Well, I've done a number of tests around this and I have to say that I get very mixed result and it seems for a number of reasons. So what I'm going to do here is explain case-by-case what happened.
Case 1 - Business users:
In one of the companies that I work for we trialled a pair of EeePC 901s running linux as a cheap, long battery-life portable solution for getting people to work on trains without needing to carry a laptop and it's assorted clutter around. This worked reasonably well, but the thing that stopped it being a success was that the Linux OS stopped the users (non-techy, account managers) from feeling comfortable with the EeePCs ... they didn't treat them as laptops, but more like mobile phones or PDAs - as though they were inherently less capable than an equivalent Windows based laptop. So we installed Windows XP on both and immediately found that the users opinions changed and we started having problems getting them back.
Case 2 - Domestic user:
My wife changed jobs recently and needed a computer to take with her so she could make use of the time she would be spending on the train. So I installed Windows 7 RC on my EeePC 900 as my wife had expressed some negative opinions about using Linux (and we've heard a lot about Windows 7 being less demanding than Vista) and the end result was essentially useable. Boot times looked good (45 seconds for a login prompt, +50 seconds to get to desktop and able to start an application) but the problems came with the time taken to get out of sleep mode (several minutes) or to shut down (over 5 minutes). The following evening I replaced Windows 7 with Ubuntu 9.04 and the EeePC 900 went from dead-weight to useful (and incidentally, my wife has been getting on just fine with Linux).
What do I make of this? People like netbooks because despite lower performance and smaller size they offer increased portability and a superior user experience to a 3G phone or MID. The OS is still a key component to this user experience and the simple familiarity of Windows can make up for the other issues and present a viable proposition .... except Ubuntu 9.04 has rasied the bar on this, with much improved performance vs. Windows and a much slicker user experience. The gap between the two propositions (Windows and Linux) is diminishing and I hope to see this close further with some of the up-coming Linux releases - Fedora 11 and Jolicloud being two that I'm particularly interested in.
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I suspect that the account managers was what i like to call windows power users. They have been using windows, and MS office, long enough to pick up shortcuts and habits, and maybe the odd tweak or utility app, that they cant make use of in linux desktops. They may not be interested in tech, but they like thing to be in the same place each time, each day...
ReplyDeleteYep - that's exactly it ... and because of that they're quite hard to move to new technologies, simply because they resist anything that's different!
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