Worth a try
Matthew Woolley, an independent PC retailer, has sent HEXUS.channel an open letter to Microsoft, imploring it to give him a low cost OS alternative to allow him to compete in the booming sub-notebook sector. Here it is, verbatim:
An open letter to Microsoft from a computer retailer.
Your grip on the market, at the domestic level, is starting to slip.
We sell laptops and have seen more and more Linux systems go out the door. I would love to sell Windows based systems but I cannot buy systems with XP Home installed. I can only buy expensive XP Pro or low cost Vista, which does not run very well on a low spec laptop.
Or I can supply Linux. We sell lots of second hand laptops with XP Home installed, but you have already been paid for these. It's the only way to compete with the low cost sub notebooks.
Please don't force us to shift more Linux, we and our customers prefer Windows. Please let us make you more money and relent on your dropping of XP Home. Yes we know that we get downgrade rights with Business and Ultimate, so that's OK for business then.
We need a low cost alternative to compete. Compete we will. With or without you. The choice is yours.
Remember. What the kids are using now is what business will be using in 10 years.
Matthew Woolley
A domestic computer shop.
This seems like a pretty reasonable request to us. If Asus, MSI, etc are allowed to pre-install XP Home on their sub-notebooks it doesn't seem fair that indies are denied it. The most significant volume increase in the PC market, in the West at least, appears to be in the sub-notebook sector and smaller PC builders should at least be given the opportunity to compete with the big vendors' Windows offerings.
Having said that, Microsoft announced last month that Windows would still be available to the channel through distribution, so we'd like to know if that includes XP Home.
Do you agree with him on this? Would smaller PC builders like to be competing in the sub-notebook market? Would consumers buy them if they did? Let us know your thoughts in the HEXUS.community.
