[clug] Re: Asus Eee PC first impressions

[Sam Couter]

Tom Worthington <Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> We will likely reach the tipping point in 2008, with $500 Linux computers 
> considered "normal" for home and business use. Anyone who wants to spend 
> thousands of dollars on a computer with Microsoft Windows, a large hard 
> disk, DVD or other unnecessary options, will be considered at best a bit 
> odd, if not anti-social or a criminal 
> <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/11/green-linux-pc-tipping-point-to.html>.

As much as I'd like to see it come to pass, there are a few problems
with your prediction:

- Australians generally don't have fast enough internet connections to
store all their data remotely, not even in cities. And in the country
they're lucky to have working dial-up. I know Howard and Rudd tried to
make broadband an election thing, but I suspect those will turn out to
be non-core promises.

- Australians don't go for smaller and cheaper (it's not manly enough or
something), even when fuel prices are skyrocketing. Intel and AMD have
large enough marketing budgets to ensure this continues.

- Microsoft's Office monopoly is firmly entrenched in corporate and
government culture and it will remain so for some time. My particular
branch of government is about to upgrade to Office2007 for no better
reason than it exists, fully aware of the usability and training
problems they're about to bring down upon themselves and proceeding
regardless.

- There isn't really a replacement for the DVD drive when it comes to
transferring or archiving data. Home networks are nice for us geeks, and
USB keys are good for carrying data back and forth, but they're pretty
expensive GiB for GiB compared with DVD-R or DVD(+-/*^_)RW. And we still
need something to boot install and/or rescue disks from.

Expecting all that to change within 12 months is... well, optimistic is
a nice word. The cynic in me wants to call it crackpottery.
-- 
Sam Couter         |  mailto:sam at couter.id.au
                   |  jabber:sam at teknohaus.dyndns.org
OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
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