Alby_da_Wolf said:
ramses01 said:
NinjaKido said:
Soleron said:
The most common use of netbooks is e-mail, office and internet. Linux is sufficiently capable and compatible to do all three, and do it faster than XP.
The reason why Linux isn't selling is because laptops with it aren't cheaper. I don't know why this is, since Linux is free and Windows XP costs, but I assume Microsoft has heavily discounted XP to OEMs as long as they obey the hardware restrictions* and market the XP version over the Linux one.
*Microsoft restricts the spec of netbooks. They're not low-spec because they have to be; it's because MS is doing it.
- Can't have flash drives >16GB or HDD >160GB.
- Can't have processors >1GHz.
- Can't have >1GB of memory
- Can't have screen sizes >10.2"
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14723
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Shouldn't that be considered a violation of anti trust law if it already isn't ?
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There is nothing anti-trust about that. It is simple customer segmentation, a basic marketing strategy.
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If it was MS to sell PC's segmenting OS according to these criteria, it would be normal, but MS doesn't sell PC's, it's imposing these criteria to PC producers it sells its OS to. This at least raises some doubts, it's like if I sold to a retailer basic nylon and luxury silk umbrellas and forced him to sell the basic ones only to people short, with a leg missing and poor clothes.
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That is an incorrect analogy. MS isn't forcing anyone to do anything. They are simply exercising control over the approved use of their products to protect their brand. The customer elects, or not, to purchase the license.
MS is saying to the customer, netbook manufacturers, I will sell this specific version of an OS designed and priced for Netbooks. However, as a condition of that sale only products meeting these characteristics are eligible for that price and feature set. This prevents cannibalization of the full OS market on laptops.
