Low-cost laptops make PC makers mull margins, Jan 31, 2008

An unfamiliar brand name sits atop the Amazon.com bestseller list for notebook computers. This hourly-updated popularity contest has recently been dominated by Taiwan’s Asus rather than Silicon Valley’s Apple. Five of the top 10 at one point this week were Asus machines, compared with three Apples, one Toshiba and one Hewlett-Packard unit.

The entry cost for personal computing is tumbling thanks to lower component prices, the greater popularity of low-cost (and often Linux-based) operating systems and free open software.

Ubunto’s [sic] “Gutsy Gibbon” release may not be for everyone. But as I discovered, you do not need a PhD or an IT department to install it. Ubuntu 7.10 is worth considering if you are looking to minimise costs or join the open source movement.

Oracle is studying whether to launch its own version of the Linux operating system and has looked at buying one of the two companies currently dominating the Linux world, according to Larry Ellison, the software company’s chief executive officer.

Microsoft will on Tuesday announce it is opening up access to its Office file formats to competitors, as part of a move to ensure the software giant does not lose lucrative government markets for its Office software.

Donald Becker, one of the early contributors to the Linux kernel while an engineer at Nasa, says the internet has made it possible to find and work with other technical specialists in ways that weren’t possible. “There are not that many people who are interested” in any given technical subject, he says. “But the internet makes it possible to find them in all corners of the world.”

The state of Massachusetts has laid out a plan to switch all its workers away from Microsoft's Word, Excel and other desktop software applications, delivering what would be one of the most significant setbacks to the software company's battle against open-source software in its home market.

To find growth in the highly fragmented software industry, it pays to look small.

In 2000, Mr Palmisano mapped out a strategy calling on IBM to share technologies more effectively across its hardware line-up, to embrace Linux and other products of the open source software community, and to start building tools to help companies manage increasingly complex IT systems. The project was known as Mach One.

Does open source software represent a viable alternative to the competing forms of proprietary software, which is licensed only for a fee?

Nearly one-third of Oracle's software sold in China now runs on the Linux operating system, compared with less than five per cent a year ago, a trend the company calls "an unstoppable wave".

Derek Williams, Singapore-based executive vice-president for Oracle, said the "open source" operating system's low costs, government backing and improved reliability had made it increasingly attractive.

Dell, the largest personal computer maker, has distanced itself from moves by an Italian company to sell Dell machines loaded with Linux, the open source operating system.

In his new book Hackers and Painters, Paul Graham, the computer programmer (and painter), recalls his days at high school when he and his friend Rich made a map of the school lunch tables according to the popularity of those who sat at them. He and the nerdish Rich were consigned to a D table, "as low as you could get without looking physically different".

In the grown-up world of hackers - the programmers who built open-source software such as Linux in their spare time - the D table is reserved for Darl McBride, chief executive of SCO Group. SCO is hated by open-source devotees because it has launched legal action against International Business Machines and companies such as DaimlerChrysler, claiming that their use of Linux breaches its copyrights.

Brazil's left-leaning federal government is set to adopt free software on a big scale in an effort to save taxpayers billions of dollars and increase independence from multinational suppliers such as Microsoft.

At least five ministries in the federal government are to switch their internet web servers and most desktop computers to free software, such as Linux, the alternative operating system to Microsoft Windows. Already nearly a dozen government agencies, including the defence ministry, have used free software on a trial basis.