The VAR Guy loves cat fights as much as the next guy. Jennifer Aniston vs. Angelina Jolie? Classic but a bit dated. Canonical vs. Microsoft? Not quite as sexy, but certainly timely and just as much fun. The latest spat involves Canonical dismissing Microsoft’s claims in the netbook market. But the feud ignores the bigger netbook problem.
The clawing started when Microsoft blogger Brandon LeBlanc declared victory in the netbook market, noting third-party research that said Windows has 96 percent market share in the netbook industry. Meow.
Canonical wasn’t going to sit on its paws. The Ubuntu proponent fired back with a blog (written by Chris Kenyon) titled Microsoft, FUD and the netbook market. For those who are new to the IT industry, FUD is a classic term that stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. In other words, Canonical thinks Microsoft is spreading misinformation in the netbook market in order to ensure victory for Windows.
The Bigger Story
Frankly, The VAR Guy thinks the netbook market has a larger problem than the Windows vs. Linux debate. Regardless of which operating system you choose, some netbooks come with cheap keyboards, lousy batteries and other money saving items that deliver less-than-stellar user experiences.
No doubt, the forthcoming Ubuntu 9.04 and Windows 7 launches will trigger the next battle in the netbook war. Let’s hope hardware improvements keep pace with operating system improvements.
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Tags: | Canonical Netbooks | Microsoft Brandon LeBlanc | The VAR Guy | Ubuntu Netbooks | Windows Netbooks | WorksWithU
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Put my vote on Ubuntu and Jennifer.
Netbooks are crap. The only thing that’s healthy are the margins.
Talking about 96%:
It’s remarkable that Linux gets 4% – the Linux netbooks are hardly available.(World wide) So: with about 100% Windows availability they only manage 96%…
Now, think about it:
Where do we see figures like that? That’s right. In politics. Saddam got 100%, and Kim Il Sung got 100%. Remember Eastern Germany? 100%…
That’s what we get when there’s no free choice. A totalitarian OS regime.
I’m a OS dissident and proud of it.
That 96% figure applies to the US market, which accounts for less than 10% of the global netbook market. Worldwide Linux has more like 20%.
And what’s going to happen once Microsoft starts forcing netbook vendors to ship Windows 7 Starter Edition, with its limit of three applications running at once on a maximum of 1GiB of RAM? Do you think people will pay 50% extra on the price of the netbook to get an uncrippled copy of Windows, or do you suppose perhaps even more of them will give this Linux thing a try?
>Netbooks are crap.<
Seriously?? As a proud netbook owner, along with a couple million others, I beg to differ. That’s an inane statement. The market has spoken on that form factor – it’s for real. OS wars or not (my Dell mini9 runs OSX, if you must know), you can count on this format (and all the touch variations soon to be released), as here to stay.
Kenny: You put OSX on your mini9? You’ve got The VAR Guy’s attention. But be careful: You don’t want the Apple police’s attention…
>Netbooks are crap.That 96% figure applies to the US market,….You don’t want the Apple police’s attention…<
I honestly don’t think they bother unless someone starts shipping them for cash. One should buy a licence/DVD though….. (Does the stickertrick actually work licencewise?)