OT: Redmond

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 12:06 -0700, Joe Fleming wrote:
> I don't know that they are specifically targeting that market. I mean,
> most of the netbooks run vista already. Run over the Fry's if you
> don't believe me..... all of their netbooks on display are running
> vista. It was enough to make me not want to buy any of them, but I
> digress. I've read the m$ has claimed that the reason most of them
> can't is because of the lack of storage space, a problem that 7
> clearly doesn't solve.
> 
> As for the storage space, my Ubuntu install is using about 10GB right
> now. Of course, that's with an office suite, a webserver, a few
> websites, my email, a bunch of pictures and documents accumulated over
> the 2 years it's been installed (over 3GB in my home directory right
> now)...... that's kind of the same, right? I mean, kinda, right?
> 
> For the life of me I can't understand how the hell they use up so much
> space for JUST the operating system! As an aside, I read that IE8 uses
> more memory that the whole of XP too. Crazy.
----
nope - yesterday, I just got an Acer Aspire One and it has WinXP. All of
the 'Windows' based offerings on Acer Aspire One are WinXP. Most of the
devices termed 'netbooks' offer WinXP or Linux...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_netbooks

and for illustrative purposes, I got the one with 160GB hard drive,
shrank the base Windows partition down to 32 GB, there's a 5 GB restore
partition which I left alone, and partitioned the rest for Fedora 10
which installed quick/easy from USB key.

FWIW - on the Windows partition...I removed the trial version of
Microsoft Office, the included Microsoft Works, the addiction version of
MacAfee, installed HP Web JetDirect Admin, OOo 3.0, AVG Free, iTunes and
it's using 10 Gb...not that I plan on using Windows very much.

In defense of Windows installations, Fedora isn't exactly known for a
light footprint installation either and I'll get back to you on the full
installation size later but I don't expect it to be much less than 6 Gb.

Linux is running on my KVM/19" LCD at 1280x1024, wireless is working
(without madwifi crap) and once my media library finishes copying, it's
ready to roll.

The thing rocks!

Craig