Stop Copying a Failiure and Do Something New
Just like with the Eee PC, ever since the gPC started the low-cost Linux desktop market (yeah, yeah I am sure there is some cheap Linux PC that came before it), many, many companies have rushed to essentially copy the design and call it their own. This is understandable in the case of the Eee PC, since it has done so well, but it makes a lot less sense in the case of the gPC, since the gPC and all the copies so far have basically failed. I can even understand some early rip-offs thinking they could do better, but after every product in the market flops, you would think the flow of these cheap Linux PCs would stop, but it has not. Shuttle just set a launch date of mid-April for their “KPC.” (Even the name is a rip-off.)
While I am saying that companies should stop copying a tried and failed idea, I am not saying that no one should try to enter this cheap Linux PC market. Just don’t do the same thing as everyone else. To figure out how to make a better cheap Linux PC, look at the Eee PC. One major factor, at least in my opinion, in the Eee PC’s success is that it has appeal to both geeks and regular people. On the other hand, the gPC has almost no appeal to a geek (why would they want another underpowered computer even if it were free?)
There are plenty of ways to increase the geek appeal of a cheap Linux PC, you just have to think of it as a little more than your average Dell PC. As one commenter named Robert Pogson pointed out in a comment on “Will Asus’s UMPC Success Carry into Linux Desktops?,” Asus could make their new cheap Linux desktop PC a “base station for the eee (backup, software repository, home files, printing…).” Or how about an inexpensive media center/home server computer? All of this could be done.
The cheap Linux desktop PC market is not hopeless, it just needs some products that are not copies of failed ideas.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Creative ideas are hard to come by. They worked for the eee because the small unit was highly portable, colourful, inexpensive and a good size for smaller people, places where more mainstream products could not go, including that other OS. I noticed recently that even with many OEMs making available GNU/Linux machines, they never put them in head-to-head competition with that other OS. That could be because M$ forbids it, which I think is illegal, or it could be that the sellers figure the better known product would continue to dominate and they could make more money/sales by separating the machines. I think the former is more likely.
I wonder whether GNU/Linux can turn the table, excluding that other OS is similar ways. Whoever is in the market first wins. RAM under a gB will keep that other OS out once XP is killed. I run thin clients in 256MB (45 MB used) all day using an X connection to the mother ship. Perhaps the new desktops should have a second NIC and a private subnet for connecting the thin clients. Perhaps we can make a move in multi-user homes and businesses. Thin client is growing rapidly but still is derided by the one licence per disk folks. The eee reminded me of a thin client when I saw it. All it would take are a bit of configuration to get it to connect/login to the mothership when on the home network. It could be scripted to make the connection automatically. Cool. Sell a decently powerful machine that could run the whole group and some $100 boxes on the backs of monitors, or an eee-like machine for the clients. Make it plug and play for the non-geek market. Geeks would still like it because they could use the power when they needed it and still have a tiny thing in front. That other OS cannot go there because of the per-seat charges.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
It’s not always that simple. There are many factors that contribute to why a particular implementation of a concept doesn’t launch, and not all of them are related to it being a “bad idea” per se, just a bad presentation of it. Mutable Factors such as social conscience and awareness can make or break what would otherwise be a magnificent idea at any other time. What this means that reintroduction of the exact same idea that may have bombed 2 years ago could take off like a rocket right now. It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, it was just a bad time for it.
Low cost PC systems running Linux have been around for years now, but have never really caught on until recently. I can’t imagine how anyone could see a brand new computer with respectable components, low cost, and running a stable/free/secure platform could ever be a “bad idea”; however social awareness is just awakening to the fact that there are other options than MS or Apple in the desktop computing market.