The VAR Guy

At first glance, the PC market is pretty darn mature. But walk into a Target retail store in New York or visit a computer retailer in Melbourne, Australia and you’ll see the start of a new revolution — driven by Asustek Computer (a.k.a. Asus).

Roughly 30 percent of Netbook sales in Melbourne — Australia’s second-largest city — involve customers requesting Linux rather than Windows, according to Geek Central, a fast-growing solution provider that serves the region. Here’s the scoop and its global implications, from The VAR Guy.

It’s one small step for Dell and consumer Linux — and one giant leap for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux efforts. Specifically, Dell is spending advertising dollars to promote PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled. The move has significant implications for the business world as well. Here’s why.

Low-cost mini notebooks like the Asus Eee PC continue to win rave reviews. And now Fortune is praising a Hewlett-Packard mini-laptop that “packs a lot of punch.” You can almost see Steve Jobs writing on an white board somewhere at Apple, weighing the pros and cons of launching his own tiny notebook offensive.

The VAR Guy was guilty of hyping Windows-based Ultra-Portables from startups like OQO a year ago, but he has drastically changed his thinking about the Ultra-Portable computer market. He thinks current market dynamics greatly favor Linux over Windows in the Ultra-Portable industry. Here’s why.