Use Linux to lower your customer's expectations

Advertising the fact that your product runs Linux seems to have an effect of lowering expectations for some. Case and point, this little blurb out of a Wired review of the Asus eeePC 900.

The 900 is not without a few hiccups: For example, the Eee didn't remember our WEP key after a reboot, and the battery life meter was totally wrong during our testing, but those issues are probably due to some Linux drivers that can be updated.

You know, cuz it's totally acceptable to ship a busted battery meter, or something that you have to type some crazy hexadecimal key in every time you want to get on the interweb. It ships Linux, so we can forgive it, right? Fuck no.

Why won't these companies realize that the percentage of people who are going to react the way that this reviewer did is less than 1%. Even big Linux nerds are going to be annoyed. I mean they just spent their life working to spread freedom to people who don't want it, and this is what Asus does with the free fruit of their labor? Oh well. At least it's free. At least I can spend hours hacking on a driver fix for something I just paid $500 for. Sounds like an awesome weekend to me.