Why Android (probably) won't work on Netbooks
HP's Mini 1000 Netbook.
We've seen several stories recently (including one by our own Maggie Reardon) about how HP and other companies are considering using an operating system based on Google's Android platform for Netbook laptops, replacing the ubiquitous Windows XP. Examining the short history of the unexpectedly popular Netbook market, it seems unlikely that Android will be able to gain a foothold.
The very first Netbooks ran Linux operating systems, usually with a custom front-end to give users easy access to a Web browser and other frequently used apps. But as well-intentioned as that plan was, it wasn't until PC makers added the already archaic Windows XP operating system that the Netbook craze took off.
It wasn't that XP was the perfect solution for small screens and low-power CPUs -- it's that consumers searching for a simple, low-cost second or travel laptop value ease of use over almost anything else. XP benefits from looking and feeling familiar to most users.
While a non-Windows OS can easily front-load the most commonly used software (FireFox, Open Office, etc.), adding new programs can be a hassle for the uninitiated, and users can be disappointed to find their existing library of Windows software won't work (to say nothing of trying to find and install an alternative). And if something like your Wi-Fi connection, for example, isn't working for some reason, even a relative luddite can muddle through several obvious possible fixes in XP -- try getting a PC novice to figure that out under an unfamiliar operating system.
To its credit, the phone version of Android (as used on the T-Mobile G1) is very user-friendly, and an Android computer OS would likely attempt to tackle many of these issues with a features such as a built-in app store.
Market research firm NPD Group Inc. estimates that Windows comes on more than 90% of new Netbooks. Microsoft said consumers returned Linux Netbooks after discovering the PCs didn't easily work with popular programs and peripherals like printers--a challenge that could also be faced by Android, which is based on the core of Linux.
In our initial tests, Windows 7 also shows great promise for Netbooks, and seems like a much more likely candidate for the future of Netbooks than anything else. Can a non-Windows OS win over Netbook users? Weigh in with your comments below.
New York native Dan Ackerman, a former radio DJ turned journalist, has written about technology and music for publications including Spin, Blender, The Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today. He hosts the weekly Digital City podcast and the New York edition of Editors' Office Hours. Dan's new album, Tales Out of Night School, is available now. E-mail Dan. 
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Low price, touchscreen, keyboard, WWAN, OMAP4 based nettablet's.
"Market research firm NPD Group Inc. estimates that Windows comes on more than 90% of new Netbooks. Microsoft said consumers returned Linux Netbooks after discovering the PCs didn't easily work with popular programs and peripherals like printers--a challenge that could also be faced by Android, which is based on the core of Linux."
Even on "nettablets," I would imagine the same problem exists, especially if the consumer's going to want to sync up his/her material between multiple machines and sets of programs.
However, as browsers other than IE become more common, web developers will do a better job of designing their web pages to work on more than just IE.
Cloud computing also shows a lot of promise in giving people the same functionality on different operating systems.
I have to agree that Linux still isn't quite ready for the mainstream, but it is getting a lot closer than it was not long ago, and my skepticism that it ever will be viable is starting to fade.
We went this way to avoid the upgrade cost of Vista and the new hardware and software cost that came with it. We avoided those costs by migration of everyone over a weekend using the 18 month old equipment. Yes we lost productivity for about a month at most, a small hit for a much larger gain. The company still has XP and Apple PCs which are planned for replacement as soon as we find suitable replacements for the smaller by the day "captive" applications.
Linux might be easy to pick up if you want to do nothing else but what comes with Linux but beyond that OS X and Windows take it out back and give it a firm beating.
Nice story about your dad, but if he knew about the conficker virus, he's not "one of the most confused users" that you portrait him to be. And this is great for him.
I agree that one of the things that prevents from people to leave the OS they know (be it Windows or OS X) is that they are familiar with their OS. You may see this as a problem, while I see it as something normal.
If the case was of Lunux/Ubunutu being a much superior OS than the others, I would understand your astonishment from people sticking to their OSes. But Windows (and I guess OS X too, which I used for a short time) is a great OS, that doesn't fall behind Linux (except for the price, of course ;) ).
I know that people have the wrong idea about Ubuntu. I have several friends that tried to use it, and some still keep using this OS (usually in dual boot).
I know it may sound silly, but most people (including myself) just want the OS that they are used to, and that all the software they know will run on it. Ububntu is free, so the logic is that people should be rushing to use it, but in reality people prefer to stay with the known, even if it costs money. And again, Windows (or OS X) are fine OSes, such a Ubuntu is.
Regarding the conficker virus, I think that the media exaggerated a bit. Sure, I'm saying this after "dooms day", but just keep your OS updated and install an anti virus software.
Actually what you're saying doesn't sound silly at all. The only point I've been trying to make is that people have misconceptions about the usability of GNU/Linux. I haven't at all been trying to say that people's resistance to change is irrational or unnatural. Really I think the free operating system that will finally gain a decent market share will be React OS(Windows clone, years away from completion) for that very reason, familiarity.
There won't be any driver issues if HP puts Linux on their machine.
They will make sure the drivers work. :-)
As for software installs, with Android (and Ubuntu with Synaptic), that's much easier than it was.
Now, there is still the "I need/want X Windows app", and that's valid.
And there's still the larger issue of "I want Windows because everyone has Windows," and that's still a major issue.
But with more and more people living on the Web and using Firefox, and Linux distro with Firefox, PDF viewer, flash viewer, some important codecs (again, if this comes from a vendor, these will (must) be preinstalled), that will be less of an issue.
I'm not going to say "Linux for everyone now!", but some of the old arguments are showing their age a bit.. :-)
desiv
Linux developers have a long history of making considerable kernel changes in even minor revisions and breaking lots of drivers. Supporting device drivers on Linux can be a nightmare at times. It took up the lion's share of our support efforts and was far from the platform on which we had the most sales.
As long as you have a working configuration and don't change it things will be fine. However, if you try and update things, which people always do, things can get uglier even faster on Linux than they do with Windows.
We're talking about Windows-esque end users. The ones who will get updates from their vendor only.
Those users won't have those issues, as long as HP/Google do this right.
Even the latest Ubuntu releases are very good at handling driver updates.
Again, I'm not saying it's "the time", I'm just saying that the arguments against are a bit dated. Linux has improved quite a bit in these areas very recently, and especially with a Vendor supported OS, I don't expect those issues.
Other issues (app compatibility), sure. But driver problems in these situations are so 2008. :-)
Until the hear about something new they want to run, and hear they have to apply some patch to get it to work. They'll have no idea what applying the patch actually means, but they'll try it because they read on the web that they need to do it to get the software to run...
Linux developers just don't limit themselves to what a certain version of Linux does like Windows developers do because Linux is in a constant state of change.
Until there are more rigid and constant interfaces within the kernel and developers start abiding by them better, Linux will remain a problem for users.
If you can get users to be happy with the applications that come on the machine, or wait for the system vendor to provide updates, then that is fine.
If HP were able to have one hardware configuration and not have it constantly changing as they switch to new components it wouldn't be too hard to keep drivers up to date and provide new software in a timely manner. Unfortunately that's not reality. Hardware changes because they are always looking for a way to provide more functionality for less cost. They end up with a series of varied hardware configurations any of which may break when the kernel is updated or patched.
HP doesn't exactly have a great track record even for updating all their drivers for printers and scanners in a timely fashion even for new Windows versions.
Now all we need is an operating system from Google to replace windows on our desktops!
However the PC is not so simple and since many companies have their own requirements and custom software that is rarely compatible with Linux. Its much harder to have a Linux OS on computers that are consumer oriented. One of my big issues with Linux is not with the OS itself but with its image. It has no image! Its Ubuntu, Red Hat, Susie, and a host of other distributions. How can any OS create a image from this kind of model. Until Linux fixes its image and gets one good version out in retail. It cannot gain familiarity from the general user.
This is easy to do, and I purchased Leopard specifically for this reason. You can have XP and Linux, I'll take Mac OS X, thank you very much.
- net-oriented "thin" OS (Android)
- fast boot & run time
- always-on operation (like a mobile phone)
- super long battery life (days?)
- simple to learn, simple to use
- touch-optimized UI
- mobile phone calls (if GSM/3G equipped)
- app store for easy free/paid app installation
- lots of location-based apps
- low/no OS maintenance (especially compared to Windows)
- quiet (no cooling fans)
- ultra low cost BOM (ARM CPU?; small SSD)
- compact form factor
You starting to see this in Europe more and more.
However in the United States the conversion rate of Microsoft users
to Linux users is going to be a slow process, mainly because most
users strive for instant productivity, they need to use the
same software packages that they have at work, until Linux cracks the
business desktop market the transition of users from Microsoft Windows
to Linux/Android is going to be a slow trickle. What Linux really needs to boost
the conversion rate, is a killer must have application that's initially is
only available on a Linux Android platform.
www.knamejumper.com/blog
To solve the problem Windows netbooks are often going to come with a special version of W7 for which OEMs won't be charged much. It will have lots of limitations (unlike the Linux alternatives) so you'll need to upgrade to a better version of W7 for which Microsoft will charge you a decent amount. Microsoft shareholders are hoping they'll make a buck (or at least stop losing a buck) but will users will like the idea? It's the OS equivalent of buying an expensive new printer and finding out there's only a trial toner cartridge and there's no USB cable included and that you're quickly going to have to shell out another $100. But it's even worse because if you are a Microsoft diehard you want MS Office as well and that's going to set you back some serious additional cash. That's a lot of extra money to blow in a recession just because you're afraid to try something new.
BTW the claim that "it wasn't until PC makers added the already archaic Windows XP operating system that the Netbook craze took off" is incorrect. Asus started the craze with Linux. It was about 6 months before any WXP notebooks appeared from Asus and by that time they'd shipped truckloads of Linux netbooks. Microsoft didn't see the netbook market coming. If they seen it coming they would have tried to kill it because, whether they dominate the netbook market or not, the market is taking huge chunks of profit out of their business.
to compete with with lots of limitations so Microsoft can up sell the user to a real version.
as for familiarity and ease-of-use, distros like Ubuntu have made a lot of headway there and i would say that probably for about 95% of hardware configurations out there today you DONT need to ever worry about the command line on those setups. for those time that you do, well you might not have someone holding your (figurative) hand with support but at least you're not paying for the support either.
so, no thank you to MS and closed source. we're in a recession for chrissakes.
Your article is historically innacurate.
> But as well-intentioned as that plan was, it
> wasn't until PC makers added the already archaic
> Windows XP operating system that the Netbook
> craze took off.
The netbook craze took off *before* Microsoft slashed the price of XP, and Microsoft did that to be able to compete with Linux in the hottest-growing market.
> It wasn't that XP was the perfect solution for small
> screens and low-power CPUs -- it's that consumers
> searching for a simple, low-cost second or travel
> laptop value ease of use over almost anything else.
Netbook consumers are looking for low cost, period.
If Microsoft put a price tag of $50 on Windows 7, they will have to compete with $0 in a sub-$300 market.
> In our initial tests, Windows 7 also shows great
> promise for Netbooks, and seems like a much
> more likely candidate for the future of Netbooks
> than anything else.
Android doesn't have to surpass Windows 7 in sales to be considered a success.
If Android gets 20% of the market share it will be a huge victory for Linux and Open Source.
Even I won't try operating systems for fear of upsetting my computer which is running Windows quite nicely.
Long having been screwed with old XP updates and crashes, including the complete loss of a computer's memory a couple of years ago, I decided my new computer would not be used to experiment with foreign platforms.
I am a general user. Not a programmer, I have been out of computer sciences in the mainstream at work (where I worked for a computer serves office in an aerospace firm) for over 10 years. I am out of touch, which is a no no in the world you live in. The less information I have, the less inclined I am to try anything new.
Your problem is not your inventive and most probably better; software. It's your sales job of it.
- by jeffshattuck April 1, 2009 11:28 AM PDT
- Great discussion. I would add that Linux and Android are not the same, Android is merely Linux based. Further, to assume that Android won't be user-friendly means you think Google Search, Apps and Gmail are not user friendly, or at least indicate that Google can't build a decent UI.
- Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (57 Comments)For me, Andoid Netbooks will find a great market with all those who are willing to experiment a bit and accept fewer functions in return for a much lower cost. Most likely, MSFT will end up trying to create some sort of free version of its OS, which, if the courts have any say, will not fly.
Last, I think the OS matters less and less for everyday users. What people interact with is the browser, and as long as FF works well with Andriod, people will be reasonably happy, I think. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the OS of the future will be a virtual machine.
Jeff
www.cerebellumblues.com