Blogternals

Everybody knows Microsoft has a big target on its chest saying take me down, but rest assured it will not fall over dead tomorrow … or will it. Most people today are familiar with terms such as Windows XP, Windows 98, MAC, Apple, and even Windows 3.1. However most people are not familiar with terms such as window manager, gnome, KDE, Tiger OS X, but this is about to change and in a big way. Acer (the third largest computer manufacturer in the world, by sales) behind Dell Inc and HP has announced that it will begin to push Linux on its laptops, Gianpiero morbello, vice president of marketing and brands at Acer stated; “We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft. Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market.”

The shift in power is inevitable, Microsoft for too long has been pushing out versions of Windows that seem to only take up more hard drive space, look more cluttered, get less friendly, and achieve no more productive functionality than its predecessor. I mean let’s think about it why on Gods green earth does an operating system need 20Gs more hard drive space than the version before it. I could under stand this if we gained virtual net meeting capabilities, and speech recognition capabilities for all programs installed, but 20Gs so we can get two more colors for the solitaire deck is absurd. I know, I know Microsoft gave us speech recognition for “Microsoft Office”, but why not non-Microsoft products, is it that hard to essentially “change keyboards” come on we all know the best way to integrate speech recognition into existing programs (think backward compatible) so it is portable is to translate the signal into keystrokes. Ooops I just forgot Microsoft is king of make Non backward compatible software, remind my again we can I not run Wolfenstein 3d on my new Vista PC.

Sorry I got off on a rant there. Anyway the open source community is not without its problems, but I think their model is more in line with what people expect from software. The only problem that stands in Linux (Debian, Red Hat, you pick a flavor), and Apple’s way is simply familiarity with its products and I think the big price difference may begin to win over the increasing lower and middle classes. The price of gas is affecting every thing and I can promise you, you want be getting a raise when gas raises to over $4.00 a gallon but you can cut the price of the of your entertainment and business needs. This is were Linux will gain its ground, and Acer is just giving the medium by which to deliver the answer to Microsoft, and possibly launch themselves into number one status in computer manufacturing.