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#46
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Windows 8 on four computers
On 2/2/2013 6:21 PM, BillW50 wrote:
In , Ken Springer typed: On 12/24/12 11:23 AM, VanguardLH wrote: "BillW50" wrote: On 12/24/2012 10:54 AM, ray wrote: On Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:30:17 -0600, Gordon wrote: Our household computer/network setup has three desktops, one laptop and one Kindle. One of the desktop comptuers is a new HP Pavilion that came with Windows 8 preinstalled. I would like to install Windows 8 on the other computer but can't find a store copy that will let me install it on more than one computer. Why? Gordon MS licensing. Most Linux distributions, on the other hand, are free to install on as many machines as you want. Yeah... but what good is it? Even if I installed Linux on a million machines, it still isn't as useful to me as one Windows machine. ;-) As is typical with Linux proselytizers, they don't address the issue. Use whatever OS fits your purpose, not the other way around. If you have LPs then you get a record player. If you have DVDs then you get that player. If you have Blueray then you need that type of player. Figure out what you want to do and then find out what lets you do it. Determine the tasks, find the apps (across any OS) that let you do those tasks, and then decide on the OS. You might find one that does them all or you might even decide on a couple different operating systems utilizing the best of class functionality in each. The other way around means you buy the player but don't know if there's anything yet to play on it. Dumb. Use the best tool for the job. Don't focus on the OS. Focus on what apps will do best what you want and that'll decide the OS. For example, if you're a gamer and want the largest selection available, are you really going to suffer the slowdown of virtualizing Windows on Linux providing that all those games don't require direct access to the real hardware? If you have a mission critical business app that only runs on MS-DOS or Windows 98, are you really going to trash your business by moving to an NT-based version of Windows? If you want a super-reliable and robust file server that runs on a platform with far less hardware requirements than demanded by Windows, you sure you don't want to use Linux? It's pretty clear the OP isn't asking for OS recommendations. He already knows what he wants. A Linux proselytizer proffering an irrelevant solution makes them look stupid and just as pathetic as a Windows proselytizer flaming in the Linux newsgroups. +2 Very, very well said. You're approach is exactly how any project should be approached. Determine the result you want, then determine what needs to be done to accomplish the result. A man named Stephen Covey made millions doing seminars to tell people just that. When it comes to Linux solutions, I wish places like Best Buy would set up a few popular Linux machines, I think low power low price solutions, so people can have a better chance to make a decision. Unfortunately, I don't think most consumers/shoppers have the knowledge or interest is learning what they need to know to follow your example/system. But with the current economy, having the low priced Linux systems in stores might attract some sales that otherwise would not happen. Oh man! You know how many times this has been tried? It has been tried over and over again and it always ends up with the same result. Linux PCs just doesn't sell. Sure you can sell one here or there, but you always end up losing money because you can't move your stockpile. The largest attempt at selling Linux machines that I know of was when Asus created the first netbook with their EeePC 700 series line back in 2007. While they were XP compatible and came with XP drivers and all, but they all came preinstalled with Xandros Linux. They were selling these things in the millions. This is the only success story of Linux machines that I know of. Microsoft got scared and came up with a new netbook OEM pricing that made Windows more affordable with the lower prices of netbooks. Now Asus started to offer either Linux or XP on their machines. And if you wanted one with Windows, it costs about 50 bucks more. And the XP ones nobody could keep in stock and the Linux ones just wasn't moving anymore. It got so bad that Asus stopped configuring anymore with Linux preinstalled. And it isn't just Linux with this problem. IBM back in around 1990 stopped shipping machines with Windows and replaced it with OS/2. Then the sales of IBM machines plummeted. Another computer manufacture in Austria also stopped selling machines with Windows. Although they didn't back off of their decision and they went bankrupt in about 6 months. You're right, the typical home user would prefer Windows or Apple. Universities and governments, OTOH, use Linux widely. -- Alias |
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#47
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Windows 8 on four computers
On 2/2/13 10:21 AM, BillW50 wrote:
In , Ken Springer typed: On 12/24/12 11:23 AM, VanguardLH wrote: "BillW50" wrote: On 12/24/2012 10:54 AM, ray wrote: On Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:30:17 -0600, Gordon wrote: snip Oh man! You know how many times this has been tried? It has been tried over and over again and it always ends up with the same result. Linux PCs just doesn't sell. Sure you can sell one here or there, but you always end up losing money because you can't move your stockpile. The largest attempt at selling Linux machines that I know of was when Asus created the first netbook with their EeePC 700 series line back in 2007. While they were XP compatible and came with XP drivers and all, but they all came preinstalled with Xandros Linux. They were selling these things in the millions. This is the only success story of Linux machines that I know of. Microsoft got scared and came up with a new netbook OEM pricing that made Windows more affordable with the lower prices of netbooks. Now Asus started to offer either Linux or XP on their machines. And if you wanted one with Windows, it costs about 50 bucks more. And the XP ones nobody could keep in stock and the Linux ones just wasn't moving anymore. It got so bad that Asus stopped configuring anymore with Linux preinstalled. And it isn't just Linux with this problem. IBM back in around 1990 stopped shipping machines with Windows and replaced it with OS/2. Then the sales of IBM machines plummeted. Another computer manufacture in Austria also stopped selling machines with Windows. Although they didn't back off of their decision and they went bankrupt in about 6 months. Like most things, I'd bet it's more marketing and presentation than anything else. So, MS changed pricing so there was a $50 difference. Did Asus and/or the retailers put up a sign saying Free Software? Then, if Open Office or something was installed, also saying it was MS Office compatible? Thus letting people know that while there was only a $50 difference, they wouldn't have to buy software? How about pointing out little to no malware out there for the Linux unit? Speed differences that can be independently confirmed? I see Dell also tried to sell Linux based machines. But, if you went somewhere like Best Buy, did you get to see any Dells with Linux installed? If you want the unknowing to consider Linux, you've got to get systems on showroom floors so people will find out there's something different. In your Asus example, that price difference got the unknowing people's attention. When that goes away, you have to have something else to get their attention. If you don't do that, then you are just "selling to the choir", which definitely won't do much to increase the user base numbers. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.2 Firefox 18.0.1 Thunderbird 17.0.2 LibreOffice 3.6.3.2 |
#48
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Windows 8 on four computers
In ,
Ken Springer typed: On 2/2/13 10:21 AM, BillW50 wrote: In , Ken Springer typed: On 12/24/12 11:23 AM, VanguardLH wrote: "BillW50" wrote: On 12/24/2012 10:54 AM, ray wrote: On Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:30:17 -0600, Gordon wrote: snip Oh man! You know how many times this has been tried? It has been tried over and over again and it always ends up with the same result. Linux PCs just doesn't sell. Sure you can sell one here or there, but you always end up losing money because you can't move your stockpile. The largest attempt at selling Linux machines that I know of was when Asus created the first netbook with their EeePC 700 series line back in 2007. While they were XP compatible and came with XP drivers and all, but they all came preinstalled with Xandros Linux. They were selling these things in the millions. This is the only success story of Linux machines that I know of. Microsoft got scared and came up with a new netbook OEM pricing that made Windows more affordable with the lower prices of netbooks. Now Asus started to offer either Linux or XP on their machines. And if you wanted one with Windows, it costs about 50 bucks more. And the XP ones nobody could keep in stock and the Linux ones just wasn't moving anymore. It got so bad that Asus stopped configuring anymore with Linux preinstalled. And it isn't just Linux with this problem. IBM back in around 1990 stopped shipping machines with Windows and replaced it with OS/2. Then the sales of IBM machines plummeted. Another computer manufacture in Austria also stopped selling machines with Windows. Although they didn't back off of their decision and they went bankrupt in about 6 months. Like most things, I'd bet it's more marketing and presentation than anything else. So, MS changed pricing so there was a $50 difference. Did Asus and/or the retailers put up a sign saying Free Software? Then, if Open Office or something was installed, also saying it was MS Office compatible? Thus letting people know that while there was only a $50 difference, they wouldn't have to buy software? How about pointing out little to no malware out there for the Linux unit? Speed differences that can be independently confirmed? I see Dell also tried to sell Linux based machines. But, if you went somewhere like Best Buy, did you get to see any Dells with Linux installed? If you want the unknowing to consider Linux, you've got to get systems on showroom floors so people will find out there's something different. In your Asus example, that price difference got the unknowing people's attention. When that goes away, you have to have something else to get their attention. If you don't do that, then you are just "selling to the choir", which definitely won't do much to increase the user base numbers. I am well versed with these Asus EeePC 700 series machines with either Linux or XP SP2. They all came with a Celeron 900MHz underclocked to 633MHz. They sported a fan, but it was on the bottom side of the motherboard and the CPU the the northbridge was on the top side. I played with the fan control manually and I could only get the CPU to change 10 degrees F max. The CPU and the northbridge was mainly cooled by using the keyboard as a heatsink. Some have removed the fan for total noiseless machine. I could see this working. The only thing I could see the fan really helping is the RAM, WiFi, and the SSD. As they were on the same side of the motherboard as the fan. I used these machines with Xandros, Ubuntu 8.whatever, and XP SP2 or SP3. And yes Asus disclosed what Xandros included including Open Office, Thunderbird, and Firefox. The problem was Open Office was stuck at v2.0 (I think), Firefox was stuck at v2, and Thunderbird was stuck at v1.5. If you wanted anything newer, you had to recompile the Linux kernel source code. Worse, the Open Office spell checker didn't even work. Another odd thing about Xandros EeePC is that you could uninstall any app you wanted too. But it never really deleted. As everything was ear marked as read only and that is all. And any changes had taken place somewhere else. The only cool thing about this is that you could hit a key at boot and say I want it restored back to factory and that somewhere else would disappear. Ok, so you say the hell with Xandros and you switched to Ubuntu. Ubuntu even had a special distro just for the EeePC. Yeah how wonderful is that? But XP ate about 20% or less of the processor at idle. But Ubuntu and Windows 7 ate 50% of the processor at idle. Worse the 700 series only had a 7 inch screen at 800x480 (scrollable to much larger under Windows only), Xandros and Ubuntu was terrible at full screen videos on this machine. Although I connected up an external monitor and XP handled full screen videos flawlessly at 1440x900. That is 30fps. Linux on the same setup could only do 0.5fps. I thought maybe it was these machines. So I tried the same test on other machines and no, Linux isn't so good on other machines either. Lots of people will tell you that Linux will run on older and less beefy machines. Run? I know it is more like crawl. -- Bill Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2 |
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