Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"We have done a lot of studies on the return rates and haven't really talked about it much until now. Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don't know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it's not what they are used to. They don't want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks."

That's a quote from MSI's Director of Sales, Andy Tung, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. The average consumer tends not to embrace change very well when it comes to their computing experience - many people don't conceptually understand how software works, so they rely instead on rote memory, essentially memorizing through repetition how to do things. When you change the user interface, these types of computers users tend to become easily lost and frustration ensues. Just look at the reaction to Windows Vista and Office 2007 - with the people I've spoken to, when I drill down on their complaints, at the root of them all is the same thing: things were moved, things were changed, and now they don't know how to do anything. Linux on Netbooks is a great example of this principle in action: they think they're going to like it, but when they realize how different it is from Windows XP, they're no longer so excited about their netbook and back it goes.

"Love it or hate it, Microsoft Windows is the world's most dominant operating system. But when you look at some of the hot features found in competitors such as Linux and Mac OS X, both XP and Vista can seem a little incomplete. From intuitive interface features like Apple's application dock and Cover Flow to basic media capabilities such as ISO burning, Windows often falls short on built-in goodies. And some features that other operating systems offer by default-- such as 64-bit processing and business-networking tools--require a premium-version license in Windows. We took a good look at a variety of OSs, from the Mac to Linux to PC-BSD and beyond, and we rounded up a list of our favorite features--few of which come standard in any version of Windows. We even considered some operating systems of yore, and recalled a couple of cool features that Microsoft still hasn't caught on to. Some of these features simply aren't available for Windows at all, owing to the way the OS is designed. But you can add most of them to XP or Vista with the help of third-party applications, and we'll show you how to get them."

If you've never used an OS other than Windows, you might find this an eye opener regarding some of the cool features you are missing and if you are a Mac/Linux devotee, I'm sure you enjoy a recap about why your OS of choice rocks. I'll admit, since I've been messing around with Linux, I especially enjoy the Virtual Workspace feature and would love to see that implemented in Vista.