“The old Linux plus Open. Office idea is just an equivalent to Windows in the platform sense but with different piece parts.”

I agree but that is what 99% of users want. The real issue is making sure that the end user is aware that this is a good starting point…and that there is a lot more that they can access and they need to understand how to get to it.This is the marketing issue.

I think that most people would regard Intel’s Atom as a decent chip!

Peter

I both agree and disagree. The Netbook does open the door to Linux, and at the same time it doesn’t. Judging from a few recent (local) examples (a) sales staff don’t know how to deal with an enquiry for Linux on a netbook even if they are selling it on that shelf over there; (b) many of the demographic for netbooks are “afraid” of Linux.

The latter is up to the Linux community to address. It is great to create open source software and Linux runs well BUT for people who are bred on Windows with all its imperfections and vicissitudes they know what they are doing on Windows and what is available to them to use. It is heavily marketed.

Linux presumes too much. Ubuntu is a step on the right direction, but it still lacks in vital areas such as support (I don’t mean mainstream packages like Open Office). The Linux community as a whole has a job of marketing to do before it opens up the opportunity offered by the netbook.

I’ll be honest, I bought one for my someone a few weeks/months back. It came with XP and lots of trial licences. The best thing that Microsoft did for Linux was the trial licence. On discovering that there was still $xxx to pay over and above the cost of the netbook, the trial copies went out the window and were rapidy replaced by OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Mozilla and the rest.

There is another point. I looked at several brands when buying and one thing that was clear was that build quality is often on the low-side of poor, keyboards in particular are not brilliant for anything other than trivial use and for much day-to-day use screens are too small. There is a real risk for Linux by association. If Linux were to become de facto on netbooks it risks being seen as the downmarket option. That is not where it wants to be.

I am not sure about the market outline that you posit for the netbook. It is a bit of all that you say, but primarily it is a cheap, ubiquitous alternative to the laptop. It is selling well into the young, mobile-aware sector and netbooks are getting so cheap that you can walk into most mobile phone stores here and pick up a netbook in return for a two-year mobile line-rental contract.

Linux has an opportunity whether it will make it really remains to be seen