PC's and the Peak Oil Theory...

[smoker]

i read this article today and thought it quite interesting,

PC's have a similar predicament. It has been evident for years now that the combination of smaller/faster/cheaper hardware + free operating systems/internet browser/office suite packages would reach a price point where a complete working system is cheaper than a single Microsoft OS license.
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-06-08-009-35-NW-HW-0002

anyone have any opinions, is this likely to happen?

[celsofaf]

Already happens. With Vista's Ultimate price I can assemble a good computer for office work.

[johnny4north]

its very true we are at the top of oil production. it will get more expensive/difficult to extract and produce oil.:( everything(yes computers to:cry:) will cost more to make and ship. already feeling the shipping cost, here in Alaska. thats why i m upgrade/downsizing my pcs and buying lcd's(moving to linux, there is hope:D). im now looking at alt. energy sources. more info peak oil - http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=peak+oil
alt energy - http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=alternate+and+renewable+energy

hint - Joe's fuel cell looks promising :)

[smoker]

its very true we are at the top of oil production. it will get more expensive/difficult to extract and produce oil.:( everything(yes computers to:cry:) will cost more to make and ship. already feeling the shipping cost, here in Alaska. thats why i m upgrade/downsizing my pcs and buying lcd's(moving to linux, there is hope:D). im now looking at alt. energy sources. more info peak oil - http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=peak+oil
alt energy - http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=alternate+and+renewable+energy

hint - Joe's fuel cell looks promising :)

thanks for the links, i think the main comparison with the Peak Oil thing though, was that as hardware becomes cheaper and better, the additional price of an operating system like windows becomes unfeasible...

When computers used to cost $3000, Microsoft and its friends made a lot of money, and everyone wanted in on the action. The market was big enough to support all of them, and a bit left over too.

When computers started to cost $2000, Microsoft continued to make a lot of money, but growth was no longer as easy as it used to be. Growth came at the expense of cannibalising the market, and a lot of the MS-dependent supporting companies who rushed to join the bandwagon found themselves competing with Microsoft. They lost.

When computers started to cost $1000, Microsoft started feeling the pain .. the share price eroded, and things started to look a little desperate longer term. At this point we see a lot of strange behavior in the supporting industries - DRM gets invented to fullfill a non-existent need, Software Patents become a reality, Spam and malware explodes in popularity, keeping alive a thriving support market. SCO sues for ownership of linux, and gets bankrolled by many an interested party.

Computers are now around the $500 mark, and Microsoft is becoming increasingly irrational. They have lost the ability to control the hardware vendors (eg. Dell and friends openly thumbing their nose at MS and selling Ubuntu and XP). Profits still appear in obscene numbers, but thats only because there is still 'oil in the pipeline' from their glory days. More money is invested in legal shenanigans and political appeasement than is invested in new technology development.

an easy example off the top of my head would be the new asus £100 ($190) laptop which will shortly be for sale. to buy the laptop = £100, to buy windows vista home basic retail = £180, + Student Office = £120 + more if antivirus and such is required! therefore, the os & software becomes three times the price of the hardware! vista and office priced at maplin: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=software&source=15&SD=Y

i'm sure many similar comparisons can be made with a bit of research.

[dogeatery]

Smoker, I think about this topic quite often and I don't think that it's as simple as pricing of software/hardware. MS still has advertising muscle and a psychological stranglehold on consumers, leading to a 'computing standard' which developers feel a need to adhere to. As long as Microsoft can get away with calling Linux 'untested technology' (as they claimed when Massachusetts state government pondered a switch) then people will continue ponying up for their OS. This is also in part to the simple fact that when you purchase a computer from a manufacturer like HP or (until recently) Dell, Windows appeared to be 'included' in the price (which is true, but the other way around, if that makes sense???). All of this solidifies the image of Windows in the public psyche as a necessity. Linux needs better PR to mainstream PC users, many of whom have never heard of it or believe it's all run from a command prompt. Until I made the switch, I'd never seen a computer running Linux software , let alone met someone who was familiar with it or could describe it to me. I would consider myself an average Windows user at the time.

I think, as many people see that free online apps can do what their installed apps do (word processing, image manipulation, blog posting, calendars, email {much of this thanks to google]) they will start to see their OS in a different light, as over-encumbered. But even then they may not know that OSS even exists.