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Comments: 393 +-   Sony Says Eee PC Signals "Race To the Bottom" on Friday February 29 2008, @11:38AM

Posted by kdawson on Friday February 29 2008, @11:38AM
from the what-you-mean-we dept.
portables
sony
hardware
Alex Dekker writes "Sony's Mike Abary says in an interview, 'If [Asus's Eee PC] starts to do well, we are all in trouble.' Presumably by 'we' he means all the hardware manufacturers who sell over-priced, full-fat laptops. And he's not going to be too pleased when he sees the Linux-powered, sub-$200 Elonex One. Looks like what's bad for Sony may be good for the consumer." The CNet article mentions that a version of the Eee running XP is available in Japan now and will be coming to the US within weeks.
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  • About dang time... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EntropyXP (956792) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:40AM (#22601222)
    Remember when DELL said they'd create the first sub-$1000 PC and people just laughed at them? I never understand why people pay $2000 for a LAPTOP that can so easily be stolen, dropped or damaged. $200 for a email machine is more of the price range that they should be in.

    • Re:About dang time... (Score:4, Funny)

      by evilklown (1008863) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:46AM (#22601326)
      I'm so glad someone finally said one of the key phrases in technology advancement:

      Looks like what's bad for Sony may be good for the consumer.
    • Seriously, did anyone read the whole thing? About two paragraphs are devoted to the whole 'race to the bottom' thing without explaining exactly why Sony thinks this a problem. The rest of the entry just goes on and on about all the cool things Sony sells and how many colors and textures the Vaio comes in.

      • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by UncleTogie (1004853) * on Friday February 29 2008, @12:02PM (#22601612) Homepage Journal

        That's Sony for you: All marketing, no brains.

        Seriously, does Sony really think we can take pronouncements like this as gospel when their top lawyers can't even listen and answer properly? [blogspot.com]

        • That's Sony for you: All marketing, no brains.
          I wouldn't say they have no brains. They consistently make high quality tech products. Blu-ray (despite being DRM crippled) will probably be the next CD. I sure hope it is. They chose to throw their engineering might behind Plasma TVs because, while they cost more, they produce a better picture (too bad the market preferred cheaper LCDs). They produced the first handheld 1080p camcorder, and it's actually high quality. Now anybody can make their own home-pro-snowboarding video. Their Vaio laptops are known, industry wide, for having, hands-down, the best displays-- AKA "X-Bright". They managed to create a great, cheap to produce for, entertainment system (PS1) and managed to duplicate that success with the PS2-- this thing has so many games I'm probably going to go buy one, even though PS3 has been out for [a while]. Now that Blu-Ray has won, I bet a lot of people will be picking up PS3s instead of other players when they get around to purchasing one.

          All I'm saying is I see Sony as a superb tech producer with simply misguided management.

          • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by WindowlessView (703773) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:43PM (#22602218)

            They consistently make high quality tech products. Blu-ray (despite being DRM crippled) will probably be the next CD. I sure hope it is.

            I have no dog in the disk format wars but can Blu-ray's success really be chalked up to engineering? There are stories aplenty about how Sony paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the movie studios to get them to switch. This seems more like marketing (or something more nefarious) than technical excellence and doesn't support your argument very well.

            • They consistently make high quality tech products. Blu-ray (despite being DRM crippled) will probably be the next CD. I sure hope it is.



              I have no dog in the disk format wars but can Blu-ray's success really be chalked up to engineering? There are stories aplenty about how Sony paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the movie studios to get them to switch. This seems more like marketing (or something more nefarious) than technical excellence and doesn't support your argument very well.

              Of course not. The important thing is that they weren't pushing a crappy format that was insufficient for our movie viewing needs. Toshiba, on the other hand, would have us adopt a format that can't hold Return of the King in 1080p on one disk.

            • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by DragonWriter (970822) on Friday February 29 2008, @03:36PM (#22604712)

              There are stories aplenty about how Sony paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the movie studios to get them to switch.


              AFAIK, what all those stories share is that they lack any evidence or named sources, and in many cases overtly cite the speculation of unnamed "analysts" both on the existence and amount of the payoffs.

          • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Aqualung812 (959532) on Friday February 29 2008, @02:53PM (#22604106)
            Actually, I see Blu-ray as being the next 8-track and mini-disc. It is a stopgap between DVD and downloadable video, just as 8-track was between LP disc and cassettes and MD was between CDs and MP3.

        • No, that is reporters for you (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:30PM (#22602024) Journal

          The entire article is nothing more then the an out of context quote. Cnet heard something they think might sound nicely controversial, plunks it in in an article that seemingly has no goal and watches the ad revenue stream in when as predicted slashdot picks it up, makes an entire story out of one quote and runs rampant with it.

          Personally I think this is all overblown, offcourse Sony who operates at the high end for laptops will call a move for the cheapest laptop a race to the bottom and warn that if this catches on "better watch out", but you note that completly absent from this article is any condemnation of this, neither do they warn consumers about the Eee. He might as well be meaning that those companies who think they can only sell super expensive ones better watch out.

          Oh wait, I am doing it wrong ain't I. Sony is the evil!

      • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:5, Funny)

        by The Great Pretender (975978) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:21PM (#22601880)
        And when the race reaches the bottom they'll find Sony there, lounging around in big piles of their failed products, sipping Mojitos.
      • You read the whole thing? You are sooooooooo doomed. While you were doing all that reading, Sony installed a rootkit on your machine.
      • "devoted to the whole 'race to the bottom' thing without explaining exactly why Sony thinks this a problem".

        In early 80 terms: Sony is the TI99/4A and Asus eeePC is Commodore 64. Commodore engaged a price war with TI took TI out of the market. All micro-computers lowered the price at that time.

        I would be worry if I were Sony.

      • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Atlantis-Rising (857278) on Friday February 29 2008, @01:01PM (#22602510) Homepage
        It seems very clear to me why Sony thinks a race to the bottom is bad. They argue that by forcing manufacturers, who already have thin margins to cut their margins even further by creating cheaper and cheaper commodity hardware, it will limit the likelihood of manufacturers investing in high-margin, high-value, cutting edge hardware- and will therefore limit the development of said hardware.

        As a result, the focus on commodity PCs, like the eeePC, signals a shift away from the accelerating development of hardware and software toward a more stagnant approach.

        I'm not sure I agree. But that's what it seems like Sony is arguing.

        • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cp.tar (871488) <cp.tar.bz2@gmail.com> on Friday February 29 2008, @01:41PM (#22602996) Journal

          I'm quite certain I do not agree.
          Cheaper appliances will have a larger target demographic, and therefore quite enough money will be available for the development of high-end ones.

          There is a market for everything.

        • Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by iamhassi (659463) on Friday February 29 2008, @03:18PM (#22604476) Journal
          "hey argue that by forcing manufacturers, who already have thin margins to cut their margins even further by creating cheaper and cheaper commodity hardware, it will limit the likelihood of manufacturers investing in high-margin, high-value, cutting edge hardware- and will therefore limit the development of said hardware."

          You can go to Walmart and buy a complete PC system with LCD for $400, even less online. Has that stopped manufactures from making faster processors and video cards? Of course not, and neither will cheap laptops.

          The Eee PC is no threat to Sony or any other major manufacture. It has no dvd-rw drive, no hard drive, and the cheapest $300 model only has 2gb of storage. 2gb! Most laptops have more ram than this has total storage! It costs $500 to get a Eee with only 8gb [newegg.com], and for that price you could buy a full-sized 1.86ghz Inspiron 1525 from Dell [dell.com] or Walmart has several laptops betweeen $400 and $500 [walmart.com]

          Saying the Eee PC threatens laptop manufactures is like saying motorcycles threaten SUV sales. If they really want to be competitive, Sony should make a Eee PC clone. I'm sure there's money to be made selling a 7" LCD, 2gb storage and 900mhz processor for $300.

          Sony's argument is BS. I would think they'd be more worried about the full-sized $500 laptops competing with their $1,500 notebooks considering they're much closer in specs.

    • Re:About dang time... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Amouth (879122) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:30PM (#22602028)
      i have had the pleasure of using an EEE PC - they are nice.. but leave alot out.. give me one with a nice 1024x768 (atleast) screen make the SSD removeable and replace able with a 1.8in hdd (hell sell them with not SSD's too) and add internal blue tooth.. then we can start.. sure it wouldn't be 300$ at that point.. but it wouldn't be that much more - hell i would love to buy just the shell.. given it has a decent screen and a standard 1.8in drive connection.

      personaly i got a dell d420 with extended battery.. i couldn't be happier.. sure it is only a Core Duo ULV at 1.06ghz.. but it is dual core. and lasts 6+ hours on battery with wifi and bt on and the screen at a nice level.. it is only alittle heavyier than the EEE PC with a lot more power and storage and over all isvery nice.. personaly i use it as a desktop replace ment.. and when i got it the base price was >2k (agree not exactly worth it) but after mixing cupons i got it for 1200$ - very well worth it..

      I agree that i am sick of laptops that can't be used in the lap.. the EEE PC is cute.. and i might get one for my kid in a few years (once i have the kid that is) but untill they get alittle better specs on it.. it isn't going to kill off any good true lap usable laptops

  • When do we get these affordable laptops? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lumpy (12016) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:43AM (#22601280) Homepage
    The EeePC was promised to be around $200.00 and it currently sells for $299.00 most places $399 for the decked out version. nearly TWICE the promised price. all the others come in way WAY over as well.

    Why buy a Eee PC when I can get a Dell cheapie of the moment with 12X the power at the same or LESS price. Last one I got was $369.99 on one of their 1 day sales. I can do way more than the eeepc and saved money.

    I'm for the race for the bottom if the race is sanely priced. right now it's not.

    • Re:When do we get these affordable laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Calinous (985536) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:52AM (#22601426)
      Your Dell comes with a 15.4" display, better resolution, better processor, more memory, bigger non-volatile storage, a normal keyboard, and maybe other things.
            And weigh three times as much as the EeePC. There is a market for lower performance, light computers.

      • Re:When do we get these affordable laptops? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by blackbirdwork (821859) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:16PM (#22601796)
        And your hard drive will crash if you hit hard your Dell, the SSD of the Eee will not break. (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4dhhl_tests-resistance-chocs-chaleur-froi_tech)

      • Competition: Apple Air and Thinkpad Subnotebook. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gnutoo (1154137) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:27PM (#22601968) Journal

        But they cost 10x as much and, despite Sony marketing assurances, alligator skin is not what people want a laptop to do. EEE delivers almost everything people care about in a laptop for an order of magnitude less than the competition. The reason it's selling for twice as much as expected is because it's a runaway hit and considered a good deal at $400. Used computers of the same weight sell for twice the price but offer only better screen size and keyboard. If they come with Windows, a used laptop does not offer much performance gain, and some significant performance losses, as well as a the usual Windows migration and software install pains. Good for Asus, EEE sells out as soon as they hit the shelves because people who don't care about GNU/Linux want it.

    • Re:When do we get these affordable laptops? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IL-CSIXTY4 (801087) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:02PM (#22601604) Homepage
      The big selling point for the EeePC in my case was the size. It's about the size of a paperback, and weighs the same. I can carry it around the office under my notepad to pull up a browser, email, or SSH session whenever I need it. It's replaced a much more powerful Dell and gave me more productivity.
      • And this is the cool thing - it's a boy magnet! I get it out in the pub or Starbucks or wherever, and attract all those furtive glances that my looks alone sadly never procured for me. I even have some guy come up to me in the pub wanting to try out my Eee. So girls, forget the Apple that says "Hi - I like pretty things and ponies!" Get an Eee instead, and men will fall at your feet.

        Well, okay geeks will fall at your feet, but in my case that's the required demographic...

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by IL-CSIXTY4 (801087)
          I have EeePCLinuxOS on an SD card for a full Linux desktop, but I hardly ever use it. The built-in Xandros has Thunderbird, Firefox, Pidgin, and bash. That's all I need, really. It boots in ~30sec. The built-in SSD shows up as an IDE drive, so you can install whatever you want on it.

        • I want one for this exact reason as well. Been too busy/lazy to really research it (and/or get my employer to buy me one).. how well does it function as a "portable thin client"?

          Wonderfully. It comes with Firefox preconfigured with Flash and other plugins, Thunderbird, Kontact, OpenOffice, and lots of other useful apps.

          Can I reinstall it to get rid of the easy mode programs and turn it into a simple portable xterm?

          Well, ctrl-alt-T gets you an xterm in the default install. You can reinstall if you want (and some people have been putting XP on them), but you might not want to.

          In fact, at the risk of having my geek card revoked: I don't even go into advanced mode anymore. It boots more slowly than easy mode, and easy mode is good enough for me 99% of the time. I'm a huge KDE fan so I expected to hate the basic launcher and "need" the full KDE desktop, but all that extra flexibility kind of misses the point of the Eee PC.

        • Re:When do we get these affordable laptops? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Neil Jansen (955182) on Friday February 29 2008, @01:02PM (#22602514) Homepage
          I use mine daily and don't think the 800x480 is such a compromise. Once you implement some tricks to optimize your window manager and web browser, it's not bad at all. I run web apps like Google Docs, Mail, Calendar, Reader, etc.

          I'm not exactly sure what a 'full blown' internet application is, but I've never ran into anything and been like 'damn, this is totally unusable'.

    • Re:When do we get these affordable laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by POPE Mad Mitch (73632) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:21PM (#22601872) Homepage

      Why buy a Eee PC when I can get a Dell cheapie of the moment with 12X the power at the same or LESS price.
      Because you, like so many other people, and some of the 'rival' manufacturers miss the point of why this appeals to quite so many people.

      Its fairly cheap, sure, but as you point out its not the best value for money on that score.

      It is because it is also small, and light, at under one kilogram and smaller and a A4 pad it easily slips into a satchel, or messenger style bag that many people carry around these days, making it much more practical to keep with you than a traditional large heavy laptop.

      You can of course buy small sleek laptops with more features, but they tend to cost more, a LOT more.

      Its the balance point of price and size and features that makes it so popular, alter any one of those very far and you lose that unique selling point.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pipatron (966506)

      The EeePC was promised to be around $200.00 and it currently sells for $299.00

      This is mostly because of the US economy grinding to a halt. I'm pretty sure that it still costs the same in euros/yuan/whatever other currency was initially projected.

  • People aren't interested in over buying anymore ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by trdrstv (986999) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:45AM (#22601306)
    I know it threatens their business model, but the majority of home users would be fine running a Pentium 3 caliber chip with a DVD burner and a big Hard drive.

    Are consumers actually getting to the point where they buy what they need rather than the high end, of what they want?

    Imagine if this were to happen to the automotive industry...

  • I think he's worried about nothing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wamerocity (1106155) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:48AM (#22601366) Journal
    First of all, all these little laptops are really cute, but for anything that's not listening to mp3's, looking at pictures, and surfing the internet you are in trouble. Now I realize that this is what the vast majority of computers are used for, but people overbuy what they need because of what they MIGHT do. People buy trucks bigger than what they need so they can occasionally tow a boat - you also buy computers more powerful than what you need because you MIGHT want to want decent quality video clips. You might want to do some video and audio editing, you MIGHT want to keep more than 8-16gb's worth of data on your computer, and you MIGHT want to use the plethora of programs/ features that are found on XP that simply don't work that well or at all in Linux. I don't know about you, but surfing the internet on a 8" screen with a 800 x 480 resolution screen sounds like a nightmare, especially if you are used to even an SXGA. I personally think these are cute little gimmicks, but only time will tell for sure.

    • Re:I think he's worried about nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by blackbirdwork (821859) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:05PM (#22601660)
      Did you use the Eee? It's the perfect device for a mobile world. Well, the internet tablets from Nokia would be the perfect devices but the qwerty keyboard of the Eee puts it in the first place. You can browse, play videos, music, chat, or do everything you need on that little screen. Sure, you won't feel comfortable using photoshop or any application that needs high resolution monitors, but that's not the target of the Eee.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Hatta (162192)
      you also buy computers more powerful than what you need because you MIGHT want to want decent quality video clips. You might want to do some video and audio editing, you MIGHT want to keep more than 8-16gb's worth of data on your computer,

      That's why you have a powerful desktop at home too. If you know that 99% of your computer use is editing text files, reading text files, playing mp3s or snes games then it's a great option. It was not so long ago that an eeepc would have been an amazing computer, even fo

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LocoSpitz (175100)
        The biggest inconvenience is ponying up the extra cash to purchase a desktop and a laptop. Not everyone can afford to have a nice desktop at home in addition to a laptop on the go.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by (H)elix1 (231155) *
      IT also has an external VGA port - 1680×1050 max support, if you are plugged in and sitting on a desk.

      (still, would like to see 1024 x 768 when they bump up the screen size later this year)

    • Re:I think he's worried about nothing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DMoylan (65079) on Friday February 29 2008, @01:04PM (#22602534)
      > First of all, all these little laptops are really cute

      bullshit! it is really practical. as somebody who travels for about 4 hours every day on public transport i used to carry a 15" vaio laptop. even when i got that i was looking for a smaller laptop. over the 2 years i carried that laptop even though it was carefully packed and surrounded by padding the case was cracked and the harddrive killed by accidents while travelling by bus. even on the mac forums you will find people who want the old 12 inch macbook rather than the current 13 inch version. smaller is better if using public transport/bike/foot.

      > you also buy computers more powerful than what you need because you MIGHT want to want decent quality video clips. You might want to do some video and audio editing,

      i have never needed to edit audio or video. not even at home on my desktop. just something i have never needed to do.

      > you MIGHT want to keep more than 8-16gb's worth of data on your computer, and

      i can plug in my 150gb ipod as an external hd no probs. 32gb sdhc cards are available so it's only a matter of time i reckon before 64gb cards will be available. that's up there with the mac air.

      > you MIGHT want to use the plethora of programs/ features that are found on XP that simply don't work that well or at all in Linux.

      i could install xp on to the eee pc but as it already has firefox, thunderbird and open office 90% of what i need on the road are already there in an os that boots from cold in 25 seconds. a customer who saw my eee pc on wednesday who does powerpoint presentations on the road constantly saw that it displayed his powerpoint files and was half the size and 1/3 the weight and as he uses over head projection he can use the vga port no problems. he was in awe with the size of the power brick which was 1/4 than the usual laptop behemoth.

      > I don't know about you, but surfing the internet on a 8" screen with a 800 x 480 resolution screen sounds like a nightmare, especially if you are used to even an SXGA. I personally think these are cute little gimmicks, but only time will tell for sure.

      well i also surf on the 3" screen on my nokia e61i with no problems so i reckon by now that i'm used to using small screens (i've been using portable devices since the psion series 3a in 94).

      for me the major decider in getting the eee pc was that i could view the 1000s of pdfs i need on a portable device with out having to scroll left and right to see a single line. that it does beautifully.

      i would have gotten a olpc for the battery life and reader mode but they are not available in ireland.

      i'm just glad that somebody is catering for this market.

  • Mobile world (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blackbirdwork (821859) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:58AM (#22601516)
    I'm a happy owner of the following mobile devices:

    - Asus Eee
    - Nokia 770
    - Nokia N810

    I'd learnt something in these years: we don't need powerfull fat heavy devices, we need smaller and lighter devices, we don't care about power. For power we have fat big desktop computers.

  • Sony Has Bigger Laptop Problems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mpapet (761907) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:14PM (#22601762) Homepage
    than just this one product.

    1. Take a look at this estimate of who builds laptops for what brand. http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_oem.html [tuxmobil.org] The brands like Sony might change vendors, but the manufacturers listed haven't changed, so re-arrange the check marks if you want to pretend.

    2. Many of the OEM's are marketing barebones laptops which are going to eat into Sony's laptop business in unpleasant ways. MSI and Asus are two notables. http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=23 [asus.com]

    Talk amongst yourselves....
     

  • Customer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EaglemanBSA (950534) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:14PM (#22601774)
    Perhaps these companies (whether they be electronics manufacturers (Sony) or automotive manufacturers (GM), etc.) need to pull their heads out of their asses with respect to customer research.

    LG did a bit of customer research, painted their washers and dryers red, and quadrupled sales overnight. Toyota made a tiny, efficient car (echo), and sales boomed. Asus made a PC that it figured would sell really well, and they were right, as a result of understanding their customers' CTQ's.

    I love my eeepc because it's exactly what I need. Portable, durable, cheap and linux-based. Sony, Dell and the rest can produce what they want, but when it doesn't sell, it's nobody's fault but their own.

  • So that's what Sony says is it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Panaqqa (927615) * on Friday February 29 2008, @12:46PM (#22602272) Homepage
    Hmm. It seems to me that rootkitting your customer's computers is more like the REAL race to the bottom.

  • Earth to Sony: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cerebus (10185) on Friday February 29 2008, @01:08PM (#22602588) Homepage
    If [Asus's Eee PC] starts to do well [...]

    What [asus.com] do [asus.com] you [reuters.com] mean, [pcauthority.com.au] "if" [engadget.com]?

  • What's wrong with that? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Guspaz (556486) on Friday February 29 2008, @01:56PM (#22603192) Homepage
    What's wrong with a race to the bottom? Like any other competitive market, it will force companies to innovate to try to provide faster performance at lower prices, driving innovation in the lower end of the market. I, for one, am quite excited.

    • Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arth1 (260657) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:54AM (#22601458) Homepage Journal
      This is slashdot, so we need a car analogy. And indeed, people continue to buy expensive cars even though most people will buy a cheaper car that fulfills their needs instead of going for the top of the line. The influx of cheaper cars (from Japan, I may add!) didn't kill off the top models, although it relegated them to a niche market.
      Similar for laptops -- most people will buy what serves them well, and not splurge on the top models. There's a good market for small, fast /enough/ and affordable laptop computers, and Sony knows this fully well. They have chosen to stick with the upscale market, and shouldn't complain about EEE and similar eating their pie more than Porsche should complain about Nissan eating theirs.

      Regards,
      --
      *Art

      • Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)

        by HangingChad (677530) on Friday February 29 2008, @12:17PM (#22601810) Homepage

        The influx of cheaper cars (from Japan, I may add!) didn't kill off the top models...

        Not yet but American auto manufacturers are on life support. GM used to be huge. Remember the old saying that what's good for GM is good for the country? Probably before your time. As big as GM was in the day and as small as those upstart Japanese car makers were in comparison, there's been quite a turn around. That in an industry that evolves at a glacial pace.

        The technology market evolves much faster. The technologies that should scare the bejabbers out of the status quo include:

        • Appliance PC's. Sony has good reason to be scared. So does Dell, HP and Lenovo.
        • Mesh networking. Self-discovering p2p networks that don't need a telecomm or service provider to spring to life. This could potentially be as disruptive to the current internet as the internet was to traditional telecomm in the late 80's.
        • Open Source. When you take an overview of MSFT's approach to OSS, it's hard to mask the unmistakable signs of fear. And MS should be afraid of OSS, the same way Dell should be afraid of EEE PC's.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thisissilly (676875)
      Seeing as your Vaio cost over $2000 brand new (with 64MB of RAM), and this is $300 (with 512MB), I'd say they're allowed to do a few things badly.

    • Re:Color me a happy eee customer... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by meringuoid (568297) on Friday February 29 2008, @01:37PM (#22602934)
      Enter the eeePC, which comes fairly cheap (mine was 399.99) with Linux pre-installed. It's Xanadros, and I'll admit, I'm a moron, so I didn't want to deal with it. Installing XP was anything but easy... lacking a DVD-rom drive, I had to port it to a memory stick, run a bunch of suspicious looking programs to make the stick bootable, and then run it from there. XP died after installing 4-5 times, 6th time's the charm...

      This kind of thing is why Windows will never be ready for the micro-laptop.

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