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A comment on Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays.

Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by Toshio on Saturday January 05, 2013 @03:26PM (#5013920)
Netbooks were originally intended to ship with Linux pre-installed, but to microsoft that meant letting consumers have an actual, real choice, and ballmer wouldn't have any of it (am I the only one who remembers a ms-asus join-venture site about netbooks called itsbetterwithwindows.com?) Anyway, netbooks stopped shipping with Linux preinstalled, which caused them to quickly nosedive into irrelevance.

TL;DR microsoft should have left the netbook market alone. They didn't. Fast-forward a few years, and it's biting them in the ass.

Justice exists.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by dasil003 on Saturday January 05, 2013 @04:11PM (#5014074)
I get the poetic justice part, but explain how netbooks shipping with Linux would have kept them relevant?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by Toshio on Saturday January 05, 2013 @04:18PM (#5014096)
Linux would have kept netbooks relevant by keeping them usable. It turned out netbooks are powerful enough to run a browser, an IM app and a few widgets, but as soon as you throw AV software on top of that, they screech to a halt.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by raverbashing on Saturday January 05, 2013 @04:56PM (#5014216)
Yes, but

Shipped versions of Linux were simply AWFUL

Even Ubuntu "netbook edition" was terrible! It needed a good video card to run (and compatible drivers, etc) meaning it was a crapshoot.

What MS could have done is kept licensing Windows XP for them, which was good instead of "Vista" and then 7

So yes, if I get a netbook I'm customizing my linux installation, because default ones are bad.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by justincormack on Saturday January 05, 2013 @05:57PM (#5014368)
Ubuntu netbook was pretty decent compared to the shit that came with them.
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Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by yuhong on Sunday January 06, 2013 @09:27PM (#5018910)
They did keep licensing XP for them.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by jbellis on Saturday January 05, 2013 @05:33PM (#5014316)
Note: the Google Chromebook (a netbook by any reasonable definition) is Amazon's top-selling laptop. http://news.yahoo.com/netbooks-crash-burn-amazon-best-sellin...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by lake_rogue on Saturday January 05, 2013 @04:10PM (#5014068)
How does this hurt Microsoft? If everyone is tossing their netbook every 6 months, doesn't Microsoft get them to pay the Windows licensing fee more frequently?
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Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by wazoox on Saturday January 05, 2013 @04:51PM (#5014202)
Of course I can't draw definitive conclusion from a couple of cases, but the 3 linux netbooks I've bought in 2007/2008 are still in use. And AFAIK my mother's 2008 aspire one only recently failed afer 4 years of heavy use.
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Re:Explaining Windows 8 PC Sales Over the Holidays by freehunter on Saturday January 05, 2013 @05:26PM (#5014298)
My mom bought one for my sister this summer before her first year at university. An EeePC 10" something or other. I'm still using my 3-year-old Lenovo netbook as an Arduino programming machine because it's so portable and runs Linux.
[ Parent | on HN ]