Let Them Eat Cake: $99 PC’s

Written on January 14, 2008  |  by RP Mickler  |  Leave a Comment  | 

Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show vendors were ready to show off their new PC’s boxes (literally) that start at $99.

Shuttle’s $99 and $199 KPC Linux machine (pictures shown here).

Generally speaking, these are machines with a small form factor, a dual-core processor, a 128mb video card, 1 gb RAM – a decent machine for looking at email, surfing the web, and working with productivity applciations – yet all of them are lacking one specific thing: Microsoft Windows. In fact, all of them featured some variant of Linux and promoted open applications like Google’s Writely or OpenOffice.

What’s interesting about these classes of machines is that they’re addressing an “appliance” layer of data processing that is likely to be marketed to 3rd world countries or anyone looking for a good deal on a simple box at Wal-Mart. Which begs the question: will open source be the platform for the poor?

It’s even compelling to think about it in terms of class distinction: the information-have’s will be flushed in proprietary solutions and the information have-not’s with an open platform. The impressive resume will feature certification and licenses from software vendors; the unimpressive resume will be riddled with self-exploration and discovery with hand-crafted software.

All of this sounds pleasantly counter-culture but I can’t help but think this a legitimate “Marie Antoinette” strategy on behalf of commercial OEM’s. It’s kind of like acknowledging a Kia Optima looks like a Lexus LS, but under close inspection, people who … know … about luxury vehicles realize the Kia for what it is. A Linux box may look and feel like Windows, but anybody who knows (and can afford) a premium O/S understands the benefit. Somewhere, a senior manager at Microsoft is saying, “Let them eat cake: we’ll keep serving the over-priced pork.”

So. when looking at a resume, and understanding this economic disparity between open and proprietary solutions, I might be inclined to believe those with extensive experience with SendMail, Eudora, Ubuntu, Firefox, and MySQL are like chop-shop mechanics trying to keep a taxi fleet running with junkyard parts. Yeah, they worked with what they had and maybe did a great job, but I could I even employ this guy? All I’m running my taxi fleet with are Lexus’.

R