Conrad Knauer wrote:
> on the cover mention pretty much everything *EXCEPT* for what OS it
> runs. On page four, except for the prominently featured MacBook, NONE
I don't think most people care what OS they run. AFAICT, as long as you
show people enough info so that they can translate that Firefox =
Firefox, Word = OpenOffice, etc, they're just as happy in Linux land as
Windows land (except that new hardware causes grief, like the Intel
GM965 video -- supported in Xorg 7.3 [Ubuntu 7.10], but black screen w/
Xorg 7.2 [Ubuntu 7.04...]).
Ubuntu, once they help get Xorg a little more modernized and ruggedized,
will be the reason mere mortals use Linux on the desktop. Slackware,
much as I love (and continue to use it!) is more for people who're
interested in learning about things like runlevels -- most people just
care about things like Google :)
> of the laptops mention what OS they run. On the very bottom of the
> page is a cheapo Compaq desktop system with 512 MB RAM running Vista
> Home Basic and on page six there's a 4 GB thumb drive that mentions
> Vista's "ReadyBoost" but unless I missed something, those are the only
> mentions of Vista in the entire flier. I note however on the top of
> page seven is a prominent pic that shows they're still selling retail
> copies of XP Home (with free bonus thumb drives).
512mb of RAM is so ridiculous. Cereal boxes come with 512mb of RAM in
them because no one buys in such a small amount nowadays! Seriously,
when you can get 4gb of RAM for $150 or less (depending on the NCIX.com
sale), there's no reason not to :D Well, unless you have a 32-bit
Linux, and you can only use 3.5gb of your 4gb!
Readyboost nets you a 5% performance upgrade if you have 512mb of RAM,
and a 0% upgrade if you have enough RAM to cache -- a flash drive is ms,
vs. the ns of real RAM! Flash drive throughput is no more than 10Mb/s,
vs. the 50Mb/s + of a SATA drive. It's such a ridiculous technology.
It might work well if you want to not spin a spindle, using only a
little power to change some flash around, but I sure as heck wouldn't
want that to be a thing poking out the side of a laptop I shove into and
out of a backpack all the time.
Did anyone else notice how the "Readyboost" boosters quietly stopped
talking about it once a few performance benchmarks were posted by people
who understood the performance difference of flash vs. RAM vs. spindles?
> Not good for Vista, ne?
I've never met a person yet who likes it although a lot seem to "get it"
with new Windows laptops and are generally unhappy. You come to an
understanding with Vista (a setup that works) through pain and time.
People buying computers through me specifically request no Vista 100% of
the time so far.
Long development cycles are a pretty good way to fail at software.
Apple put out almost every OS X major release between XP and Vista, and
10.5 is due out in a few weeks (complete with things like super-easy
backups! Yay! Ubuntu should make it a priority to put in a
time-machine like feature in the distro...).
Received on Thu Oct 11 00:59:51 2007
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Oct 11 2007 - 01:41:27 CST