ASUS Ships a lot of eee PCs at Robert Pogson

ASUS Ships a lot of eee PCs

Published by Robert Pogson October 6th, 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

According to Digitimes, ASUS shipped 700k eee PCs in September. Good for them. They are only one of a dozen suppliers of netbooks so that could be many millions of new GNU/Linux users each month. Good for GNU/Linux.

There still is a problem with that other OS hiding its price in different features for different OS but in the low end, it is hard to hide the price. Some are of the opinion that M$ is giving XP away or paying OEMs to install it, which would be dumping or other unfair trading practice. I hope some regulators are watching this market. Still GNU/Linux is growing. They can only slow us down, not stop us. It seems the growth of Vista in the webstats has slowed to retail sales… The truly locked-in will wait for Vista II. Others will migrate to GNU/Linux.

I have been in contact with Chinese suppliers of thin clients and mini-PCs. They are all ramping up production and can redouble production at the drop of a hat. GNU/Linux will grow rapidly in this segment.

- Robert Pogson

2 Responses to “ASUS Ships a lot of eee PCs”

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1 markba Oct 7th, 2008 at 2:57 am

“Still GNU/Linux is growing. They can only slow us down, not stop us.”

That’s the way I see this also. A few years ago, I was really worried if FOSS would succeed experiencing all tactics from the established vendors of close source software, with ISO/MS-OOXML as the most prominent example.

Now I’m not worried at all. At the end, FOSS will turn out as a real alternative of that other OS, not by dominating the world but by having a substantial slice of the ‘market share’.
2 Robert Pogson Oct 7th, 2008 at 4:30 am

We still must be vigilant. The illegal trade practices continue. I wrote the Competition Bureau in Canada and they did nothing. I wrote my elected representative. If I were in charge, the law would be changed to include a ban on operations for persistent offenders like M$ and they would be out of here. For now, Canada only allows petty fines and court orders. M$ can drag that out for ten years at least. Justice delayed is justice denied but you are right, good things will eventually happen in IT. I am sure M$ will be able to compete on price and quality if they are forced to do that but I do not see it on the horizon until they lose market share seriously. That will happen in a year or two at this rate. Good. It’s about time!

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My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.