Netbooks Take a Bite Out of Windows Profits 221
twitter writes "Analysts at Bloomberg noticed the tumble in Microsoft's traditional software sales last quarter and blamed it on netbooks: 'The devices, which usually cost less than $500, are the fastest-growing segment of the personal-computer industry — a trend that's eating into Microsoft's revenue. Windows sales fell short of forecasts last quarter and the company cut growth projections for the year, citing the lower revenue it gets from netbooks. When makers of the computers do use Windows, they typically opt for older and cheaper versions of the software. Equipping Linux on a computer costs about $5, compared with $40 to $50 for XP and about $100 for Vista, according to estimates by Jenny Lai, a Taipei-based analyst at CLSA Ltd.' This is why MS declared war on the segment last year and palm top computers in previous years. While they may have successfully tamed the Asus EEE PC, they can't hold back everyone who wants to make a buck on cheap hardware and free software. Analysts have predicted the fall of MS's business model when computers break below $250/unit retail. We are there now, and it has shown in the bottom line."
Re:Why make it more complicated than it really is? (Score:4, Informative)
They never followed the standards before, why would they start now?
Wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Normal labour doesn't even cost that much in China.
Even with a brain dead CD installation method I'm sure you can install Linux on more than 10 computers in one day. Low cost labour in China doesn't cost USD50/day.
A decent ready-made meal probably only costs USD1.
Yes most chinese workers can't afford two SUVs/trucks, a big house with a TV in each room (and the heating/cooling bill), a big slab of meat for every meal. But perhaps with the current energy infrastructure, maybe the world can't afford it either.
If I can get paid USD5 per PC install of Linux, bring em on, I'd easily do 100 a day, and still have lots of time to nap, post on Slashdot, play games etc.
May not be a lot of money for you, but it's good money where I am.
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Re:MSFT goes SaaS? (Score:2, Informative)
I don't think Microsoft will have to cut significant costs to sell Windows for $25 a copy. Especially XP, which they have pretty much already paid for. As it stands, their OS sales are essentially printing money for them. Go to the following page and find the "Client" section to see what I am talking about:
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar08/10k_fr_dis.html [microsoft.com]
Re:You should not. (Score:1, Informative)
Vista is a failure
Keep saying it enough and you might convince yourself. Meanwhile, if your metric for failure is sales, then I'd suggestion 180 million sales [arstechnica.com] isn't a bad metric to go by.
To be objective, Vista did break a lot of things when it RTMed, hence the bad rap it took. Nearly 2 years on now, and things are much much smoother.
But no, you're right, Vista is a failure. Keep repeating it and it'll be true eventually I promise!
Re:Why make it more complicated than it really is? (Score:1, Informative)
Ubuntu and FreeBSD work wonderfully here on my PIII 1.2GHz laptop and PII 450MHz household server (with KDE for when I'm desktopping on it). Mac OS X 10.4 works wonderfully on our 400MHz G3, 400MHz G4 and 800MHz G4.
Really - this is all a Microsoft problem, because their software is mediocre.
Re:MSFT goes SaaS? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why make it more complicated than it really is? (Score:2, Informative)
That screen would be 1024x600, and the processor is only a single core with hyperthreading. I should think that your Dell laptop from two years ago has a faster processor if nothing else.
Re:Chill dude. (Score:5, Informative)
I have not confused cores with threads. Cores are simply individual CPUs integrated on to a chip. AMD and intel are currently up to 4 on a chip. Sun does 8 on a chip (with 8 thread contexts per core).
Solaris, Linux and many other unixes have been scaling (not merely being just "aware of") many more that 256 CPUs (call them cores) for well over a decade.
Do some googling. Solaris especially and linux scale almost linearly to thousands of CPUs per system today. To say that Windows' performance is embarrassing in this respect would be an understatement.
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Re:Why make it more complicated than it really is? (Score:1, Informative)
Hyperthreaded =/= Dual core. You have a single core 1.6Ghz Atom CPU that can be recognized as a dual core CPU. That's hyperthreading in action right there. Just wait until you run an old application that absolutely cannot be multithreaded. At most, it'll peg the CPU at about 53%. Even if you wanted it to, it will not go higher. No one single application will peg the CPU at 100%. I find Hyperthreading in this aspect to be a serious drawback because it limits the raw power you can get out of the CPU itself.
The screen is 1024x600. Not 1024x400. Roughly 16:9.34 aspect ratio.
For real use performance, I find the Aspire One to be roughly equivalent of a 600Mhz Pentium. It's not blazing fast. At best, on low settings, I get about 20fps on some games. Regularly between 7-15 fps. And this was on a DX7 era game that is entirely CPU bound.
GPU based games don't run too much better, really. (No, I didn't buy the netbook for gaming, though it's nice to be able to sit back and frag a few AIs during a long train ride.)
The Aspire One with 512MB of ram is dog slow. I upgraded mine and added 1GB to it. It became much more usable, but Firefox still takes nearly a minute to finish loading. Disabling virtual memory/swap finally took that bit of I/O lag out of the equation and I find it less tedious to use.
Now, if you were coming from a P2/300 Mhz Dell laptop, I could understand your enthusiasm, but I hardly doubt that you are able to compare it to a Dell laptop from 2 years ago. My current laptop is about 2 1/2 years old and it kicks the crap out of the Aspire One. (True Dual Core, 2Ghz Intel C2D, 2GB Ram, dedicated video Geforce 7700 Mobile with 512MB of video ram)
I built a file server/network box. 512MB of ram, P2/500Mhz CPU. The Aspire One runs about the same.
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Re:Why make it more complicated than it really is? (Score:3, Informative)
Not a single game since Crysis came out comes close to taxing the system
Ever try FlightSim 10?
The guys who run it, also run a pile of addons like real world weather, ATC, virtual 3d cockpits and the rest.
Even FS9 on directx 9 sucks on a 3.2P4 with 2gb ram with the best 3D card - maybe 20fps.
FS10 or FSX as it is known, can barely do 10fps.
3D card/systems comparisons generally avoid the FS game as it is very demanding on all systems.