I don’t get it. Why in the world are people reporting that seven out of ten Asus PCs is news. Hello. Wake up call. Nine in ten PCs, counting Macs as PCs, are already running Windows. The news, the real news, is that three out of ten Asus PCs are being sold with Linux.
To be exact, according to Asustek, “The company shipped 2.5 million notebooks in the first half of this year, 1.7 million units in the third quarter and is expecting to ship 1.9 million units in the fourth quarter, bringing the company’s annual notebook shipments in 2008 to at least six million units.” Breaking that down by operating system, “The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows XP and Linux stands at 7:3.”
So, by year’s end, there will be 2.4-million more desktop Linux uses. Maybe my colleague Preston Gralla is right. Perhaps Microsoft is getting worried about Linux on the desktop and that’s one reason why they’re cutting the fat out of Vista Second Edition, aka Windows 7, to make it more competitive with Linux. Certainly, Microsoft is already doing its best to flim-flam people with overly-rosy early reviews of Windows 7.