[ltp] Re: Lenovo to shun Linux

[Andreas Gredler]

On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 10:48:28PM -0400, Bill Hudacek wrote:
> Sorry - can't resist - this makes it 950 Million Windows Users (per 
> Gartner group 2005), and 1 linux user :-)
> 
> Even if it were 10,000 linux users - all of whom wrote email - that's a 
> ratio of 95,000 to 1.

And this 950 Million are all buying thinkpads? The point is, that IBM
thinkpads were also famous for their linux compatibility. It's doesn't
really matter who made it, chip vendors, IBM or anybody else. The
important thing: If you bought an thinkpad you had best chances that
nearly everything worked out of the box.
A lot of people bought thinkpads instead of powerbooks because of that
fact.

Maybe the number of notebooks running linux is small, compared to the
number of notebooks running Win. But what else do you expect if a
company doesn't dare to preinstall any other OS? It's easy to say that
nobody asks me about fridges, if I don't sell any.

Every customer was afraid to buy Lenovo when they took over the
thinkpads. Now they are willing to buy them, again, as it was made
clear that Lenovo manufactured them before and that the high standard
will stay. And now the next shocking news: Lenovo doesn't care about
Linux!
It makes a difference if a company does not provide linux support or if
it explicitly says, that they do not care about it. IBM was always a
leader in innovation, also with the thinkpads. After the statement about
the MS contract I see no more innovation. I see a company like many
others, no difference.

A couple of people here wrote that they don't care about linux support.
Well, like it or not, but some companies don't buy hardware without
support. These are usually the companies that buy more than one thinkpad
;-)

I think I understood your point of view. But you should never
underestimate the purchase power of Linux users and companies using
Linux. Think about Linksys and the wrt54 ;-)

greets Jimmy

-- 
                 Andreas "Jimmy" Gredler 
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