[ale] Linux making good headways, in my family at least

[Daniel Howard]

Two great stories to relate: First, my daughter's Apple iBook finally 
died, and we said no way to another $1200 laptop; the first required 
many repairs going to and from school, but was required by Atlanta 
Girl's School, and we got it for $1100 on volume discount.  So we 
started looking at Netbooks for her.  Settled on the ASUS eeePC 901 with 
Linux (Xandros, IIRC) with 20 GB solid state HD and 2 GB of RAM, 8.9" 
screen.  Compared to the other options we considered (Dell Mini 9" w/ 
Ubuntu, MSI Wind--only conventional HD, not solid state, Acer, etc.) the 
biggest selling point for me and my wife was was the physical assembly 
of the eeePC: the eeePC 900 we looked at at Best Buy was really solid 
(2nd or 3rd generation I think for them), while reviews online of the 
others all had concerns for the loose assembly, flimsy plastic, etc. 
This is for a teenager to take to and from school every day.  Best part 
was that Best Buys had a WinXP version next to the Xandros Linux 
version, (she played with the 900 Linux eeePC they had at BestBuy for 
$279 and liked the OS just fine) but a guy also shopping for one was 
trying to tell my daughter how the Windows version had more software. 
We pulled up the Add Software web site for the Linux eeePC and it showed 
3600 software titles available for download for free, including a full 
office suite, etc. and my daughter asked the guy how many packages he 
could get for free for the Windows version.  Then she told him she 
didn't want the windows version because of viruses, and he said you have 
to put antivirus software on it, and she said, "But that costs money, 
and you don't have to do that on the Linux one."  Right proud, I was.

(I should add that the enabler for her to go for a Linux based box was 
that the new iTouch from Apple comes with WiFi built in so you can 
download songs from iTunes directly without requiring a Mac or Windows 
PC to have the iTunes client.  I bet Apple didn't realize they're 
cutting themselves out of iMac sales in the process...)

I should also add showing my daughter reviews of the XP eeePC where 
folks in Japan discovered it came from the factory infected with a worm, 
sneaky me:

http://www.switched.com/2008/10/15/asus-pre-installs-computers-with-maiicious-worm-issues-recall/

Then, my dad who's visiting us for Thanksgiving, and he currently has a 
dual boot XP/Ubuntu 8.04 computer I set up for him that he uses at home. 
Note that he only uses the XP boot when he wants to use MS Money for his 
finances, and only after he disconnects the Internet cable.  He told me 
he's thinking of a laptop, and can he get one with Ubuntu already on it? 
  I show him my wife's Dell Inspiron that came with Gutsy over a year 
ago and now has Intrepid Ibex on it, and she tells him how problem-free 
it has been.  So we go to the Dell site, and yes, they're still making 
it harder to get to the website for a conventional Laptop with Ubuntu on 
it compared to Vista (but easy to select the Ubuntu version of the Dell 
Mini netbook), but we finally find the Ubuntu PC page, there's an 
Inspiron 15" laptop with it, and it's $540.  We then look at the Vista 
laptops, and the cheapest one is $480.  WTF?  Turns out the Ubuntu one 
starts at the dual core Pentium CPU, while the cheapest Vista one has a 
Celeron CPU, plus it has 1 GB RAM, while the minimum you can configure 
the Ubuntu one for is 2GB of RAM.  So, Dell is still caving in to make 
sure the cheapest conventional laptop you can get is the Vista one by 
forcing higher options on the Ubuntu one.  But just to check, we 
configured the Dell Vista PC to dual core Pentium, and added RAM to make 
it equal 2B like the Ubuntu laptop, and then voila: the Vista laptop was 
now $580 compared to the Ubuntu with the same hardware configuration 
being $540.  My dad wants the Ubuntu one hands down, no interest 
whatsoever in the Vista one.  Now that's progress!

Happy day-after-Thanksgiving to all!  Daniel


-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation