[sf-lug] $199 Linspire Desktop at Sears

[Sameer Verma]

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Blake Haggerty (Blake.Haggerty at Sapphire.com):
>
>   
>> I am just wondering if anyone was aware of Sears selling Linux Desktop
>> Machines? Anyone ever used Linspire?
>>     
>
> Few people in the conventional Linux community use Linspire, because
> it's marketed at an entirely different market, and only rarely is 
> even available in slightly crippled editions (e.g., for download)
> without paying for either a shrinkwrapped retail copy or an OEM preload.
>
> Last time I got ahold of a copy, which I believe was Linspire 5.0 
> (complete with Baby Boomer-focussed advertising campaign calling it 
> "Linspire Five-O").  It was a rather underfeatured KDE-based desktop
> distribution built on Debian, bundled with a number of "value-add"
> proprietary desktop utilities specific to Linspire.
>
> It seems as if their business model relies mostly on a "razor blade and
> razor" sales model:  They want you to backfill the rather thin supply
> of applications by buying them from the online "Click'n'Run Warehouse"
> e-commerce site.
>
> (I vaguely recall that almost all such software is also available
> without expense from, e.g., the Debian mirrors.)
>
>   
Reminds me of what my professor used to say in graduate school. He would
say, and I quote approximately, "If you take away the fence from around
a sheep pen the sheep will still stay in formation". Debian mirrors
aren't going to help the folks who shop at Sears (or Walmart).

> Going by what I remember of it, I think Xandros Desktop OS was, at least
> at that time, by far a more impressive entry in the category of
> "proprietary supersets of Debian aimed at novice desktop computer users
> and trying to look and act as much like MS-Windows as possible".
>
>
>   
I've seen their handiwork on the Asus Eee PC. They have worked hard to
make it look like Windows XP. Maybe I'll bring one to the meeting this
Sunday.

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/