Windows XP Lives, Thanks to Linux

CWmike writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols puts his thumb on what really happened to spur Microsoft's change of mind on sparing Windows XP: The smashing success of Asus and others' Linux-powered UMPCs and mini-notebooks caught Microsoft completely by surprise. It turned out people wanted inexpensive, hard-working Linux laptops rather than overpriced, underpowered Vista PCs. If anyone thought this was a flash in the pan, that Asus just hit it lucky once, they haven't been paying attention. Intel is putting big bucks into its Atom family of processors, which have been designed for UMPCs, or as Intel would have it, MIDs. Intel has encouraged both the computer makers and the Linux companies in its Moblin initiative to run desktop Linux. The Linux companies have picked up on this. Canonical, Ubuntu's dad company, has come up with an UMPC-specific version of Ubuntu 8.04, the latest version of this popular Linux distribution, for Intel Atom UMPCs. At Computex, by my count, more than a dozen new UMPCs were announced both from vendors you've never heard of and from big name companies like Acer and Asus. You can also expect to see Dell releasing its 'mini-Inspiron' with Ubuntu by June's end."

Cool.

[AltGrendel (175092)]

I'll be checking out the new systems to see if they would make great portable multi-media systems.

EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[Odder (1288958)]

EEE PC already has enough horsepower to play movies and music as well as anything else. Battery life could be improved and it already is up to 7.5 hours [guardian.co.uk].

Apple dominates the high end market and GNU/Linux rules the low. Soon the ends will meet and M$ will be squeezed out. Vista is a failure and it has taken M$ down with it.

The change is permenant. Vendors have revolted, M$ won't be able to come back. Good riddance.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[bennomatic (691188)]

And in the mobile phone market, it seems like Google and Apple (Goople?) are playing nice with each other, which will allow iPhone to rule the high end and Android to dominate the middle-to-low-end phone market. I don't know anyone who loves Windows Mobile, but a lot of people are pretty excited about their iPhones and/or the promise of Android.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo (1000167)]

Actually I'm pretty pleased with my Treo 750. The ability to SSH, change providers, and easily develop software is what made the decision over an iPhone. I'm not trying to start a flamewar, just saying that there are plenty of people out there that are quite happy with Windows Mobile. That isn't to say however that I wouldn't by an Android capable phone the minute it came out.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[limaxray (1292094)]

I have the same phone and IMO the phone is great except for WM sucks big time. I like OSX on the iPhone, but at the end of the day it lacks a lot a very basic functionality that WM has. When Android come out though, I'll be on that bandwagon in a heartbeat

Anyway, I strongly suggest looking into flashing it with a new radio and WM6.1 ROM. You can enable all sorts of great functionality like GPS, EVDO Rev A, and ICS (if you have VW and the bastards disabled it). Check it out here [ppcgeeks.com]

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

It's a pretty good time to be alive if you're a geek.

I disagree. Now, it seems like you don't ever "own" any of your devices, your phone is somehow tied into your cell provider, your computer is the *AA's if you don't use Linux, the makers of game consoles constantly try to brick you if you use a modchip, and all your media you haven't pirated or downloaded off of a DRM-Free site is tied to your account. So no, it isn't the greatest time, because now, you don't own a single thing.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[mewsenews (251487)]

I disagree. Now, it seems like you don't ever "own" any of your devices, your phone is somehow tied into your cell provider, your computer is the *AA's if you don't use Linux, the makers of game consoles constantly try to brick you if you use a modchip, and all your media you haven't pirated or downloaded off of a DRM-Free site is tied to your account. So no, it isn't the greatest time, because now, you don't own a single thing.

This is total tripe and pessimism! One of the defining characteristics of a geek in this age is that they are able to discern what a load of garbage this stuff is. They use unlocked GSM phones, they avoid DRM like they've been born to do so, and they do all these things with the full knowledge of what makes Quality.

And this wonderful Internet that lets us discuss this, allows them to share their ideas and feelings with similar-minded people from around the globe!

How is this not a golden age?!

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[PitaBred (632671)]

If there's not a critical mass of people avoiding DRM and working with unlocked hardware, it just won't be available any more. That's the point. It'll become a very niche, if still existent, market. The golden age will be when everyone has proper, unencumbered information sharing.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[zeromorph (1009305)]

I happen to disagree with you both, it's always good time to be a geek. It was when my father brought home a Sharp MZ whatever. It was a good time when he was soldering in his first transistor radio. It was when my grandfather bought his first motorcycle in the 1920s and crossed the Alps with it. It was when one of my ancestors got his first water driven hammer mill. It probably was when the first person was tinkering with steam, gun powder, paper or fire.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[Andy Dodd (701)]

Actually I know quite a few people who love Windows Mobile, including myself.

Many of those people are hardcore Linux users on the desktop, too.

The iPhone is a toy. It's shiny and cool but it isn't very flexible. My AT&T Tilt blows it out of the water in every aspect except user interface, and the UI of the Tilt is good enough for me, especially considering the significantly better functionality.

Android looks like it's going to cater to the Lords of Lockdown (carriers).

It's really sad that the most open mobile phone platform out there is Windows Mobile. Everything else is a nightmare of signed applications and lockdown.

(Yes, Windows Mobile has application signing, but every WM device I know uses this for warning purposes only, not lockout. In addition, WM will remember when you say "yes, I want to run this unsigned app" and not bother you again.)

Re:Thing is, Vista sells more in a day than linux

[iamhassi (659463)]

"Who BUYS a PC with Linux?"

did you not read the article summary above?

"It turned out people wanted inexpensive, hard-working Linux laptops"

The entire story is about XP being kept alive simply because people are BUYING a PC (er, laptop) with Linux. So yes, people are buying Linux PCs, enough so that M$ is scared.

Re:Not even close, try in 8 hours as many as Linux

[jedidiah (1196)]

Vista sold on the same number of machines that XP would have sold on otherwise.

Don't try to confuse anyone into believing that Vista is a real product in it's
own right. It's just another version of Windows. So what if the latest version of
MonopolyOS sells as many copies of the latest version of MonopolyOS.

Even the current version of MacOS selling as many copies as the last wouldn't be
terribly exciting.

Pointing out the fact that Vista is the latest iteration of a monopoly that
stretches back to DOS doesn't alter the fact that alternative(S) are growing.

Re:Thing is, Vista sells more in a day than linux

[DittoBox (978894)]

Gentoo is not hard core. Any monkey that can use a command line can do a Stage 1 Gentoo install (I'm proof!). Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] is hard core.

emerge "teh hardcorz"

Re:Thing is, Vista sells more in a day than linux

[oakgrove (845019)]

Yeah, but how long does it take to install all of the software and updated drivers for your various hardware including multiple reboots? And what about your favorite apps? How long does it take to install those what with swapping out the install CDs and such? Sticking in the Vista DVD and waiting the 20 or so minutes to get to a desktop is just the beginning.

On my Ubuntu box, I just install the OS pull up Add/Remove software, click a few boxes for the stuff I want, hit apply and I'm done.

Anybody who uses Linux on a regular basis I'm sure can identify with the groan inducing tediousness you prepare yourself to put up with when a friend or family member asks you to help them install Windows.

Re:Thing is, Vista sells more in a day than linux

[yelvington (8169)]

I installed Ubuntu Linux and did a "first run" of Microsoft Vista, side by side, and Ubuntu won the race. I assume that means Vista didn't really come "installed," but rather with just an installer pointed at some .CAB files.

There really wasn't a significant difference either way, and I didn't do much other than wait and confirm an occasional dialog/default. The idea that Linux is harder to install than Vista has never been true. Linux installations became insanely easy long before Microsoft shipped its Edsel.

By the way, the Vista installation was on my teen daughter's new laptop. Performance was so poor that I reformatted and switched her to Ubuntu. The original Ubuntu installation was on her grandmother's PC. Both are working out just fine.

Microsoft ain't over

[an.echte.trilingue (1063180)]

Nah. Just because they were caught by surprise doesn't mean that they won't adapt. They don't even have to do anything beyond maintain XP. I am happy that Linux has been able to provide the competitive pressure to keep Microsoft on its toes, but to suggest that MS is going to keep reinforcing failure is a pipe dream. They are already on the OLPC, you can get the EEE with XP if I remember correctly, and so on. I predict that there will soon be a windows "light" based on XP or even NT, and the cycle starts all over again.

Still, it's nice to see that after 10 years or so of stagnation, the free market in software is finally healthy again and doing its job.

Re:Microsoft ain't over

[tmcmsail (302707)]

Microsoft always misses the first bus, but they come back with a vengeance. Remember when they thought the internet was not important? Many times, they let someone else lead the way and step in later to take over the market. I loved Word Perfect, Lotus 123, d-Base, and many others, now I am stuck with a work computer with Word, Excel and Access.

Back to making money, supporting the MS systems manufactured to break and need IT pros to keep running...

Re:Microsoft ain't over

[LehiNephi (695428)]

I think you may have missed the title of the submission--Vista's too big, Mobile's too small, but XP may be about right. Personally, I still think XP's on the pudgy side, but it's the best fit out of the current microsoft OSes

Re:The market did wake up. M$ is Over.

[jedidiah (1196)]

...you mean the same IBM that came back with a vengance as a server company. ...or the same Sun that's still around as one of the dominant server vendors. ...or Netscape which is starting to chip away the monopoly/OEM acquired marketshare of IE?

Even Novell is doing pretty well by way of SLES.

AOL is the same sort of dinosaur as Microsoft. Microsoft never eliminated them. The internet
made them both look foolish. Although AOL was enough of a success based on it's own merits
before to linger on for awhile anyways.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[dave420 (699308)]

Vista is not a failure. I'm not trolling (though many will see it that way) - vista has made MS a bunch of money, and if anything, has given them a great wake-up call to shape up or ship out. It'll only be a failure if they never release another version of Windows, and don't learn from their mistakes. +5, Troll expected - slashdot, don't let me down!

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[m.ducharme (1082683)]

vista has made MS a bunch of money

This is true, but success/failure depends on how much money was made, and whether it was enough to justify the expense and/or unintended consequences.

[Vista] has given them a great wake-up call to shape up or ship out.

People usually say this about failures.

It'll only be a failure if they never release another version of Windows, and don't learn from their mistakes.

MS will probably release another (newer, as opposed to just updating XP) version of Windows, but it's not obvious that they will learn from their Vista mistakes. Either way, it's certainly too early to tell if it's been a total failure. I think it's safe to say that from a marketing standpoint, it's been a failure.

Re:EEEPC already does that. M$ is over.

[LehiNephi (695428)]

It's worse than just the retail numbers. Microsoft takes credit for every machine that is sold with Vista, whether or not that machine is sold with an XP install or whether the user subsequently wipes Vista and replaces it with something else. So basically every laptop sold to a business with a site license has counted as a sale of Vista, even though almost every large business replaces it with their own image.

My company (over 50k employees) took four years after the release of XP to adopt the new OS. They're moving more quickly on Vista, however, with rollout scheduled for 2009. It'll be really interesting to watch--about 50% of our entire workforce and 80-90% of our management are over 47 years old. There's going to be a great deal of bellyaching when users are suddenly confronted with the brand new user interface for both the shell (Aero will be on by default) and office suite (2007). I'll adapt fairly easily, I expect, since I'm still in my 20's, but I feel sorry for the poor folks at the Helpdesk when it hits.

Re:One Pair of Glasses

[zappepcs (820751)]

Well, let me have a stab at this. For some time now, it 'seems' like MS business decisions might have been made by looking at the chairs scattered in the hallway outside the boardroom like so many tea leaves in the bottom of a cup.

Whether you like MS or not, clearly Vista was not the big deal it was supposed to be, and has failed to live up to expectations of even many MS fanbois. With users and businesses requesting XP be installed on new machines, and requests for longer lifecycle for XP added to the growth in GNU/Linux marketshare plus GNU/Linux shipping on some big name OEM machines. The trend here is not a positive one for MS. MSN is not making money, Zune is not making money, XBox isn't making any real money, XP is not causing the finance group to be all smiles either. Clearly the bid for Yahoo was a sign to everyone that MS does not plan to innovate it's way out of the maelstrom they find themselves in right now. When you get caught bluffing at poker, your hand is played out.

MS will have to do something rather extraordinary to turn the current trend around. Trying to do that in the midst of a recession might be difficult. There are very large organizations (whole countries even) that have decided to dump MS Windows products for various reasons. It really doesn't matter how good XP was or is, MS marketshare is leaching away in many areas. Wii helped with that. Ubuntu et al have helped with it. Dell et al helped too. In a recession Free sounds a lot better than 350 bucks, especially when it runs better on your old hardware than Vista does on brand new hardware. Of course there is the whole DRM thing to think of also. Then there is the iPod halo effect bringing more Mac customers.

There are plenty of reasons for NOT choosing Vista or MS products. Linux is one alternative, and it does deserve some of the lime light in this situation. If Linux wasn't working so good, MS would be making money off of Vista de facto.

The fact that there is only a very minute chance that you managed to post your message without relying on some version of Linux sort of technically means that Linux *IS* related and germane to a whole lot of things in the world today.

Hmmm...

[Stanistani (808333)]

I wonder, with the surge in this UMPC form factor, if not only efficient OS's are favored, but perhaps new networked games with cross-platform ports (and a smaller footprint).

I scent a market opportunity for game companies to port more games to Linux...

Caught between a rock and a hard place?

[It doesn't come easy (695416)]

So Microsoft has to keep XP going to slow the adoption of Linux? Yet malware writers are now using Microsoft's patch cycle for XP at least (and can Vista be far behind?) to rapidly create exploits. And of course XP is still rife with security issues. I wonder how long XP can stay afloat with malware on one side and Linux on the other? (especially if Microsoft stops fixing XP security issues)

Re:Caught between a rock and a hard place?

[dave420 (699308)]

It's very easy to keep an XP install running. Especially since SP2, now that the firewall is on by default. I've run XP for years without a firewall of its own (just a NAT denying inbound connections), and no anti-virus, and I didn't have virus problems. I'm not suggesting you're spreading some FUD, I'm merely hinting that the reality you've painted isn't reflected in some, if not many people's 'eXPerience'.

Re:Caught between a rock and a hard place?

[MightyYar (622222)]

I think that they will still sell it for these tiny PCs, since they won't run Vista. For them not to do so would mean forfeiting the market to Linux - something they are not prepared to do.

Re:Caught between a rock and a hard place?

[peragrin (659227)]

except for the low powered machines. in fact MSFT is trying to put artificial limits on these machines in terms of speed, ram, storage, etc so that they don't eat into the vista hardware.

While still claiming that XP is done with on june 30th, there are so many exceptions it won't even been funny.

I fully expect to be able to buy a full spec machine running a new copy of XP in 6 months.

More like a stay of execution..

[s31523 (926314)]

I do not think MS is going to completely spare XP, more likely it is just delaying it's execution. As time goes on, the hardware will be caught up enough to run Vista and MS will have had time to "fine tune" it enough to make people get along with it, then they will kill XP.

Re:More like a stay of execution..

[s31523 (926314)]

Which will be an XP box with a black marker 'X' through it and "Vista Lite" written underneath it!

XP Home Only

[russlar (1122455)]

OK, so they're extended the life of XP Home Edition until 2010 to capture more of the mini-laptop market. So? Name me one network admin who will use XP Home on an ultra-portable. These things are perfect for someone who needs a small, lightweight laptop to administer a network rack, and XP Home is practically useless for that.

The target market for XP Home has had Vista pushed on it for the past year and a half, and most of that target market probably doesn't know enough about Windows to care about XP vs. Vista.

Only extending the life of XP Pro will have any meaning.

Re:XP Home Only

[Goaway (82658)]

Name me one network admin who will use XP Home on an ultra-portable.

Remind me again why anybody would care what network admins do with their ultraportables?

Well... It was actually the "Not Windows" bit

[arivanov (12034)]

So far anything on the market ran either both Windose and Linux or just Windoze.

IMO what got MSFT really scared is that many of the crop of the new and cheap PCs went as far as not being bothered to be Windows compatible on release. Asus is a prime example - it could not run Windows XP as shipped without MSFT doing some work on it. Half of the UMPCs are on its heels as well.

This is not something Microsoft has ever experienced in its history since the days of DOS vs CPM - the hottest PC product on the market based on customer demand for the Christmas season to be Windows incompatible.

It is not the linux market penetration that they are worried about, it is the change of attitude in major OEMs. The entire MSFT business is based around a B&D relationship with OEMs which keeps OEMs doing exactly what MSFT wants. An OEM rebellion is what MSFT is most scared of and it will do anything and give out any candy it can to prevent it.

Those new "little" CPUs aren't so little

[Animats (122034)]

Those new "little" CPUs coming out aren't so little. They're above 1GHz now, they're going into machines with 1 GB of memory, and some of them are superscalar. They even have GPUs. That's more than enough power for any reasonable portable system. Mail, web browsing, video playing, the occasional PowerPoint presentation - you don't need a quad-core 3 GHZ CPU part for that.

What you need is battery life. The next frontier may be less CPU power but a full day of operation or more between recharges. Note that phone battery life was a huge issue until it reached a day or two of moderate to heavy use. After that, it stopped being a major factor in buying decisions.

Great for linux...

[sucker_muts (776572)]

... but I'm still dissapointed that most of those laptops are promoted with XP on it anyway.

Here in Belgium I saw an ad voor an asus EEE last week, but with shiny happy 'Windows XP' logo and specification besides it.

I'm afraid too many users (and stores) over here are too lazy to try something new. It makes sense that supermarkets (the ad was from one) might try to sell XP rather than linux, so they can sell some other software that's needed.
With linux, a lot needed software is installed by default, and that does not translate in money to earn. :-(

(The day when proprietary software wil be perfect against piracy will be a day to rejoice: Empty your wallets, or stop being lazy and try something like open source for a while, it's not that bad when you only need basic stuff done!)

There's No Surprises

[mpapet (761907)]

Only complacent management at Microsoft.

Here's the loong tale of how this stuff happens.

This is how it works people. Smaller companies hit on a good idea all of the time. Every once in a while, the idea appeals to a very large group of consumers. Big companies just wait. Sometimes for quite a while.

All big companies, Microsoft included, have one guy running around corporate going "This UMPC thing is going to be big! We need to target it." This guy is completely ignored because there's no market data and Management pretty much ignores him because he's saying stuff like this all of the time.

Meanwhile, Asus figured out how to deliver the goods on the cheap. Microsoft's Asus rep ignored Asus's info about UMPC's because Microsoft's rep is used to waiting for corporate to deliver the pinata filled with money.

When Asus gets things rolling, Management panics because their high-priced market research has just come back with a new report saying cheap UMPC's are growing into a huge market. Some ass-kisser in Marketing is then tasked with stomping on the Linux Distro by preparing a pinata filled with money to deliver to Microsoft's Asus rep.

There's more waiting. More market research. More waiting. Presentations. Approvals. Meetings. More waiting.

Microsoft corporate delivers pinata to Asus rep. Microsoft's OS is then available as a SKU worldwide ~1-3 years after Asus's product launch.

Computers that just plain work

[spaceyhackerlady (462530)]

I feel part of this is a reaction of people to slow, buggy computers that crash all the time: a computer is useless if it doesn't actually work. User don't care how fast the computer is. They don't care how fancy the OS is or how many bells and whistles the applications have. As long as it does what they need it to do, they're happy.

I've actually met people who are suspicious of Macs. They're too easy. They're too reliable. They're not like other (i.e. Windows) computers. There has to be a catch, somewhere. Us Mac fans just say this is how computers are supposed to work, and it's Windows that has it wrong.

...laura

Stupidest os release?

[fluffy99 (870997)]

From the article

...and Vista is looking more and more like Microsoft's stupidest operating system release ever. Yes, even counting Windows ME and MS-DOS 4.0.

I think that honor belongs to Microsoft Bob http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob [wikipedia.org]

How much longer can Windows really stick around?

[HomerJ (11142)]

XP does the two things you really want an OS to do well. Run all the software you want, on the hardware you want. But XP is getting long in the tooth.

The market is going to things like these UMPCs. It's going to tablets and other exotic hardware. Windows is losing one of the two things here. Vista doesn't run at all on them. Microsoft's only answer is keep putting out XP. On these systems, even XP doesn't run on the hardware as well as Linux.

Next up is software. These aren't gaming PCs. Linux is running the software people want to run. Firefox, Pidgin for IMs, It plays media without hassles. It has an office suite. Toss wine on there, and it will even run Office. Look at all the solutions that mac users use to run a couple Windows programs on OSX. The market is coming around to just using emulation for that last 5% of Windows software they want or need to run.

If Windows loses the only two reasons people put up with it, why would they continue to run it? OEMs are seeing this as well, and are just putting out Linux machines. Dell is going "If people buying Apple machines will use Parallels to run Windows stuff they can't in OSX, why can't they just use Crossover to run them on Linux"? In a market like PC, that $20 they spend on that Windows license is $20 they can't lower the price to compete with others. That $20 is a difference in someone buying a Dell, and going elsewhere.

Windows may end up being a niche market, with business that just need native Windows for one reason or another. But considering they are losing the two reasons home users RUN Windows, and then the added headaches associated to running it, why are they going to continue to bother?

Thanks to Vista, too

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

If Vista didn't suck so much and wasn't as bloated as a dead whale carcass, Windows XP wouldn't have a reason to stick around. It's not just Linux, give credit where it's due.

The fact that Vista took 6 years to get here meant that the minimum specs for running Windows.CurrentVersion didn't change for 6 years, which created a market for ultra-cheap subnotebooks that would run like shit if they had to run Vista. Linux wins there, and XP's Microsoft's stopgap to try to compete with it.

Re:I knew it

[russlar (1122455)]

Finally this is the year of desktop linux.

Didn't you say that last year?

Re:I knew it

[Archangel Michael (180766)]

He is mistaken. This is the year of the Laptop Linux!

Desktop Linux isn't scheduled for release yet. Perhaps next year.

Windows is over.

[Odder (1288958)]

No one is going to spend $400 on an OS so they can run a $450 word processor. The Microsoft era is closed.

Re:Windows is over.

[boxxertrumps (1124859)]

Why would that be modded flamebait?

It's true.

Re:I knew it

[meringuoid (568297)]

Finally this is the year of desktop linux.

This isn't the desktop. It's the micro-laptop. But it's a beginning.

We had one of the women from upstairs come down to the IT dungeon a couple of weeks ago. Wanted to get her (personal) laptop set up so she could read email while on the road, which meant configuring it to connect through a 3G USB stick, then bookmarking the company's webmail in the browser.

She'd bought it, having done without laptops in the past, because it was small and cute and pink and cheap and fit in her handbag. Yep, it's an Eee.

In case anyone's wondering, yes, they work perfectly, at least with the Vodafone sticks; there's a free download of the necessary software, with a version especially for the Eee that adds an icon in the Internet pane, and Vodafone even run an apt repository for it. I was expecting to get to play the Unix guru, but this was simpler than it is on the bloody Windows boxes!

So: someone wholly clueless bought this machine because of its size and price and cute factor. She wouldn't know what Linux was if you beat her about the head with a plump contented well-fed penguin. Wouldn't know an operating system from a hole in the ground. But she'd been playing happily with it for days and loving the damn thing. Best of all, the usual question of 'what happens when they try to install [INSERT DUMB USER PROGRAM HERE]' doesn't arise: Eee's got no disk drives :-)

These machines are going to produce an army of users who are used to Firefox and OpenOffice.org and all the rest of our beloved open-source applications. Once they've found that they can do everything they expect of a computer with these systems... well, Joe Public isn't tech-savvy, but he'll notice the price premium for Windows, remember how their geeky nephew Timmy said it was because those ones go to pay Bill Gates The Richest Man In The World even more money but these don't, and make the obvious decision.

Re:Just keep stalling..

[Fx.Dr (915071)]

Just like with ME, I'll contiue to use XP until a sutiable replacement comes about.

Whoa, you waited for a "suitable replacement" for Millennium Edition?

Head Asplode

Re:EEEPC

[MightyYar (622222)]

A man "silicone augmenting" his computer... hmm, pretty soon you'll have something to make into a movie. [imdb.com]

Re:EEEPC

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo (1000167)]

We use them exclusively in the field, when somebody drops it or somehow breaks it (and people can get very creative about what they do) we're only out a few hundred dollars compared to the over $2,000 we used to spend on toughbooks.

Re:EEEPC

[compro01 (777531)]

actually, a friend of mine has been working on creating a durable-ized eeepc. Current method he's trying is encasing pretty much the entire outside of the thing in about a 2" layer of modified (mixed with some kind of metallic powder to allow decent thermal qualities, as it would have to be passively cooled.) soft silicone, along with a sealed keyboard, watertight plugs for all the ports, and gasketing around the edge of the screen and keyboard interior, covered in some army surplus untearabillium-infused fabric (same fabric as the older green Canadian combat uniform pants) to protect the silicone from abrasion.

No idea how well it's going, as I haven't talked to him in a few weeks (He's currently working with the base forces for the summer, but is doing this project on his own time), but it seems like a workable idea. The eeepc is sufficiently cheap that it's almost ideal for this kind of prototyping.

Re:Apple needs to make overpriced underpowered min

[MightyYar (622222)]

Well, that was random.

Coke needs to come out with a blue-flavored cola.