Wal-mart repeals the Microsoft TAX

[Gopher Broke]

Wal-Mart repeals the MS tax Low-cost PCs ship with Lindows

When Sam Walton started his own company, he thought the key to success was keeping prices low and customers loyal. That formula helped make Wal-Mart, the world's largest and most successful retailer, selling more apparel than department stores, more toys than toy stores and more music than record stores. Wal-Mart also sells PCs and it thinks the time is right to banish Windows from its lowest-priced units.

Wal-Mart is selling eight of its "white box" Microtel models with Lindows, the fledgling Linux OS designed to replace Windows on the desktop. Lindows CEO Michael Robertson (formerly head of MP3) says Lindows will run most major applications written for Windows eventually. Rather than minimize the change, Wal-Mart is promoting it. It originally said, "These computers do not ship with Microsoft Windows. They ship with an exciting new UNIX based Operating System (OS) named Lindows. This exciting new OS delivers the stability of UNIX with the ease of Windows and the ability to run most Microsoft programs. These computer systems are a perfect low cost alternative to computers preloaded with Microsoft Windows."

After a day or two, Wal-Mart and Lindows withdrew the claim that Lindows runs any programs designed for Windows, let alone Microsoft products. It's not clear if this was a move designed to avoid the costs still more MS anti-Lindows litigation or if Lindows does not yet deliver on that critical promise.

The PCs come with an e-mail program, word processor, web browser, address book, calculator, CD player, MP3 player, viewers for Word, Excel and PowerPoint and a choice of three applications from the Lindows.com warehouse of open-source software. The PCs sell for between $299 and $599, without monitor. If Lindows can deliver on its promise of evolving into a serious desktop contender, it will put a damper on MS' ability to leverage Windows, reduce its profits and limit its potential to buy its way into other IT realms.

[Gopher Broke]

One less workshipper at the Microsoft altar....yikes..now they only own 99.99999% of the market

[Recovering_Democrat]

Oh my god! You mean the FREE MARKET IS WORKING???

Give Janet Reno and the rest of the Democrat Party a call: they'll be stunned.

[toupsie]

Walmart is also supposed to be selling the Microtel "white boxes" with Mandrake Linux as well. However, I think the average Walmart shopper is going to be real disappointed using Lindows. As bad as Windows is, it beats the pants off Linux on the desktop. There is only one company that has figured how to put the incredible power of UNIX in front of the basic computer user without confusing the hell of them or scaring them to death.

[Petronski]

Ping

[ShadowAce]

Sadistic, aren't you? :)

[Xenalyte]

"Exciting new operating system"? We need to get you out more, honey.

[LetsRok]

This is going to be the start of a customer service nightmare for Wal-Mart. If customers are unable to buy the same games and software titles as "real windows" users, then I can see lines full of angry shoppers wanting refunds.

[Huck]

I am pretty close to taking the plunge on a Power Mac. I have always been a windows pc user, but when I buy a new pc, it'll probably be a mac. I have never actually bought a pc. I always got them through work. I am starting up my own multimedia side business, and I plan to use a powermac to operate it.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

There is only one company that has figured how to put the incredible power of UNIX in front of the basic computer user without confusing the hell of them or scaring them to death.

Fehh! Ever heard of Lycoris?

[ShadowAce]

The new Red Hat 7.3 is pretty nice as well.

[toupsie]

Fehh! Ever heard of Lycoris?

Lycoris is not UNIX and is nothing more than Linux with another knock-off Windows-like desktop. Run fvwm with RedHat and you got the same thing.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Lycoris is not UNIX

Very true.

However, I'd rather overwrite my Windows ME and run Lycoris than switch to a Mac. But that's just me.

I'm sure that there are a lot of people, like the ones that would buy a $599 PC from Walmart, that would be very comfortable with a Mac.

[from occupied ga]

I have both. Dell WS 530 with Xeon and windows 2000 and a powermac (first of the blue boxes) Keep in mind that photoshop for the mac is a lot better than photoshop for windows, but there are some business applications that are not available for the mac (turbotax business for filing your 1120 is only available for windows)

I like some of the details of the W2000 os a little better than the mac, but I have never had a system crash on the mac that wasn't caused by one specific software product (my kid loaded diablo II on it and this periodically freezes the keyboard or the mouse when playing - just reboot and everything is fine) I like the Dell monitor (trinitron) better than the Apple monitor I have, but the Dell is new (3 months) and the Apple monitor is 9 years old.

Microsoft data files are compatible between the two. I only have photoshop on the Mac, so I can't answer about photoshop, but all of the image standard files should be interchangeable. I've heard that people in the image editing business prefer mac.

[DrDavid]

I'm sure that there are a lot of people, like the ones that would buy a $599 PC from Walmart, that would be very comfortable with a $1599 Mac.

[dwollmann]

Some clarification is in order. Wal-Mart is offering these systems only on walmart.com, not in stores.

With that said, Lindows is a brain-dead choice for an OS. Lindows does away with the access protection afforded by file and directory permissions, running everything as root. You might as well run Windows 98 if you're going to run as root.

The deal with Mandrake isn't a sure thing yet. The only mention of it so far has come from Mandrakesoft, not Wal-Mart, as far as I know. I hope Wal-Mart wise up and dump Lindows altogether in favor of Mandrake. Mandrake blows chunks, too, but it is more secure.

[Orangedog]

I see a lot about the Windows vs Mac OSX duel, but what I don't understand is that if OSX is so much better than windows, why hasn't apple ported their OS over to the Intel/AMD based PC's? If it's unix based, shouldn't it be possible? I know that there are middleware approaches that kinda-sorta lets this happen, but wouldn't they be able to port it to the wintel platform so it runs natively, without the processor overhead that comes with an emulation approach. I imagine it has to do with apple being primarilly a hardware vendor and they have to rely on the high margins on their hardware to survive. That is where MS has it all over them....all intel/amd pc's run windows, but if you want to use apple's OS, you have to have apple hardware.

[general_re]

I'm sure that there are a lot of people, like the ones that would buy a $599 PC from Walmart, that would be very comfortable with a Mac.

Probably, but does Apple even have a system in that price range? Heck, the low-end model on the Wal-Mart website is $299 for a Duron 850 sans monitor, which is more than suitable for websurfing, productivity software, email, and what-have-you. Toss in another $130 for their monitor, and you're still under $450 - I don't think I've ever even seen a refurbed iMac for that low of a price...

[toupsie]

I'm sure that there are a lot of people, like the ones that would buy a $599 PC from Walmart, that would be very comfortable with a $1599 Mac.

All aboard the clue train...

$1,599 for a midrange PowerMac/top of the line iMac. You can get much better deals. Frankly any computer you can buy below $999 is the quality of a Yugo. Will work for about a month or two, then you will spend more money plus time and effort on it fixing it than you spent buying.

[Utopia]

Mac's a good choice - particularly for multimedia. Mac OS X and Quartz is a pretty powerful combination. Apple's running some fun ads right now, which you can see off their website www.apple.com Requires QuickTime.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

The new Red Hat 7.3 is pretty nice as well.

If we're going to plug our favorite flavor of Linux, you should check out Slackware. Very nice and robust.
Of course, you can check out all of the flavors at DistroWatch.com.