December 8th, 2008
Desktop Linux buy or rent and the home market
One important point about Paula’s story concerning IBM’s “Microsoft-free” Linux PC is that it’s a rental unit.
What users get is a terminal. The applications and file storage reside elsewhere.
Night editor Steven Musil has concerns about this.
Will companies tolerate having their data stored elsewhere? The answer to those concerns is simple, a hot back-up stored at the customer site. Local back-up instead of remote.
My own concern lies elsewhere. Desktop Linux users now face a buy-or-rent decision.
With a Netbook (or larger Linux-based laptop) you are buying enough hardware to store and run your applications locally. There is no contract, no ongoing cost. Just as it is today.
With the IBM solution you have ongoing costs, but you eliminate a lot of maintenance headaches.
Especially regarding security. Maintaining anti-viral, anti-spam, anti-spyware, and registry protection systems is a hassle for any network administrator.
As I’ve said here many times that is what I am. Each of my kids has a PC, my wife brings hers home, and now my college-age daughter has a laptop. They all link back to a router and Internet connection by my desk.
We have our own stupid user tricks. Son decides that, since his PC is running hot he will take off the cover and lose it. Daughter doesn’t run an anti-viral for months and faces a persistent bug buried deep inside her PC operating system.
Guess who they run to, and guess who they blame, when “the Internet won’t work” or “my PC is slow?”
Multiply this by tens of millions and you have the market I think IBM should be tapping with its rent-to-rent plan. Not the enterprise, but Daddy Inc.
Imagine if the parents are no longer sysadmins. That’s almost as good as the kids going off to college, don’t you think?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 12/08/08
