Attack of the GNU/Linux Ultraportables, Part 2

On Open Enterprise blog.

Ace Acer

Computer manufacturers are beginning to see the light:

Acer sees two killer apps with Linux on computers: operation and cost. Its flavour of Linux will boot in 15 seconds compared to minutes for Windows, and the open source operating system can extend battery life from five to seven hours.

At the same time, the company expects that the price differential of Linux will make the offering attractive for consumers at the low-cost end of the market.

"Microsoft's operating system typically costs around £50 per unit," said David Drummond, UK managing director at Acer. "On a £1,000 PC that is peanuts, but on a £200 computer it is a major issue."

And Acer won't be the last, either: first a drip, then a gush, then a raging torrent....

The Beginning of the End for the OEM Tax?

I wrote recently about the call to unbundle operating systems from PCs, but without much hope it would ever be heeded. Maybe I was too pessimistic:

The ruling by a French court according to which the manufacturer Acer has to refund the purchase price of the preinstalled software that the notebook buyer in question does not use to the notebook buyer, has been welcomed by proponents of the sale of PCs and notebooks without preinstalled software. In the case that has now been made public the court ruled (PDF file) that Acer, over and above the sum of 30 euros it had previously agreed to pay, was obliged to refund the plaintiff the complete sum he had paid for the software he had subsequently returned.

The total of 311.85 euros of the overall purchase price of the notebook of 599 euros that Acer was forced to pay back was made up of 135.20 euros for Windows XP Home, 60 euros for Microsoft Works, 40.99 euros for PowerDVD, 38.66 euros for Norton Antivirus and 37 euros for NTI CD Maker. On top of that Acer had to pay a further 650 euros in, among other things, legal costs.

Acer: A Case-Study in How Not to Succeed

The Acer Aspire 5710Z has gone on sale in Singapore pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows. Ubuntu is currently one of the world's most popular and easiest-to-use Linux distributions.

But a spokesperson for Acer told ZDNet.co.uk on Tuesday that the company — one of the world's top laptop manufacturers — had "no plans" to sell any Linux-based systems in the UK. "[Acer models] with Ubuntu pre-loaded are available at the factory level. However, there is no demand for it in the UK. Therefore, those configurations are not an option [for UK customers] at the moment," said the spokesperson.

Well, let's just compare that with Dell, shall we.

Dell creates a site where people can tell the company what it wants. People ask for Dell systems running Ubuntu, people get systems running Ubuntu in the US. People then ask for Dell systems running Ubuntu outside the US, and it looks like that may well happen.

Acer, by contrast, does not ask anyone what they want. As a result, it has no clue what anyone wants, but being a superior company that knows much better than mere customers what they want, it knows full well that people outside the US don't want Ubuntu running on their laptops - even though that is what they are telling Dell.

Guess which company I shall be buying from when Dell starts selling GNU/Linux systems in the UK? Guess which company I shall be recommending to people when they ask for advice about buying PCs in the UK? Guess which company can go and get knotted?

Update: Maybe there's hope.