HP has announced plans to launch a low cost PC in China. At $483, HP hopes the PC will be cheap enough to keep it active in a high competition, high growth market. The PC matches the price of a similar basic PC introduced by Lenovo earlier this year.
Keeping costs low, HP has chosen to ship the computer with FreeDOS, and is using AMD for chips rather than Intel. The decision to ship the PC with FreeDOS is an interesting one; not shipping with Windows is obvious due to the high costs involved with the OS. Not shipping with Linux is perhaps less obvious. One answer: piracy in the Asian market is massive; although HP would never admit it, it would seem that there is an expectancy that users will replace FreeDOS for something else (read: pirated Windows) after purchase.
China is massively important to PC makers. It recently surpassed Japan as the world's second biggest market for PCs and is expected to see 20% growth in 2004. HP needs to make this venture work and make it work well. It faces stiff competition from other companies like Lenovo; Lenovo recently announced that it would purchase IBM’s PC unit. HP’s currently only has ~5% of the PC market in China, and will no doubt hope that their low cost solution will improve this figure.
View: HP
Keeping costs low, HP has chosen to ship the computer with FreeDOS, and is using AMD for chips rather than Intel. The decision to ship the PC with FreeDOS is an interesting one; not shipping with Windows is obvious due to the high costs involved with the OS. Not shipping with Linux is perhaps less obvious. One answer: piracy in the Asian market is massive; although HP would never admit it, it would seem that there is an expectancy that users will replace FreeDOS for something else (read: pirated Windows) after purchase.
China is massively important to PC makers. It recently surpassed Japan as the world's second biggest market for PCs and is expected to see 20% growth in 2004. HP needs to make this venture work and make it work well. It faces stiff competition from other companies like Lenovo; Lenovo recently announced that it would purchase IBM’s PC unit. HP’s currently only has ~5% of the PC market in China, and will no doubt hope that their low cost solution will improve this figure.
View: HPB]Features:[/B]
· The best PC performance: Choose between a silent running mode or the best graphics performance settings and the wizard automatically adjusts all performance metrics (clocks, voltages, fan speeds, bus speeds, etc.) to get the best options for the hardware in the system.
· Improved dynamic overclocking: Provides on-the-fly overclocking and BIOS configuration within an easy-to-use Windows interface that is streamlined and simplified for better user understanding.
· Benchmarking wizard: See how your PC configuration stacks up against synthetic benchmarks before and after adjusting system parameters.
· Saved system profiles: Save, import, and export custom overclocking or BIOS profiles. Assign profiles to favorite programs for automatic application. A safety "watchdog" checks temperature and steps system down if failure could occur.
· GPU overclocking: Overclocking of GeForce FX and GeForce 6 Series GPUs is supported in concert with system overclocking, temperature monitoring, and system profiles.
· System troubleshooting: An automated reporting tool captures all needed information to help you determine when problems may be happening to the system, and helps you troubleshoot.
· Improved system monitoring: Temperatures, voltages, and bus speeds are now available as an “always-on-top” window with a transparency option so that it is visible at all times.
· Voltage and bus speed monitoring: Track actual motherboard voltages, GPU clocks, bus speeds, and CPU core speed to ensure safe and correct settings.
· Temperature and fan speed monitoring: Real-time monitoring of CPU, GPU and system temperatures helps prevent hardware damage. nTune supports dual-CPU and SLI multi-GPU systems.
· Dynamically adjustable voltages and fan speeds: Adjust motherboard voltage levels without a reboot, as well as dynamically control fan speeds.
· Dynamically adjustable memory timings: Change critical memory timings without rebooting and without entering the BIOS.
Thats the point. HP loads an OS nobody will use and everybody will replace.
If HP preloaded Linux, HP would have to provide tech support for Linux, which costs them Money.
If HP preloaded WinXP, HP would have to provide tech support for WinXP, which costs them Money.
HP saves costs by not having to provide software tech support for these machines.
yeah! go HP go!
Everybody wants it above the others.
In a country whaere the average annual household
income is $3000 to $5000 USD nobody is going to pay
for software that costs 2 weeks income but Linux and BSD
are no more easier to use for the Chinese people than it is
for American people. So the alternative is to use a pirated MS OS.
Does this say "they would rather pirate Windows than learn to use
an alternate OS"? The Microsoft foothold is growing even if the
method is illegal. Being "top dog" must be tough.
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