Amazon.com's top 25 tech items

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Take a look at the following link and see if you if you find anything interesting about what Amazon reports as their top 25 technical sellers.

I'll be really interested to see what you guys see as trends in this list.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/ref=pd_dp_ts_pc_1

 

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Here are the trends I see in a breakdown of what is in the list.

5 out of 25 are either OS agnostic hardware(monitors) or warranties. That leaves 20 technical products that use an OS. Of those 20 products here is the breakdown according to OS:

10 out of 20 run Linux. That's all the Nokia N8x0 products and the Asus EEE's. That's right. 50% of Amazon's top selling technical products run Linux.

8 out of 20 are Apple products. That's 40% of the top selling technical products at Amazon.com.

2 out of 20 are running Vista. That's right. Only 10% of the top selling technical products run a MS OS.

Who'd a thunk it? A major vendor that caters to the general public having 50% of the their best selling technical products based on Linux???

I have. I've been saying for a year or so now that the tipping point has been reached and Linux adoption was growing very rapidly. We are now seeing the first hard numbers to support what I've been saying. You're going to be seeing this same result in many other places too.

I'm telling you guys, open source is the wave of the future. It's coming, and it's coming fast. Now is the time to start learning open source products. Get ahead of the game. Be ready before the the huge rush to find techs for open source products starts. You guys have seen the country where I live. As you can see it's pretty rugged, sparsely populated, and the largest town in this half of the state is only ~350,000 people. However, even here about 50% of the job openings are now asking for Linux skills. Most of these job openings are for senior positions right now, but 2-3 years ago there weren't any job openings around here for Linux skills. It was all MS, yet the tech sector here was dying. Big call centers were closing. A couple of closings each put several hundred MCSE's out of work in a moment.

A newbie to IT with only MS skills couldn't find a job around here for love nor money. I finally got a job, but only because of my Linux skills and my willingness to intern for free to showcase what I could do and learn.

Edit: had to change the numbers. In the last couple of days the number of MS products has dropped to only 2 and my numbers were based on previously looking at the list.

One last edit: Remember, I live in MS's home state.

 

Interesting viewing freddy.

It seems I was headed in the right direction when I bought my Mac!

 

I don't see it as Linux skills vs Microsoft skills.

I see it as Real knowledge/skills vs Fake knowledge/skills.

If you really know OS's, compilers, assembler, hardware, networking, databases, protocols, design, architecture, testing, debugging, reversing, frameworks, etc then you will have a place in the industry. Thats why I reccomend college over certification, use your certs to bolster a traditional education, not the other way round.

Knowing how to boot a PC should never have let people enter IT, during the dot.com days things went mental and anyone that could move a mouse could get a job...

Likewise never forget that vendors hava an agenda of their own, the old universisties used to pursue learning for its own sake, now even they are commercialised, its now more important than ever to have a critical eye where you source your information from and how you interpret it.

 

I agree. However, that's not how most people seem to look at things.

I've always studied basics. When I studied networking I studied tcp/ip, dns, dhcp, etc... not MS's implementation of them. I had to learn MS's implementation to get an MCSE, but that was secondary to me, even before I started learning Linux. I always wanted to understand the fundamentals. Still have a lot to learn, but I'm still focusing on fundamentals.

 

Agreed Ffreeloader, at work we use mostly netware and linux servers so linux is a reasonable part of my work chores, but I think the results may be skewed alittle by those cheap little asus eee laptop things as there is 7 of them in that list with very little to tell between each.

Linux is definately arriving in a big way but I think in a work place it will take along time for it to make any headway in business (espescially in complete MS environments). If we have to buy a product in rather than develop it in house we tell all the companies about our environment but 9 times out of 10 the first thing they say when they come to roll it out is "wheres your domain controller" or "ah thats different".

 

In an enterprise setting I'll agree with you. However, these little Asus machines are opening a lot of people's eyes to what Linux can do, and they are going to need to be worked on when the warranty runs out. There's going to be a need for techs who know Linux then in part of the industry that services the general public. That will also put pressure on IT departments because those same people are going to begin wanting to use their favorite little tools at work too.

As to the results being skewed, well, it's the numbers of sales of each of those products that put them where they are. Products with Windows on them were available for sale too, but that isn't what was purchased. The general public is buying something other than Windows in large numbers for first time in a long time.

 

I think the EeePC is very misleading as a lot of people wiped the Xandros OS off it and installed mainly XP (as well as other Linux Distros) from what I've read on certain forums.

By the looks of that list it seems people like Apple and Asus

I also wish Apple would allow OSX to be installed on non-apple PC's as I would love to use OSX but can't justify the stupid prices of apple hardware.

 

same story, different day. I'll learn linux if and when I have a definitive need to. Right now, I havent encountered a single business in my employment time that has used linux on a level I need to be concerned about. The company im leaving has 0, count them, 0 implementations of linux, and whilst the company im returning to has one or two, they are by far in the minority, and utterly transparent to users. Indeed, i dont even need to interact with them except through windows file browsing, so it doesnt concern me.

What it comes down to, and this is always going to be the case in this matter, is: show me a need for me to learn linux on any level for my career, and I will learn it. Until then, I'll dabble in it at best, but im not going to devote any great amount of time on it.

For the record, my boss bought a couple of those EeePC's, and instantly wiped them all in favour of XP.

 

That's pretty much sums up my stance as well. I've never worked for a company that has used Linux in any form. Whilst I like Linux and what it can offer for me there isn't a lot of point in busting my balls learning it as I will probably never use it commercially so it would be a waste of time.

I like distros like Ubuntu a lot but just can't get away from Windows due to me being a gamer. If I didn't play games then I might of made the switch for home use. I think until Linux can play commercial games with ease (I doubt it will ever happen) then in my opinion this stops a vast number of people switching over to Linux as you simply need Windows to play them. This might seem like a strange point but think about it if you do things like web browsing and typing letters then Linux is fine with that. Want to play commercial games then your stuffed. Windows on the other hand can do all of that.

Business wise I don't think Linux on the desktop will make inroads for a lot of years due to the high level of training for staff brought up on Windows and it's familiarity with that OS which makes it pointless.

The only time that Linux may take a bigger slice of the action is when applications go web based and make the OS nomore than a launchpad for online apps.

 

as a business desktop replacement I actually think that linux is at least very nearly ready to replace windows. The amount of users that have to be trained from the switch from xp to vista is just verging on the ridiculous, So businesses who are looking and fancy a go might as well try linux. Also theres a big draw for businesses to adopt linux as a desktop because of the reduced costing involved in licencing.

I dont think that from a normal users point of view linux is that different to windows (access to programs bottom LHS of screen, CHECK, openoffice compatible with office 2k3, CHECK, file/print/ paper emerges with words on, DOUBLE CHECK).

Of course the main issues will be with compatibility of inhouse or propriatry software products but if the environment is right even those can be sorted.

Im certainly not saying that linux will be the new dominating OS, and personally as im still studying for my MCSA you can tell which side of the fence I sit on, but working where I do it has opened my eyes to linux loads and I have far more respect to it than I used too.

It will still take a huge amount of work though to get the average user displaying anything other than a blank face when linux is mentioned.

 

I would disagree on the migration from XP to Vista as Vista whilst different in many respects is still familiar ground for most uses. The Look, File structure, Office, Internet Explorer are all familiar to the average person. Linux on the otherhand isn't. Most people struggle with Windows giving them Linux would be a nightmare.

I think when applications go web based we may see the switch as it would be cheaper to buy or get Linux free and install them on client PC's if all the OS was used for was a portal. I do think applications will go this way and Microsoft will be sh@tting themselves when it does.

 

its a fair point I suppose, as webapps grow in popularity, so will linux. After all, if it costs nothing to install, then its not really an issue - particularly if the linux distros get installation routines that are easy, fairly friendly, and more importantly, install and configure things very easily, and in the manner that (l)users are accustomed to with windows. Its just not a cakewalk to have things working easily with linux, and windows is often just a hell of a lot easier. Take my install onto the laptop, its hardly new (not by a long stretch), yes the linux distros couldnt handle it. By contract, windows XP installation was easy. It did virtually everything for me. And thats exactly what users want. They want free without hassle, give it to them, and still have their apps work fine, and they will switch in droves.

That is one of the main things about the so called trend Freddie points out. The nokias are using Linux? so what? The users arent having to configure it, or navigate complex installation routines, etc. They dont know its linux, and even if they do, they dont realise what a linux proper is like. The phones' OS is designed around the hardware with ease of use in mind, its designed to be straightforward, low hassle, and what people are expecting. As a result, they work brilliantly.

 

Thats exactly what I was thinking with the asus EEE comment, apart from the fact its really the same thing but with 512/1gb difference between models users have just handy big buttons say WORK/PLAY on it, so they dont even realise that they have a linux pc. I love all these points people are making all very valid and making fair comments about both sides of the fence.