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Moore's Law Is Microsoft's Latest Enemy
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:07 PM
from the eee-running-aero-yeh-right dept.
from the eee-running-aero-yeh-right dept.
Glyn Moody writes "Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the achievements of the popular new Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a tab-based front end that hides the complexity. But maybe its real significance is that it has pushed down the price to the point where the extra cost of using Microsoft Windows over free software is so significant that ordinary users notice. As Moore's Law drives flash memory prices even lower, can ultraportables running Microsoft Windows compete?"
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Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
*Shakes head*
Get out of mom's basement once in a while, guys.
Re:Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
The school district I grew up at pays MS $400,000 every year for the software assurance program (and then $75,000 to Symantec to secure it). The total budget is about 150 Million. This can not be sustained.
Windows can not compete with Linux. That's why they use lock-in, FUD, etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes and No (Score:5, Insightful)
This is somewhat akin to asking in 1920 "100 years from now, do you think Ford's cheap cars have a chance?".
At the rate we are going, it's entirely possible that the Ford Motor Company will go Chapter 11 (or more likely be bought by some other company) and for all intents and purposes cease to exist. In both cases, there is broad mass appeal in the first wave of a technology adaption, and a cash horde and corporate infrastructure with "legs".
In 1920, electric and steam were still competitive engine technologies. In the 1920s it was probably apparent to most that gasoline engines would dominate. This happened, and the engine in mass-market autombiles was fundamentally the same (emission, computer, and many other refinements aside, still the same fundamental technology) until hybrids were mass-marketed in the late-90s. Now it looks like hybrids might dominate some day; but gasoline-only had quite a run, didn't it?
100 years from now, who knows what the trend in computing will be? Maybe most people won't even have general-purpose computers. Maybe they'll just have boxes with a dozen killer apps built into hardware for better reliability, because the "do it in software first" stage of development will be considered "done".
Or, maybe the introduction of inexpensive multiprocessing technology, smart non-volatile memory, or some other combination of these will reveal deficiencies in OS design that require re-writing the OS from scratch, and maybe that OS will dominate for 30 years. 100 years from now is enough time to fit about 3 lifetimes of MS and *NIX. In other words, 100 years is a long time even in a conservative technology like automobiles, nevermind tech where 10 years is an "eternity".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only on Slashdot would an article ask if Windows can compete with Linux.
*Shakes head*
And yet these low cost devices are constantly being offered only Microsofts 6 year old version of their operating system. That's right, out dated software instead of the latest as is the case with the Linux operating system and software on these devices. I just can't wait to see how the price of these devices go up when Microsoft pays them to put Windows Vista on them instead of Linux. But hey, what's another billion dollars or so spent to keep the ignorant shaking their heads?
And yes, I can shake my head
And advertising/capitalism is Linux's enemy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And advertising/capitalism is Linux's enemy (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Flexibility Not Price (Score:4, Interesting)
The inability (well, ok, extreme difficulty in) to skin/specialize the user interface is going to hurt them. Microsoft appears to be mentally permanently stuck in one-size-fits-all land. And to be fair, it would be really hard to let people customize as deeply as they need to without letting them muck with the deep details of your OS.
Re:Flexibility Not Price (Score:5, Insightful)
Only because of how MS made its OS. Some OS's *cough*Linux*cough*BSD*cough* let you choose among dozens of different UI's without messing with the kernel.
Parent
I think they don't (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think ordinary users notice. When I talk to my non-tech-savvy friends, they usually ask me if this or that price is right for a given computer, mostly without taking into cosideration its characteristics (Once a girl I know asked me if a 300 price tag for a laptop could be right, and when I asked for specs, she only replied "Acer"). Besides, we've got big PC stores here (like PC City) whose prices can be 50% more expensive than those you find in smaller, franchised, specialized shops, and they still sell the most.
So no, ordinary users will judge the price based on how awesome the salesman tells them it is (and, of course, if it doesn't come with Windows, don't bother calling it a PC, please, it just confuses them).
$3 is not significant on a $200 computer (Score:3, Insightful)
If need be, they'll give windows away (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft can make money on windows without charging for it; they can charge $15/copy for the minicomputer version. Microsoft has an endless number of strategies, which they will employ to keep market dominance for as long as they can.
There will be a whole *series* of retrenchments. Microsoft is in a very powerful, very profitable place, so they will fight each retrenchment as hard as they can - but they're not stupid, they've got contingency plans to stay in the market and, frankly, to stay extremely profitable whatever happens. Put another way: they can compete with free, maybe not on a level playing field, but on the playing field that exists, and they intend to do so.
Forcing them to compete, even on a biased field, is good for the rest of us, so I'm all for it. But driving MS out of any market segment is going to be extremely difficult.
Re:If need be, they'll give windows away (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, MS has effectively given away software -- in the form of licenses that could be used on two computers: so that a license bought for a work machine could be taken home and used on the home machine.
Microsoft has two advantages over Linux: familiarity and applications. Recent Linux distributions are as easy, if not easier to use than Windows, but many applications (such as iTunes) are simply not available on Linux. Both of these advantages can be swept away if Linux gains a significant foothold in the desktop market.
I just wish that Apple would see that helping Linux would also help Apple. Breaking MS's dominance is the most important goal and Linux can help that to happen.
Parent
MS strikes back (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.blogeee.net/2008/03/06/le-eeepc-900-uniquement-avec-windows-xp-dapres-asus-france/ [blogeee.net]
The good news is that the French customer is very well protected and forcing a software with a PC down their throat is illegal. So essentially, what will happen is thousands of geeks demanding reimbursement of the XP licenses. That oughta hit Asus really hard, and teach them a good lesson.
I read that Asus Germany announced a similar "forced sale", but can't seem to find the article.
Sure they can! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure they can! Sure, Linux is free, but Windows can be also made free. After all, it's not like it's not already amortized, or something. They can even _pay_ the PC makers to put Windows inside, if it's just in some models. Linux cannot really compete with that, can it?
Failure of Moore's law is more of a threat to MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft can not possibly maintain 10 operating systems with radically different code bases and programming interfaces. In fact it's likely that some use scenarios will be too specialized for a commercial company and will instead be realized by open-source coding by the prospective users. Eee-PC and OLPC are already more about failure of Moore's law that it's continuation. People want to have a cheap, light and silent notebook with extraordinary battery life, but the technology to run Vista+Aero on such a machine is not anywhere on the horizon. So it suddenly makes more sense to run Linux in order to have the hardware that the user wants.
Clear for a long time (Score:5, Interesting)
If a P3 500Mhz system was coded with the efficiency and elegance that prevailed on the Commodore 64, your OS and every application running would be so blazingly fast as to seem instantaneous, and with 1GB RAM you would not require a harddrive for anything except storing large image/music/video files. Instead, my early-generation P4 2ghz machine at work with 2GB of RAM chugs and sputters and stutters along and I can't wait to get home and use my 'powerful' personal machine that operates much faster. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep hearing this mantra, but I think a lot of it is a case of people looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses. Do people really think that software was more efficient in the days of the Commodore 64?
I remember in the late 1980s, a fair number of games for the PC would take at least 3 minutes to start up, just to initialize look-up tables and pre-render sprites! In the early 1990s, Netscape would literally take more than 45 minutes to start up on his PC. In the mid 1990s, I remember seeing, for
rolling my eyes (Score:3, Insightful)
This is 100% true. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe in ten years that won't be true. After all, I didn't really expect Word to overtake WordPerfect and other alternatives in the market the way it did back in the 90's... but even in that case, it's because something has happened to Office, not because of Moore's Law.
Parent
received "wisdom" is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you meant "perceived" wisdom. But in fact, I've installed Linux on several friend's PCs who had never used a computer before (Mandriva 8 IIRC). None of them have had any trouble whatever using it. In fact, I get fewer "how do I" phone calls from them with Linux/KDE than I did when their new machines were running Windows.
Gnu/Linux/KDE (and most likely Gnome as well, although since I haven't used it I can't say) is easier to use than Windows for a variety of reasons, the first being that stuff is put in logical places (at least with Suse and Mandriva) as opposed to Microsoft's way of putting stuff any old place. At least that's what it seems like; I can't see the logic of where Windows' stuff goes at all.
So please stop spreading this this FUD. It's simply not true. Windows is NOT easier to use than Linux.
No. (Score:4, Funny)
No, it can't.
Here, on this laptop:
# du -sx
4677115
# du -sx
2026303
# echo "4677115 - 2026303" | bc
2650812
(This is Gentoo so you need to subtract about 300M for the metadata caches,etc. Also,
2 1/2 Gig. That's it. Sure I could slim it down more if needed (I don't really use timidi much at all, etc.).
That's for a FULL, USABLE Operating System. OOo, Full install of KDE, several other User things that make this machine (a near 9 year old laptop) a User's PC and not a "workstation".
Given that same space, Windows will get your machine to boot to a Desktop and that's about it. Linux will soar on flash drives, especially with them getting larger and cheaper. Windows (unless you run CE...
How Linux can compete with Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
+ Simplify the interface and make it usable
- As much as I love KDE, there are just too many options.
- GNOME needs to be more usable. Sometimes I think that it was made for 5 year olds.
- Once you get over the fact that Office 2007 is not Office 2003, Office 2007 is a good example of how to make things simple AND usable.
+ Get support from big companies that sell to schools
+ Increase interoperability with Windows applications
Linux is on its way and I think that Windows XP highlights just how far Linux has come. As much as it many not seem like it, Windows may have moved more towards Linux than vice versa. Linux developers need to understand what Apple has done. Linux is great, but I think that the people who develop it don't understand the people who actually use the products!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
GNOME needs to be more usable. Sometimes I think that it was made for 5 year olds.
A lot of irony in this comment. The sign of a great UI is that the young and uninitiated can easy learn them.
Actually, Moores' law is what keeps MS afloat (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually, Open Office and Linux would catch and match them feature for feature, so new customers would have no incentive to go with the proprietary solution, since their protocols would eventually be reverse engineered bug for bug, feature for feature, driver for driver. The only way MS keeps Linux at bay is by releasing new feature laden stuff that takes advantage of new, updated hardware.
My prediction: The end of Moore's law will herald the end of Microsoft.
MS Enemy? (Score:3, Funny)
- Put their own lawyers on the case. To extra effect, make Ballmer shout "Lawyers, Lawyers, Lawyers"
- Buy another law, rename to MS Law, include it with new versions of Vista for free, and put the Moore Law out of the market
- Patent something related to some of the words of the moore law, and sue anyone trying to use it
- Finance a dying company to sue Moore for prior art.
- Add some undocumented code in Windows, to make it stop working if the Moore law tries to come into effect (they already are doing a good work in this direction)
Simplicity does not mean usability (Score:5, Interesting)
The main problem Linux faces is not that it's too complex, but that it's designed with a philosophy that tends to value "technologically correct" above all else. There are times when being less precise, less technically oriented, less detailed or less optioned is better for the human user, even if it is not as "true" to the computer itself. Apple seems to explicitly understand this, Microsoft seems to sort of intuit this without understanding it (so they don't make the right choices, but they realize such choices need to be made, which is better than nothing), while on Linux, this seems to be poorly understand, and often seen as a negative.
With most cases of usability efforts on Linux, it's often just trying to copy (and improve upon) some existing system (GIMP vs Photoshop, KDE vs Windows, GNOME vs Mac OS (classic), etc.), it's an attempt to be more usable for admin-types (dselect, aptitude, etc.), or--and this is where Linux truly falls flat on its face--when someone attempts to make a truly usable Linux, they don't think, "let's make a Linux that works the way people work," they think, "let's make an interface that is so simple, even an idiot can use it." Instead of respecting the humanity of their target audience, they insult them.
That is a problem Moore's Law can't do anything about.
Linux won't truly take off until they stop insulting the normal person, and start respecting them. Ubuntu is close, but it's still too technically-oriented. The thing is, though, I'm not sure this is a bad thing. It might be, as it does keep Linux from being a mainstream OS, but on the other hand, it *is* an excellent OS for the people who are more technically-minded, and prefer absolute control, who value technology over aesthetics and the humanity of the interface. If Linux truly evolved to become a user-oriented OS, it would leave a void for the technical user. I suppose there'd still be the DIY Linux distros, plus there's always BSD or Plan 9, or some new OS yet to be created. Still, I'm not sure that if a User-Oriented Linux became a major OS player, that the more bare-bones technically-oriented Linuxes wouldn't find themselves losing significant attention by both users and developers alike.
Microsoft will threaten Asus (Score:4, Funny)
It could go something like this:
Microsoft, "You have a nice business here; you sell a lot of motherboards."
Asus, "We sure do. The motherboard business has been very very good to us."
Microsoft, "And we at Microsoft have always been good to you, right?"
Asus, "Well... there was the tablet fiasco. Remember how you convinced many of us...
Microsoft, "Nevermind that. I am talking about all the help and access you get in order to write all your drivers for Windows. We have always been there for you, right?
Asus, "Well... Vista didn't...
Microsoft, "Forget about Vista for now! Just how far would you get without confidential access to all our operating systems?
Asus, "We couldn't sell any motherboards to Windows users, just Linux, BSD, Solaris...
Microsoft, "In other words, You Would Be SCREWED!"
Asus, *hangs head* "What do you want?"
Microsoft, "We are not happy about your $200 little laptop running Linux."
Asus, "But we can't stop it now - we have taken orders..."
Microsoft, "We want you to offer it with Windows!"
Asus, "But Windows is too big and too expensive and...
Microsoft, "Let me tell you what you are going to do. (1) You are going to raise the price to $400 instead of $200. (2) Then you are going to offer a Windows XP version for $395. (3) Then you are going to make a larger version that will actually work with XP.
Asus, "But our original version is underpowered and doeesn't have enough storage for XP and Office..."
Microsoft, "Too bad. Our customers have to become used to much less performance - haven't you tried Vista yet? And you leave the storage problem to us - once we trim out all the useless crap XP will fit - so will Office. It will still be slow but who cares."
Asus, "But our customers..."
Microsoft, *screaming* "They aren't YOUR customers!!! They are OUR customers!!! The only reason they buy your motherboards and computers is to run OUR operating system. And if you don't cooperate with us, you just may have all kinds of problems getting the information you need to create the drivers for your new products. UNDERSTAND?"
*CRASH*
Asus, "Yeah, sure. We understand Mr. Ballmer... Could I get you another chair?"
Microsoft, "Maybe later. Where are the girls?"
And so it goes, Microsoft Standard Operating Procedure for the last 25 years.
Ed (UnDead)
Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Why don't you actually read the Wikipedia article? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, if you'd bothered to look at the article, you'd find that the quote provides a citation, and that citation points to a PDF file of the article in which Moore made the statement in question:
ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf [intel.com]
In short, you lose on both style and substance.
Parent
Yeah, but (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Pertains to density at a given price (Score:5, Insightful)
The text you describe appears nowhere in the article [wikipedia.org] for Moore's Law. This should come as no surprise, since Moore's Law is named after Gordon Moore, not Steven Moore.
I figured that would have at least gone to the trouble to vandalize the article yourself and add in such garbage. However, a quick look at the page's history [wikipedia.org] shows that you did not even go to the trouble to do that. (not that it matters; vandalism on Wikipedia is typically reverted in under a minute.)
Congratulations, you are not only a liar, but you are also lazy. Please take your poorly made strawman arguments elsewhere.
Parent
So... (Score:3, Funny)
and Steve Moore was rebuilt faster and stronger.
Wait...
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit.
Parent
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:5, Insightful)
It's such a well-known thing that anyone who makes the inference that Moore's law has anything to do with price is an idiot.
In fact, the relation between Moore's Law and price is so well known, that I'd say anyone who thinks it has *nothing* to do with price is the idiot...
Parent
it's called a corollary (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=2 [wired.com]
"WASTE AND WASTE AGAIN
Forty years ago, Caltech professor Carver Mead identified the corollary to Moore's law of ever-increasing computing power. Every 18 months, Mead observed, the price of a transistor would halve. And so it did, going from tens of dollars in the 1960s to approximately 0.000001 cent today for each of the transistors in Intel's latest quad-core. This, Mead realized, meant that we should start to "waste" transistors."
Parent
Re:Moore's law has nothing to do with price (Score:4, Informative)
Moore's law may pertain to transistor density, but increasing transistor density indirectly affects the price of chips at lower transistor densities.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It implicitly refers to transistor density at a given price. You've been to get $200 computers for many years, and Moore's law means that you can now get $200 laptops capable of running Linux and a GUI.
Re:Eee PC vs. REAL UMPCs (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Eee PC vs. REAL UMPCs (Score:5, Interesting)
Everex has now come out with the Cloudbook (Linux) at WalMart so, now it is being exposed to the masses. The revolution is starting!
Parent
Not a revolution (Score:4, Interesting)
I am running a 289 dollar "piece of crap" desktop. I have been 4 four years. It plays WoW and does general work just fine... stupid computer, I promised i wouldn't by another one until it broke. I gave it a year.grrr.
Maybe I should install Vista, that would break it.
Parent
Windows XP will soon go out of print (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Familiarity isn't worth that much (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot less people all the time. Every single electronic gizmo nowadays has its own menu system, along with half the websites and such. People are used to learning slightly different interfaces all the time these days, 'familiarity' is much less of a barrier. And then there's the fact that Vista's Aero interface isn't all that familiar to XP-users compared to the latest Linux systems, anyway.
There are still plenty of dealbreakers - niche Windows-only software - but those niches are shrinking, and 'familiarity' alone isn't enough to save Windows forever.
Parent
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Yes? Is this a question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Eee isn't "better" than Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent