Resistance is futile.
Posted on 06/03/2009 8:10:33 AM PDT by bamahead
Google's free mobile-phone operating system will begin running computers next quarter, entering a market dominated by Microsoft's Windows and deepening the rivalry between the two companies.
Acer, the world's second-largest laptop maker, will release a low-cost notebook featuring Android in the third quarter, Jim Wong, head of information-technology products at the Taipei, Taiwan-based company, said Tuesday.
Asustek Computer, pioneer of the sub-$500 laptops known as netbooks, also developed a model that runs on Google's software, Chairman Jonney Shih said.
The development of Android netbooks indicates that the software is powerful enough to replace Windows, which runs about 90 percent of the world's personal computers. Google's move into PC operating systems escalates the pressure on Microsoft as it prepares to introduce Windows 7, according to Calvin Huang, an analyst at Daiwa Securities Group.
"This is a negative and may force Microsoft to lower the price of Windows 7," said Huang, who covers the computer industry from Taipei. "More and more vendors are adopting Android and non-Windows in their products, so this is a very good chance for Android to penetrate the PC market."
Acer's Android-based Aspire One netbook will be cheaper than the Windows XP model, though the two products will have the same electronic components, such as Intel's Atom processor, Acer's Wong said.
"Competition in the marketplace is good and people have the right to choose software that is best for them," Amelia Agrawal, a Singapore-based spokeswoman for Microsoft, said in an e-mailed statement. "Microsoft remains confident that people will keep buying Windows, as evidenced by the robust Windows growth on small notebook PCs."
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Android looks cool. I saw photos of it a couple months ago....about as cool as the Mac OS I still want but haven’t gotten yet because Macs are more expensive.
How much memory does one get on a cellphone? Linux of late, which had once had an economy like that of the old Sun workstations (40 whole megabytes of memory? wow! I can put everything on this screen!) has now gone the way of the gigabyte bloatware of Gates. Don’t even think of trying to kick off this year’s Ubuntu distros on a 10 year old computer.
I ran OS/2 for a while at home. It really was a better Windows than Windows. Back at that time I was on AOL (among other providers), and the little SNERTS as we called them, would try and IM bomb people. The pure Windows platform would choke and die, requiring a reboot. The OS/2 platform took it all in while I IM'd them back, mocking them and laughing at their impotence. :-))
After a while they got the message and never bothered me again. LOL
By that same token, it can’t aspire to kick vanilla Linux off the desktop.
I don't doubt it, at least for some applications.
I always wanted to try out OS/2, but it was pretty pricey.
While the average user won't be pruning his kernel to reduce its memory footprint, the modular nature and kernel tools makes it possible. I'm sure a Multi-Billion dollar cell phone company can spare the resources to taylor it to their needs.
Which is of course, the point of the OS (and OSS) to begin with.
Don’t even think of trying to kick off this year’s Ubuntu distros on a 10 year old computer.
Microsoft will definitely lowball to force a competitor out of a market.
I don't think this will work with Google, as their pockets are as deep as MS, and they have the ability to throw money at losing propositions, just like MS.
By that same token, it can’t aspire to kick vanilla Linux off the desktop.
If people would settle on a version of Linux for the desktop, it might finally take off (outside of servers.) I could see Google’s version doing that.
Given how scalable Linux is (from wristwatches to super-computers) it would pose a serious threat to Microsoft if Google could pull this off.
The advantages of working in IT for MaBell at the Labs. I could buy anything like that I needed. Just to play around with. I still have my Warp CD, unfortunately I can't find the 3.5" boot disks needed so I can install it in a "VirtualBox" (which supports OS/2) on my openSuSE laptop. Not that they would help anyway. No floppy drives anymore.
Well I suppose I could create an image of them and put them on a USB or something. Though that might be tricky with something that out of date.
Linux and graphical UNIXes don’t actually need to be that big. I remember the old Suns as being pretty peppy. But it’s sad to see that the answer to Gates bloatware seems to be Torvalds bloatware. Anyone who wants to ride on the coattails of the latter may find it hard to keep from being bloatware themselves. More power to them, if they can rediscover the few-megabyte glory days of old. Pop in, say, an SD drive and you’re in hog heaven. Wouldn’t it be a hoot to plug your old style monitor and keyboard into a cellphone and get something attractive and usable (as human miniaturization is unlikely to come soon).
Yes, I know how MS works. But they would “choose” to lower the price (unlikely for the Win 7 release because it would take we several years for Android to be a threat)...what I was laughing at was “may force”.
Resistance is futile.
I had an earlier OS/2 (v2.1, I believe) on 3.5" floppies. I may still... Tried to eBay it, but no takers.
As evidenced by this nifty machine.
Ubunto, no. Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, Freeduc, Knoscience, and Kioskcd (to name but five distros), yes. Not all flavors of Linux require large amounts of memory or terabyte-speed processors to run. Some live-CD distros can even boot your machine and allow you to rescue critical files after winDoze crashes and renders your machine inoperable. There is even one specifically tailored to rescue your system, as well as repartition your hard drive and make images of the partitions for future rescues. Makes recovery a lot less painful if something corrupts your system. :)
I have a script here that allows you to combine multiple live CD distros onto one DVD (or CD) disc.
See My post #36. Linux even today is not necessarily bloatware.
Bewdy, mate. Think I will play with that tonight...
Where’s the requisite penny in the picture to give it scale? :-)
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