Well The new advert that Microsoft is doing as an answer to the mac v pc adverts is out and it is rather an odd advert. At the moment at least, it does not make much sense to me. The way I see it is that most people have no choice but to use Microsoft Windows and those that have a choice, either use windows anyway or choose something else. If they use something else they have a good reason for it and if they use windows they have a good reason for it, maybe for gaming, work or whatever. So my question is why does Microsoft need to advertise given that those using other operating systems are unlikely to change to windows and the rest are already using windows anyway for one reason or another?

Now I don’t use windows myself but from where I’m standing It looks to me that windows is suffering on the Netbook platforms, they should be looking to do something in that market and with the Chinese coming out with new processor architectures for these machines which only support Linux, microsoft should be slightly worried. Who’s going to buy a microsoft netbook for $300 when they can get a linux one with firefox and openoffice for $50? X86 processors aren’t looking to have a great future on low cost Netbooks but dragon processors which are much cheaper might just have a chance. Anyway without further ado here is the advert;

As we have heard in the past sky is very reluctant to support Linux with their downloads service, however will the rise of Netbooks change this? Will this new source of Linux popularity change the minds of the people at sky and make them sit up and listen or will they remain ignorant and arrogant? I think that it is shameful to prevent the use of a service that the customers have paid for, just because of their choice of operating system.

It is great to see linux leading in the cutting edge of technology, providing devices previously reserved for the people who could afford them, for a price that almost anyone can afford. I can only see these netbooks getting cheaper with time. Digital watches were once expensive but now they are a dime a dozen. As new manufactures enter this market prices will begin to fall further. This is truly an exciting year for linux and its users.

Netbooks have also been solving some problems for linux as far as desktop use is concerned. In the past users have complained about it being difficult to use and the amount of time that it takes to boot, but asus with their eeePC have changed this. The eeePC used a program called fast init, which can boot the OS in less than 20 seconds. I’m hoping that these devices can have as much of an impact on linux as a desktop OS, as Ubuntu has had.