For a long time the question has been going back and forth: is Asus messing with us and making the Linux version of the Eee PC more expensive than the Windows version? Previously the numbers have all been speculation, but now, finally, we have real numbers to look at!

So now that the Eee PC 900 is out, it should be easy to get to the bottom of this mystery, right? Naturally, no. For some reason, only a few places seem to be selling the Eee PC 900. Worse, those prices are not all the same. Basically I was only able to find three places that sell both the Linux and Windows versions: Buy.com, Newegg, and OnSale. (I also found both at one more place, but from that store both cost more than $600.) So what are the prices?

Eee PC 900 Windows: $550, $550, $595

Eee PC 900 Linux: $590, $550, $550

Groan. It has been so long. Couldn’t you just give us numbers that make sense??? All I can assume is that Asus is really selling both versions for the same price and Buy.com and OnSale are just making one version or the other more expensive for some reason. Especially since Newegg has them both for the same price, I think that is the best assumption.

So in summary, because the Linux version has more storage space, which cancels out the price of Windows, I think Asus, at least in the US, has done the right thing and made them both cost the same so that no advantage is given to either OS. Now I just wish OnSale, Buy.com, and anyone else messing with these prices would just make them both cost the same as they should.  That way, the price advantage of Linux will be clear to all shoppers.

Microsoft has apparently given details of a new deal to PC makers that allows them to get discounted Windows XP licenses for use on UMPCs, according to Computer World UK. This already appeared to be the case due to pricing on the Eee PC, however it had not been confirmed. There seem to be two parts to this story. First, Microsoft is selling Windows for less on UMPCS. Second, some people suspect that the deal is supposed to prevent UMPCs from competing with normal PCs.

The first part is relatively simple. Microsoft is giving essentially the same product away at difference prices, depending what type of device it will go on. Although I am not in any way a lawyer, I suspect that this is legal, since Microsoft can just change one little feature and then it is a different product. Just because it is probably legal, does not, however, mean I think it is a fair practice. Another way of stating the second sentence of this paragraph is: Microsoft is making Windows less expensive in the markets where Linux is gaining market share. Because of this, I think this practice should be illegal and is certainly unfair.

The second part of the story is slightly more complicated, though not by much. The Computer World article brings up the point that Microsoft may be trying to limit UMPCs from invading the regular PC market by defining them with these specifications:

• Max screen size: 10.2
• No touch screen
• Hard drives are limited to 80GB
• Max 1GB RAM
• Max 1Ghz single-core processor, except for a few particular chips

Although it is true that these specifications would limit a UMPC from competing with a regular PC, three things should be kept in mind.

1. Microsoft has to set the limit somewhere. If Windows is going to have a different price for UMPCs, Microsoft has to define what a UMPC is so a 17-inch desktop replacement doesn’t count.
2. Every major UMPC that I can think of fits these specifications.
3. If these specifications are going to limit UMPCs, it is only going to hurt Microsoft. PC makers will not stop improving their hardware because they don’t get Microsoft’s discount. They might, however, switch to Linux, because Windows costs $50 more.

For these three reasons, I don’t see anything wrong with the specifications Microsoft has set. I do, however, think that the whole idea of selling the same product at differenet prices is unfair. If you disagree, however, I am open to hearing your arguement. Go ahead and post it in the comments.

Note: Everyone that pointed out that it is really only a difference of $50 if right, however the basic point still stands, since $50 max difference is assuming Windows is free.

Also, every that pointed out the USB flash drives are quite different from SSDs is, of course, correct. I am, and was, aware of the difference, however I choose to use flash drives due to their availability.

Today the headlines have been about the Eee PC 900 with Windows being cheaper (at least in Australia) than the Linux version ($650 to $500). Additionally, the Linux version will not be sold in retail stores. The story gets even worse when you read some of what Asus has said. APC is reporting that ASUS said “Microsoft has been a longstanding supporter of Asus.” I suppose this could just be innocent press talk, but it sure sounds to be like there is something suspicious going on.

One element of the story, however, has not been reported as much. The Linux version comes with 20GB of flash memory, while the Windows version only comes with 12GB. At first glance, 8GBs of storage should not cost $150, but flash is expensive. Could 8GB more flash memory create a significant price difference?

The answer, in a word, is no. The evidence I can find all points to, not surprisingly, 8 additional GB costing far less than $150. Let me explain my reasoning.

First, there are two issues complicating what would otherwise be a very simple problem. First, there are not many consumer solid state drives. Instead I had to use USB flash drive prices. Second, 12GB and 20GB are both very unusual capacities. Here I had to use 8-16GB and 16-32GB.

I used three lines of USB flash drives. The Corsair Voyager (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), the Corsair Survivor (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), and the A-Data My Flash (8GB, 16GB, 32GB). I will not get into the math here (it is nothing more than subtraction, but it would take up a lot of space and be very boring), but the numbers come out to this. The average price difference between the 8GB and 16GB (an 8GB difference) model was around $38. The average price difference between the 16GB and 32GB (16GB difference) was about $86 (the largest difference was about $100). In other words, the price difference between the models should really only be about $50 at most, even if Windows was free.

In summary, although it is imposssible to have perfectly accurate results, it is quite clear that the Windows version is, in fact, significantly less expensive than the Linux version for what you get. This is unacceptable.

I am sure that almost anyone following the Linux news for any length of time has gotten completely used to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that comes out of Redmond over and over. Sometimes it is outrageous, sometimes it is just annoying, but I have never seen something as blatantly uninformed as this.

Yesterday, Wired reported this: (he is Bill Gates)

“There’s free software and then there’s open source,” he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, “there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with.”

Open source, he said, creates a license “so that nobody can ever improve the software,” he claimed

What?

Bill Gates is saying that GPL makes it “so that nobody can ever improve the software.” Apparently he does not understand what “open-source” means. With open-source software, GPL in this case, you have the right to modify and redistribute the program. How on earth does that make is “so that nobody can ever improve the software.” Is this supposed to be FUD or ignorance?

Can anyone give a logical explanation for how this could possibly be at all true?

With the semi-recent approval of OOXML by the ISO, an issue has come up over how well Office 2007 implements Microsoft’s own standard, OOXML. Griffin Brown tested the compatibility of the latest Office 2007 with the latest OOXML standard and found that the results were less than perfect. My first reaction, of course, was outrage. How on earth are competitors supposed to implement Microsoft’s “open” standard if even Microsoft itself cannot implement it correctly? As I read through the original post, though, I believe I may have been too fast to jump to that conclusion.

Griffin Brown tested Office 2007 against two versions of the OOXML standard - the transitional and strict versions. When tested against the transitional version (a less strict version) Office 2007’s implementation returned 84 error messages, which Brown calls “relatively few.” Many of the errors, he says, are “all of the same type.” Additionally, in the example he gives, the Office 2007 version uses “on,” which was used in a previous version of OOXML, instead of “true,” which is the current version. Judge for yourself, but this sort of thing seems OK to me as long as Microsoft corrects it soon.

When Brown tested Office 2007’s implementation against the strict version, however, it received many more errors. Apparently, 17MB (around 122,000) of error messages were output. This seems much less justifiable to me. Seriously, 17MB???

Before I make a judgment, I want to know two things:

1. Which version is more important, transitional or strict? Groklaw says about the transitional version that it is “one no one on the planet will be using,” but this statement is not backed up or justified.
2. How common is it to have errors in format implementations? For example, if most implementations by programs such as OpenOffice are perfect, Microsoft’s implementation would seem inexcusable. On the other hand, if almost all implementations contain many errors, Microsoft’s implemenation makes more sense.

There is, of course, an argument that those questions don’t matter and, since OOXML is Microsoft’s own format, it should be implemented perfectly. This, however, seems unfair to me. Instead, I will wait to see how others react to Brown’s findings. I just want to make the point that, no matter how many other flaws OOXML has, Brown’s findings might not be as damning as they seem.

Note: I want to make it very clear that I am not excusing Microsoft, I am simply waiting for more information before judging.

I recently came across a YouTube video created by Blogeee.net which shows both the Windows Eee PC and the Linux Eee PC (I assume each with the same specifications) starting up, launching Firefox, and shutting down. It is very apparent in the video that the Linux version is much faster, but, since only the startup is done at the same time for both machines, it is hard to tell just how much faster. I timed each part (starting up, launching Firefox, and shutting down) to see what the time difference really was. Here is what I found:

Startup
Linux: 30 seconds - Windows: 54 seconds
Launching Firefox
Linux: 4 seconds - Windows: 16 seconds
Shutdown
Linux: 6 seconds - Windows: 68 seconds

(Note: Numbers are approximate. Firefox start time is from clicking on the Firefox icon to the dialog about starting a new session and then from the end of that dialog to when the windows appears, or, in other words, everything but loading the web page and waiting for the user to click on new session or resume session.)

Those numbers by themselves are impressive, but they get even more impressive when you look at how many times faster the Linux version really is.

Startup: Windows takes 24 seconds longer. Linux is just less than twice as fast.
Launching Firefox: Windows takes 12 seconds longer. Linux is four times faster.
Shutdown: Windows takes 62 seconds longer. Linux is slightly more than 11 times faster.

Look at it, Microsoft. Vista would barely even run on these things and Windows XP is much slower than Linux. This is very likely to be Linux’s first major success on the desktop.

Recently a diagram that depicts Microsoft’s “empire” competing or fighting its competitors, particularly open-source. The diagram (older versions), while probably mostly intended for fun, shows two important realities for Microsoft:

1. Microsoft is huge. They will never just disappear overnight or over a year. If they die, it will be very slow as they gradually lose various parts of their bussiness to competitors.
2. Microsoft is surrounded on all sides. They are facing serious competition almost everywhere they go. No longer are they the only player in anything.

Although these two points may seem simple, and to some extent they are, they are important. If Microsoft wants to continue to survive, it must remember that it does not have a free ride. Whether or not Microsoft will be able to beat back the competition remains to be seen, but so many (myself included) seem to think Microsoft will fall.

EWeek is reporting on some unusual good news from Redmond, which is a rather nice change from the usual flow of negative Microsoft stories. Microsoft has released some ASP.net development tools for Linux. Although I can’t claim to understand all the technical details of exactly what they released, it appears that it is a development tool for Linux developers.

Although I suspect that not a whole lot of people will care about this particular piece of software, the precedent this potentially sets is great.

In the past, when Microsoft has said “cross-platform” what they meant was always “it runs on Windows and it at least sort of runs on the Mac.” Now that Microsoft has started releasing software for Linux, if only a small development tool, perhaps that definition will change to “it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.”

It is also possible that this is just an isolated incident of releasing something for Linux and it will not become regular, but I am glad to see some good news from Microsoft and I hope we see more in the future.

Computer hardware is constantly getting  better. Intel and AMD are constantly trying to have the better, faster, cheaper chips. Graphics cards achieve higher benchmarks and lower price points every month. 2GB, or even 4GB, of RAM is becoming commonplace. Everything is getting faster and costing less at the same time and this will probably remain true forever. Microsoft and most Linux distributions view these same hardware improvements differently, though.

When Vista came out, one of the big complaints about it was that is was so resource demanding. Although perhaps not quite as extreme as with Vista, it seems quite reasonable to expect that with each new release of Windows, you will need a slightly, or perhaps not so slightly, better, faster computer than before.

This is not at all true of Linux. Phoronix recently published benchmarks comparing Ubuntu 7.10 (the current version) to Ubuntu 8.04 Beta (the beta of the version that will be out very soon.) What did they find? Ubuntu 8.04 is only very slightly slower than Ubuntu 7.10. Even more impressive, when the did comparisons with even earlier versions, 7.10 had actually improved on former versions.

What all this means is that Windows is becoming more and more resource reliant while Linux essentially maintains its requirements. Microsoft is already seeing the effects of their sloppiness in bad reviews of Vista and having to extend XP’s life, but unless they change soon, they will see it even more, and pay for it too.

In the future, it seems likely that a computer with Windows will cost far more than a computer with Linux, not because of the price of the operating system (since hardware manufacturers are constantly pretending Windows is free, when in reality it is not) but because the hardware required to run Windows is so much more expensive than the hardware required to run Linux.

Returning to the present, Linux is already well on its way to removing all the road blocks to switching. Even when there are no road blocks left, though, Linux will still not win mainstream adoption, until it gets a simple reason to use it: it’s cheaper.

Of course, Linux is cheaper right now. It’s free, while Windows costs hundreds of dollars. Well, as you probably know, most places like Dell get it for much less than that. I don’t think anyone knows for sure (and it almost undoubtedly varies for deal to deal), but a safe guess would be that places like Dell get Windows for around $40 (just a guess). In addition, we repeatedly see cases of an identical Windows and Linux machine costing exactly the same price. It is not fair to give Windows an advantage like that, but it seems to be the reality. No longer will it even matter, though, when a Linux machine costs so much less than a Windows machine, just because of the hardware.

Just by continuing to use minimal resources, Linux is constantly becoming a more and more attractive option, and eventually this may be the single most important factor in winning Linux’s mainstream adoption.

Recently Best Buy posted a price for the upcoming Windows XP Eee PC on their website. The price is $399, the same as an Eee PC with Linux and the same hardware. What is wrong with that? Lots! You can read my full post on this subject for more details, but the very short summary of what is wrong with pricing the Windows Eee PC the same as the Linux one is that either Asus or Microsoft is absorbing the cost of Windows. If Asus is absorbing the cost, it is not their business to determine the pricing of other operating systems or if Microsoft is pressuring Asus to absorb the cost, that is almost certainly anti-competitive,  and if Microsoft is absorbing the cost itself, that too is almost certainly anti-competitive. (Not that I am a lawyer.)

So basically, if the otherwise identical Windows version and Linux version cost the same, I will be furious and you will almost certainly be seeing more about it here in the future.

You may be wondering why I am not already furious. After all, hasn’t Best Buy confirmed the price is the same? (Best Buy’s page for the Windows version, Linux version) The reason is that I do not trust the numbers on the Best Buy site for two reasons.

First, the picture on the Windows page shows the Linux interface and the Linux page shows a blue screen of death. (Really just a blue screen without the death part.) Second, and much less significantly, the Linux version has an offer for a deal to save $10 on Norton 360, a security product for Windows.

For these two reasons, it is possibly nothing more than a mistake made by Best Buy. So until the pricing is confirmed, I will withold judgment.