First Nail In Microsoft's Coffin?


Ahh, another highly successful demo by Microsoft

From ars technica

What if you gave a tech party and Gates wasn't invited?

The overall verdict is fairly unanimous: the Asus Eee PC keyboard is a bit cramped, but in terms of price, performance and features the device hits the trifecta.  Indeed, Asus appears to have gotten so many things right with the Eee PC that it could be a game-changer in the mobile market, in terms of both hardware and software.

Thanks to its combination of Intel hardware and a non-bloated Linux install, reviewers found that Asus's little laptop performs just as well as much larger and more expensive Windows notebooks.  And the company spent enough time tweaking the unit's default Linux distro that Windows users will supposedly feel right at home.

Across the Intel development board, from the Terascale research initiative to the discrete GPU project to the enterprise power management efforts to the mobile division, every single forward-looking effort is very much a software effort, and all of those software efforts are Linux- and open source-based.

John C. Dvorak thinks this is a tempest in a teapot.  What do you think?  Can Intel survive without Microsoft?

Seems like a really cool little computer.  Might be fun to play around with Linux on it.

Hop

I could be wrong but other than the tiny size and the low cost, I think the main point here is supposedly people won't have to play around with Linux at all because it is tweaked by Asus to be perfectly stable and to look just like Windoze (why? he asks.). As for upgrades, updates and installing most application software, it's already easier to do those things with Ubuntu than it is to do them with Windoze.

Actually, I really wish people wouldn't think they can use Linux!

The problems are going to arise when little Timmy wants to add a web cam and can't add a web cam because the web cam company doesn't do Linux drivers or when Mom wants to hook up the digital camera and finds out there aren't any Linux drivers for most common cameras or when Dad wants to install his absolutely favorite game and finds out the game company doesn't support Linux, so he can't play.

I suppose if they sold enough Linux machines, those problems would work themselves out but that's not going to happen for a long, long time - if ever.

Apple should be the nail in Micro$oft's coffin but they are too stupidly, insanely greedy to stop killing the geese that lay the golden eggs - just like always.

I used Unix in my company for 20 years and loved the way I could write quick C-shell scripts to do just about anything.  I would assume with Linux that I could open a C-shell and write scripts.  Maybe not.

I can't imagine Linux without a text prompt but even the Command Prompt in XP freaks out most end-users these days so who knows, they may have left it out. I guess you're just going to have to purchase one of the little babies and see how cool it really is!

From what I've heard, "dos" runs under XP now rather than the other way around and "dos" isn't really dos anymore.

You're correct, there is no DOS in XP. The Command Prompt allows you to run a lot of preset commands but I don't think you can write any kind of useful program. For instance, some unix commands like netstat work but Micro$oft left out traceroute - although you can add traceroute - and other programs - yourself.

Perhaps there's a Command Prompt expert or Windows MVP available to explain just what it actually is because I can't adequately explain it, much like the rest of the things Micro$oft does or doesn't do with Windoze.

DOS is alive and well in XP.  I have some old DOS based engineering applications that I still run in a DOS (Command Prompt) window or full screen.  I have also run some old DOS games like DukeNukem.  I won't get in the the issues of getting mouse, printers, sound card, memory management, etc.  to work, but it can be done.

Type the 'mem' command at the command prompt and you will see that MS-DOS is available with the memory useage.  There is even the old DOS file editor is available, type 'edit'.

BTW, trace route is still there - tracert www. somewebsite. com or tracert someIPaddress.