which is often still a hobbyists play pen. I guess the main gripe I have with Linux is documentation, or the lack thereof. Actually, scratch that, there is too much. Disparate, unmanaged, uncoordinated and not new-user-friendly.

So sure, Linux has problems but no more than Windows does. And when low-price-point is the target you only have two choices Linux or XP; and as MS will be killing XP soon.....

And just what will be the price?

Google subsidizing the hardware means they will dictate to the manufacturer what is installed.Hello google gears, mail, google docs, search as the home page etc etc. it will be nothing more than a gateway to google services. And yet they still don't think they are a monopoly, or that there is anything wrong with this business practice.

And before everybody pipes in with - but you have a choice, if you don't want to use it install a competitors product. That's exactly the same position as a Microsoft OS. If you don't like the per-installed stuff use someone elses and yet everybody still cries monopoly.

Subsidizing the hardware is no different to Microsoft offering massive software discounts to OEMs. Both serve the purpose of making the inital cost to the consumer cheaper and so getting your product into a dominant position in the market.

Its about time Google moved something out of perpetual beta before trying to shove their half-baked projects down peoples throats. Hopefully it isn't going to be too long before this whole 'cloud' idea disappears again. Should only take 1 or 2 massive outages. It isn't a new idea and it has failed before for that same reason.

Exclusive...

... these things ain't. Think a bit historically. Fridges were originally exclusive, like cars. Phones too. Anyone remember telegrams? Air travel?

Give these developments a decade or two, and only design and deliberate function-based performance alternatives will distinguish the machines. Basic form and function will only differ like radios and landline phones. And broadband & wireless will be everywhere, like roads and road signs.

Basic funding will be radio-style with a central collection system plus advertising (maybe). Unless the state decides that this kind of electronic connection is so fundamental to work and social and cultural interaction that it funds it all out of taxation, so people won't even notice it. Or do you ever hear anyone moaning about VAT, which is a totally unjust single-rate tax on rich and poor alike (worse than Thatcher's repugnant poll-tax).

The arguments between small chargers and free advocates will be like those about ways of funding public transport in metropolitan areas.

(Paris, cos she's a kind of celebrity infrastructure...)

RE: And just what will be the price?

"MS have a different model, you pay for the OS. It might be cheaper than normal retail when included with a new PC but you *do* pay. You don't get discounted hardware as part of the deal either!"

And what exactly happens when vendors offer Microsoft-laden computers at the same price as a Linux version or less? It's well known that software vendors pay to have their crapware pre-loaded (antivirus trial versions and so on), especially on Windows systems. Whether Microsoft plays any role in that directly is another matter, but we can't rule out strategic discounts and other subsidies taking place behind the scenes.

What we should expect from regulators is them mandating the availability of hardware without an operating system or crapware bundled. If people then demand Windows plus crapware, if this effectively gets them a discount on the price at the cost of having a bunch of bloat and advertising in their face, then they would be able to choose this. But this should not diminish availability of the raw hardware, and pricing should remain transparent.