I wish all politicians would take a cue from Algore and Hinton. Every time they "do something", something else gets screwed up.

Couldn't agree more. I wouldn't want to have any Apple stock in my portfolio the day he dies.

Not yet. But I think we agree - Linux needs to be marketed such that it becomes "cool" enough that you gotta have it, and existing crap go hang. Look at the Wii - less expensive than Xbox 360 or PS3, and incompatible with everything that went before it - but they can't keep 'em on the shelf. They aren't popular because they're expensive and exclusive; they're popular because they're marketed as fun. Well, let's face it - they are fun!

Linux needs to be productized into something that can be marketed with an irresistible "fun factor". If it's too cool to resist, who cares if Lexmark sucks?

But I've caught your point - a small business person has no chance to create than kind of marketing for used computers running Linux. That will take a major player to pull off. I thought netbooks might be the market, but Microsoft has pounded the major retailers into submission. Again. No idea when or if it will happen - unless Microsoft can be neutered, and forced to compete on merit.

...and yet, Macs cost remarkably more than Windows computers at the low end, and don't work with quite a large swath of Windows-compatible hardware. Yet they doubled their market share in the past two years, which isn't bad against a multiply-convicted and proudly ruthless monopolist.

So I don't think Linux needs perfect compatibility with every hardware option available to succeed (assuming success == market share, which is debatable).

Nope, what's missing is an insanely great marketing team led by a true visionary. Y'know, like Apple's Steve Jobs and the "I'm a Mac" commercials. More features are nice; low price is nice; compatibility with Walmart crap is nice. But marketing is irreplaceable.

Or look at the server market, where Linux sells well... by IBM, HP and Dell on their hardware. It sells because it's marketed well, and it's marketed well because IBM, HP and Dell make lots of money from it.

Or cell phones, where Linux dominates in Asia and is an up and comer in the USA (Android and Pre get all the press, but existing phones are doing quite well). Again, the cell phone makers and carriers are making a killing, so Linux is sold to the consumer with great marketing.

Windows is heavily marketed on its own, so you could sell refurbished computers with Windows installed. At the point where a desktop Linux distribution gets the same marketing love - because the company backing it intends to make a lot of money selling it - it will gain a lot of market share.

I think it's that simple. Of course, if the market was easy to understand, we'd all be millionaires. :-)

Anyway, thanks for the insight. I appreciate that you are out there trying to sell computers, and had trouble selling Linux because of Lexmark. I understand why. Open source seems to be "winning" everywhere but the desktop, so I have hopes that the desktop will also fall (though probably last), or else become irrelevant. We'll see.

Don't use Windows much, do ya? I support about 500 users, and it happens all the time. Corporate policy is reboot, reboot again, uninstall and reinstall, and then "reimage" the machine. That they have such a written policy is telling.

One interesting case where even that did not work was a malware checker that mis-identified a critical program file as infected (it wasn't). Fixing this required going to corporate IT and having them endlessly verify the problem before inserting an exception in the scanner's exception list - all while the team couldn't use that tool.

I think you need to get out more... ;-)

That's remarkably informative (so why is your post "+4 Interesting", I wonder?), as I've never owned a Lexmark. But I can't help wondering if the problem was your business model.

When I upgraded from Windows 3.1 to 95, both my printer and scanner were unsupported. But the people who sold me the computer enthusiastically sold me upgrades on both, because "they'll really take advantage of your new OS!".

Did you try upselling a better printer with the new computer, one that really shows off Linux's remarkable printing prowess?

Just a thought. And yes, I am considering doing exactly what I suggest. That would be more than informative - it would be educational! ;-)

Well, no, I disagree very much (or maybe you're overgeneralizing too much, not really sure). I believe you're only paying attention to the last benchmark - the Python-based Richards Benchmark - where the differences in machines of the same class are negligible. The earlier benchmarks, though, are highly relevant.

For example, several of the benchmarks deal with copying files between or among filesystems, and Linux is noticably faster than Vista in every case. In the case of moving large files (ahem, video) between hard disks, Vista is twice as slow as Linux or 7 - and I've heard several non-technical users complain of exactly this problem.

The time / # clicks to install is also very revealing with respect to 7, as people complain that "Linux is too hard to install". Yet people who migrate from XP to 7 will be required to fully re-install the OS - and that process is demonstrably harder than with Linux. (And you needn't bring up drivers - remember, the driver model changed with Vista, and a lot of existing hardware will never have drivers for Vista or 7. When my daughter bought a Vista laptop, her printer was incompatible. She gave it to me, and it works great with Ubuntu 8.04.)

So in processing speed (which perhaps was the extent of your interest?), I agree with you that the difference isn't worth sneezing over. But in the benchmarks that were the bulk of the article, Vista was a disgrace, and 7 is catching up to Linux in some but not all of the categories examined.

Just my $0.02.

I couldn't grok the rest of your sentence until I figured out you meant a bug report to Sun. I naturally assumed on first read you meant a bug report to the university for sending you a required form in an undocumented, proprietary format. "Bastion of Higher Learning"? Bah! Epic newbie fail. If it's not open, it's not knowledge. (tm)

(Steps down off soapbox...)

Since the Palm Garnet emulation environment comes from the same company that makes the Pre (right?), isn't it reasonable to expect they invested the effort in the emulator to help the Pre rather than Nokia's N8x0 line? Sincere question - it looks too obvious for anyone to have missed, so maybe it's me that missed something. Won't be the first time.

I dunno - my wife and son love their Treos, and my daughter loves her Centro. I use a cheap phone along side a Nokia N800 - but I use the Palm emulator on the Nokia more than I'd like to admit.

Despite the unceasing prophets of doom, Palm has leveraged their ancient Garnet operating system for more years than any sane person would have expected.

Now that they have what looks like a very nice, modern, web-oriented OS, are you sure you want to bet against them?

I'm certainly disappointed as well. I want an unlocked phone that accepts my SIM card. I have no intention of switching carriers just to use a particular phone, even though my contract with AT&T is long expired.

Um, copy and paste?

Yes, but only those citizens that express an opinion - which in the USA is a small minority. So my voice has disproportionate weight, which I intend to use to advocate freedom at every turn.

I like to think that, too. Of course, some vulnerabilities aren't that obvious in the source code, and some aren't visible in the source at all.

Not really, I think, because the day Microsoft stops working on (and touting) the next great version of Windows is the day the world switches to alternatives. Or have you not heard anything about Windows 7 yet? (ahem)

Microsoft is stuck on an expensive treadmill, and they know it. The open source development model is working very well for their competitors - Windows share dropped below 90% for the first time in modern computer history this week (thanks more to BSD-based OS/X than Linux), IE is below 60% in some markets (thanks primarily to open source Firefox), and even the Office cash cow is looking a bit pale lately in light of its competitors - and Microsoft has no clue how to embrace, extend and extinguish it.

Nothing's certain, of course, but in configuring my portfolio for the coming market rebound, I am not betting on Microsoft stock.

Nope. OSS people (free software advocates) are worried about the rights of citizens.

I paid for the data*, and I demand the right to access it without paying a mandatory tax to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, or anyone else. This demand is trivial from a technical standpoint; overcoming corporate influence in government offices is the challenge here.

* I'm obviously talking about government data intended to be shared, not F-22 source code, here. :-)