Raymond: Cheap PCs Kill Microsoft

Eric Raymond, open source guru and lead guitarist of Guns n’ Linux, says that the asteroid that will kill the Microsoft dinosaur is a waaay cheap PC:

“When the price of a PC falls below $350, Microsoft will no longer be viable,” Raymond said in an interview with ZDNet UK. “The reason is that if you sell something below that price, you can’t afford to pay the Microsoft tax and still make money.” He said the best illustration of this is the handheld PC market, where Microsoft software powers relatively expensive devices, but has no presence in the lower-end market.

It seems to me that for a way-cheap PC to get over the perceived hurdle of being cut off from the mother’s teat of Microsoft, it will position itself as an application-specific device, and the obvious application is Internet connectivity, and the obvious company to pursue this is AOL. Bring on the Linux-based AOL PC’s! Where’s that RedHat-AOL deal when we need it?

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