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Re: Can a Windows PC Really Be Cheaper Than a Linux Box?
Posted by: Katherine Noyes 2008-05-12 04:39:38
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It must have been a chilly week in hell last week, because the unthinkable appears to have happened: A Windows PC has been announced that will be cheaper than a Linux one. That's right, folks: The Windows XP version of the Asus Eee PC 900 will sell for $599 in Australia, while the Linux version will cost $649, according to APC Magazine . Should we expect pigs to take to the air at any moment? Have we entered the Twilight Zone? Or is there something more to this than meets the eye? The Linux blogs were abuzz with debate and speculation.
While it's true that the list price is $50 cheaper for XP, the operating system that Microsoft is "allowing" Asus (and any other low end PC) to use is crippleware. Microsoft calls it a modified set for low end PC's, but their restrictions on low end computer manufacturers is downright scandalous. The PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs…the systems can have no more than 1G byte of RAM and a single-core processor running at no more than 1GHz.
Does that sound like a bargan?
Does that sound like a bargan?
