A Man and his Penguin

I noticed recently that I haven’t recieved any automated e-mails from my workmate containing her IP address. She came in today briefly, so I asked her about it. Her response? "Everything’s going great".

I’m really happy with this. I just need to find her a printer; preferably not HP as they seem to be very expensive to change the ink cartridges. Canon I believe makes drivers for their printers under a reasonably unrestricted license, which is great.

I’m also thinking of getting a Bebo credit card and hiring some web space; and then get this computer-building lark really underway making some money for me.

There’s definitely something shady going on with this Windows XP EeePC, being cheaper than the Linux version.

In retail, there’s something known as upselling - that’s where you try and get the customer enthusiastic about buying something more expensive than what they originally intended. Often, a cheap product will be advertised in a catalogue to get people into the store, and then hopefully a certain percentage will choose to pay more to get a better product. Sometimes, if you advertise the cheap product, people will call or come in seeking out the more expensive product.

If Asus were acting normally, under no undue influences from Microsoft, the Windows XP version would always be a little more expensive than the Linux version. Most people would happily pay an extra 5% ($30) to get Windows. It would be an easy upsell - "this is the interface that you’re familiar with; it works with all your existing programs". Sure, some people won’t care and will save themselves $30. Or a bigger margin; Windows’ familiarity will still sell for an extra $50.

Who, apart from Linux users, can upsell based on a bigger SSD and a less familiar operating system? I’d try, of course, but it would be incredibly difficult. That’s why Asus is taking that option away from retailers.

Putting the Windows XP price below the Linux price doesn’t make sense when you’re selling the product. It does when you’re being strongarmed by Microsoft (or they make you an offer you can’t refuse).

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On the topic of selling, the president of News Corp says that Blu-ray’s take-up has remained slow because of a lack of Blu-ray players on the market and in stores.

Bollocks.

There are eight Blu-ray players on the market today, not including integrated with home theatre systems. That is plenty, as most of the major brands have them - Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Pioneer, LG, and Sharp.

Blu-ray players are mostly an add-on purchase - someone buys an HD TV, and gets convinced to add a Blu-ray player too. We can add an $89 power board to the sale easily enough, but it’s difficult to sell a $599 blu-ray too.

The recent promotion with Samsung giving extra cashback if you buy a Blu-ray player with your TV, has actually sold out our stock of Samsung Blu-ray players, showing that if the players were $150 cheaper, they would sell better.

Asus, who makes the hugely popular EeePC, has just released an edition with an 8.9 inch screen.

Oh, and no Linux.

In Australia, the 8.9 inch edition will be available in department stores, retail chains, and specialist computer stores. The problem is, unlike with the 7 inch edition, this will only be available with Windows if you buy from any retail chain.

Most people who go and buy an EeePC will go to a Myer or Retravision or Harvey’s, and therefore automatically get the Windows XP version. This will definitely deprive everyday people from experiencing Linux. It will also have the knock-on effect of increasing virus transmission and damaging the good reputation these machines have due to lower battery life with Windows.

Who will go to a specialist computer store to buy an Eee? "Enthusiasts" and "Tech-savvy" people. I know I shouldn’t really complain as at least we still have the option of buying Linux preinstalled, but this now touches on one of my pet hates. The self-fulfilling prophecy of "Only geeks use Linux".

If you want to install an ATI or Nvidia graphics card driver, those hardware vendors expect you to manually install kernel headers, go into the terminal and put in commands to install the drivers. If you want to install Flash Player, Adobe expects you to go into the terminal and type a manual path to your Firefox installation. There’s a mentality of "We don’t need to make our software easy to install on Linux, because only geeks use Linux, and the geeks won’t be intimidated by our installer". It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because if an everyday person tries to install those drivers, they can quickly get frustrated and give up with Linux.

Thankfully, the distributions tend to have systems to make it easy to install those drivers. Restricted Drivers Manager, Envy, binary repositories; if the distributions can write easy installers for those binary drivers, why won’t the vendors themselves?

In the same token, if you make your Linux-based laptop readily available only for geeks, then only geeks will buy it. It’s also outrageous that the Windows XP version of the 8.9 inch Eee is $50 cheaper than the Linux one!

I was also seriously pissed off at the Asus notebook product manager, Albert Liang. He described the Windows XP version as the "mainstream edition", which IMHO is a direct undermining of the tireless efforts of Linux-based developers to make an excellent and user-friendly Linux desktop. Once again, self-fulfilling prophecy: Linux will never be "mainstream" because we keep saying that it’s not. I feel like Liang’s statement is a personal attack: I wrote some easy-to-use software that transcodes video for the Sony Walkman, so I guess I’m working to make Linux as user-friendly and mainstream-appealing as possible.

Linux adoption won’t increase at a greater rate than before unless something else comes along. Asus’ actions have shown that we can’t pin our hopes of widespread Linux adoption on the EeePC. If Linux is the destination of the computing highway, the EeePC is no longer the onramp.