It seems the new hot market to get into is the Ultra-portable laptop market. They have actually been called a number of different things but I am going to stick with Ultra-portable laptops, because that seems to sound like it makes sense to me. Anywho The Eee pc was the first created by Asus and running Linux.
Since then the Eee pc has came out with a Windows xp version and many other ultra-portables are coming out with both Linux and Microsoft versions. So how does this help Linux?
Well when the Dell started selling Ubuntu laptops and computers some people were upset about how the price differences weren’t that big especially since Linux is a free operating system and Microsoft costs hundreds. Well he answer to that is that Big companies like Dell buy Windows in bulk gettign a discount so they are only really paying for $50-$100 for the license on each computer they sell. Also all the junk software that comes pre-installed also helps offset the costs.
The $50-$100 price tag for the Microsoft operating system is not that big of a deal on a $1000+ laptop. But on a $300 laptop that is 1/6th or 1/4rd of the price….basically the cheaper the computer the more of a difference there will be in the price. The new trend of ultra-portable cheap laptops will help bring more Linux computers to the consumer market to the everyday people who may not have considered or even known about Linux otherwise.
Posted by clintthewookie 