Acer begs Microsoft to 'think twice' about Surface tablet
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
Consumers are getting the picture too. Acer's revenues have fallen for six straight quarters.
Acer shouldn't look for alternatives to Windows, (What alternatives!? I can't imagine what Acer would do to a Linux distro.) it should stop making bad products.
A clean install is what a lot of power users do on buying a bloatware ridden laptop.
The main issue seems to be lack of knowledge for a majority of 'naive' consumer on how easy it is to do a clean install.
(Maybe someone can make a 10thingstodowhen.com, if it doesn't already exist.
This could not only include a list of things for '10 things to do when you buy a laptop' but other misc stuff like '10things to do when you install ubuntu 12.04' etc
Currently such lists are scattered all over the place.)
Edit: Looks like someone snapped it up :)
Creation date: 07 Aug 2012 15:44:00
Expiration date: 07 Aug 2013 07:44:00
http://www.namecheap.com/domains/whois.aspx?domain=10thingst...
In the end when some bloatware crashes or slows the pc down, people blame windows.
I know that that's windows' business model, but makes you think how much they would benefit from having a rock solid image.
Just look at windows 7 for instance. It is a rock solid OS but that doesn't seem to have done a lot for microsoft's image. (Or maybe it has? Links welcome.)
I know I'm suffering from small sample size bias here, but everything else I've read about the company confirms my anecdotal experience.
They use the worst 1366x768 TN panels in 15" laptops when the marginal cost of even using a bad TN panel is essentially negligible.
This leads to Acer being fairly profitable when they sell enough machines, but this hasn't been the case for a few years.
And for an average consumer, the idea of doing a clean install is something they have no idea that you can do, how to do or want to do.
As long as your laptop shipped with windows you can install either 32 bit or 64 bit of the same version (oem) on the same computer.
Edit: Here's a quick google if anyone's interested in more info: http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/604187-l...
My anecdote is just a datum, not data.
For many years I watched the bloatware that totally ruined the user experience, especially at the turn of the century.
Can Microsoft make quality hardware to compliment their software and in turn make their software feel "better" to the many of those who have turned away from it? They have the capital to figure it out.
The only "huge negative impact" that I can see from this is pushing the hardware manufacturers to innovate harder and do better with the use and distribution of the software. It is going to thin the herd for sure. I think this is necessary for Microsoft to gain some control over the user experience.
Yes, resellers and hardware manufacturers helped make Microsoft the huge corporation it is today, but the time has come. I think Microsoft only has to gain from this--if they do the hardware right.
As it stands, the only company to have been successful in the consumer sector with that formula has been Apple. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft can pull it off.
On the consumer side it's "Not only is it not a Mac, it doesn't even come with Windows."
On the commercial side it's, "Can it run Excel" - some things never change and Visicalc is still the killer application, so to speak.
It is, in my opinion, a mistake to expect corporations to operate on the principles which drive persons. So long as Windows remains a profitable operating system for Acer, Acer will continue to install it. And that will continue to be the case unless Best Buy starts hiring Linux gurus for its sales floor.
MS can't have it both ways unless they want to become Apple. You can't ask an OEM to innovate and take most of their profits away in a race to the bottom market. It's simply not fair.
MS is going to have to make a choice in the future of who they want to become. They can't slam Google a year ago for what they are doing now.
I'm not sure how MS can find a way out but they had better do so soon because the future is being decided during MS's conflicted beliefs and the risk is greater than just losing Windows dominance.
Why not, exactly? As long as it increases Microsoft's profits, what prevents them from doing this?
But they did not have to decide to make their own hardware: they could have imposed controls on bloatware as a condition of OEM's licensing Windows.
You guys (OEMs) had roughly the better part of a decade to get it right. It should come as a surprise to precisely nobody that you're now being made irrelevant.
It's the same when I want to watch a movie trailer on the largest cinema chain here in Sweden. I have to watch an ad before I am allowed to watch the ad for the product they sell. It's ridiculous.
I've had a couple of ThinkPads that were beautiful in the same way that a tractor is. They just got stuff done.
I have an Asus UX31 Zenbook that is fantastic, and it didn't come with any bloatware at all. (Sure, it's a blatant copy of a Mac Air, but they made improvements, too).
Apple's principles get in the way. One button mouse, yeah right . . .
When discussing Microsoft strategy, it is hard to over emphasize how long term their view tends to be. They spent a billion or more on Kin just to learn the mobile market. They spent billions on the Red Ring of Death to retain consumers. Its hard to recognize this philosophy because it is so different from the quarter to quarter strategies of the companies to which they are unfavorably compared - Wall Street would have thrown a tantrum if Apple had spent a billion on Ping in order to learn "Social". Just look at the heat Google took for Wave.
And what did they 'learn' about 'mobile' that many of their employees (especially rank and file) probably already knew? There's usually far more cost-effective and less public ways to 'learn' about stuff without making your company look totally inept.
/Sorry.
The damage done to the MS brand over the past decade or so by manufacturers bundling crap on cheap hardware is enormous, and it may take MS either getting in to the hardware game directly, or tightening control over what can have Windows shipped on it, before we see a reversal of that. The same thing is playing out with Android - not sure why they didn't learn from the MS story.
This is not suggesting everyone should always and only make their own hardware, but without sufficient quality controls in place, the brand gets tarnished pretty quickly.
Who is "they" and will it be easier to get Android on the phone than it is to get Europe?
The financial viability of Android does not depend on the quality of the user experience. Just on data collection.
oh, and the data collection won't be as good if people don't use it as much because the hardware/software combos are subpar.
As for the second part, crapware increases data collection. That's one of the things that makes it crapware in a mobile context. It collects everything from location to the contents of one's video downloads.
I would also argue that any consumer device manufacturer should consider the longer term, in which said consumers are becoming more educated in privacy and security. I mention those two because, amongst others, they're impacted by data collection and manufacturer apps that cannot be uninstalled.
http://www.cultofmac.com/94454/acer-former-ceo-trade-blame-f...
The firm did not blame its sales slowdown on Acer chairman JT Wang, who in 2010 predicted the iPad share of the tablet market would plummet from 100 percent to 30 percent as soon as alternative devices appeared. So far, with Motorola, RIM, HP and others introducing rival tablets, the iPad market share still hovers around 80 percent.
Acer also did not blame its sales slowdown on its own strategy reversal, first embracing the idea of volume, then rejecting it when the company’s founder, Stan Shih, announced a more Apple-like future. PC makers “should not single-mindedly pursue volume growth, and should extend its operation to the field of service, just like Apple has done.”
It would be great to have cheaply priced computers as an alternative to the Mac and upcoming MS ecosystems.
This move by MS might be their final demise (fingers crossed).