For how long?

I read this article 2 days ago:

Otellini says the recession’s gonna hurt

‘The recession wil get worse, he warned. “This is the deepest one I’ve seen in my lifetime. All the smart people that I talk to tell us the US is in for a two-to-three quarter recession,” he said. “We’ll see much larger unemployment a year from now.”’

Currently the IT/Tech industry is feeling the pinch and, don’t kid yourself, the worst is not here yet. SMB’s are curtailing their IT expenditures and are looking for the “most bang for their buck”. It’s ludicrous, to think they haven’t thought of FOSS migrations.

Given the current shortage of IT talent available many SMB’s cannot pursue said migrations because the lack of will, remaining in their comfort zone and/or lack of upper IT management technical skills. Also, CIO’s and IT managers rely purely on vendor bullshit.

Disinformation and MS propaganda from rags such as eweek, CIO mag, ZD-Gates, IDG, Gartner, Yankee Group, etc. doesn’t help either since most of them sound as MS press releases and usually parrot each other and rely on the heavy advertising dollars MS budgets to them. (Who knows how many of the Pro-MS analysts have gotten their free Vista 7 laptop, or at least, their 160gb hdd full of MS DRM riddled malware). It’s amazing what some of these shills do for a pen or T-shirt.

The consumer does not have an annual IT spending budget and today, more than ever, the dollar has to be stretched. Why pay for proprietary software when you can get better, or worse case scenario, the same, using Free Open Source Software. Why tie yourself to a single vendor. The old adage; “never put all your eggs in one basket” has basic, wisdom and freedom of choice, values.

Your currency is what they value and what they’re after. Vote with it. If you can’t get exactly the machine that you want, configured the way you want it, then say, “Thanks for playing, Next!”.

ASUS has since then elevated the price of its machines, neglected or curtailed development of the Linux versions (there was room for improvement) and it’s removing it in some places. Hours ago:

http://www.mb.com.ph/INFO20081109140327.html

Learn what Microsoft did to Dell when it offered GNU/Linux:

http://boycottnovell.com/2007/10/29/exclusionary-deals-linux/

Asus (re)spins $200 netbook
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9054845909.html

EEE PC is a good example. It required twice as much SD space to load XP and a few applications that did not match Xandros features. The only way to overcome that is to use a heavy, delicate and expensive hard drive. It should come as no surprise that the new EEE PC’s “base” configuration has a hard drive and XP. This is a loser and these systems are not going to sell. After a few months on line, only the most powerful computers are able to handle the spyware virus load that comes with Windows. Talk of Vista and Windows 7 on UMPCs is absurd.

EEE PC offered people what they want from a mobile device and there will be more where it came from. It was cheap, rugged and easy to use and carry. It did everything people wanted, video chat, movie and music playing from external media, GIMP and Open Office. These are things the average desktop PC has trouble doing and that’s why netbook sales took off. Companies that offer the same features at the same price point in a two pound or less package are going to clean up the market again. What’s M$ got to keep them in line? Discounts on software that does not work?

http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/26/asus-possibly-sells-out/
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/09/11/asus-express-windows/

The ASUS Eee PC was introduced and initially marketed as a $199 PC, with prices likely to drop further. Instead, Microsoft tried to push this race upward, accommodating newer versions of Windows through elevated specifications which favour Intel and Microsoft.

Asus produces Linux and XP Eees in equal numbers, she claimed, and will continue to do so: the Linux Eees are the better selling models. “We think our version of Linux is how we will stand out from our competitors,” [an Asus spokesman] said.

Shortages of Xandros models were blamed on hardware supply shortages upstream, but it was a lie. Hardware specifications and pricing soon favored the XP models, and less than six months after XP introduction, Asus was shipping seven XP models for every Xandros model, and this probably had something to do with the 14.2% decline in profit Asus had over the previous all Xandros year.

Asus is not the only company M$ corrupted to destroy Xandros’ netbook market. The company dumped “low price” XP on all makers in exchange for strict hardware limits. These limits include a 10″ screen maximum, 80GB hard drive size, 1GB RAM and single 1GHz cores. A special allowance for Intel was given, it’s Atom and Via’s C7 processors can break the clock speed limit, but overall UMPCs are burdened with a Windows Tax and hardware restrictions that suck life out of a lucrative market Xandros could have dominated.