🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:41:33 -0700, in
<4c4401a4$0$22095$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>, SMS
<scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:

>On 18/07/10 11:21 PM, Todd Allcock wrote:

>> True, but what options do OEMs have?  Apple won't sell them OS X!  ;)
>
>I know that Dell has (or used to have) a way to buy their machines 
>without any OS and the price was reduced slightly.

I have no idea where you dreamed that up, but Dell has been a volume
licensor of Windows just like all the other Wintel PC makers.  Microsoft
pricing makes it prohibitive to not license Windows for every machine.
I speak from actual experience in the Wintel PC business.  You?

>It actually probably 
>cost them more to sell the machine without an OS. Any savings in 
>licensing fees to Microsoft would be lost by the cost of having to have 
>someone remove the OS from the machine which no doubt had it installed 
>at the time of manufacturing.

Nope.  Doesn't work like that.  The OEM configures its own build images
from materials supplied not just by Microsoft but also by others, and
different SKU's have different build images, even among different
versions of Windows.  In the case of Dell, the Linux SKU would be
assembled with a different build image than a Windows XP SKU or a
Windows 2000 SKU.  No removal.

>I know that OS companies, and not just Microsoft, used to have a pricing 
>structure that made it much more financially attractive for the 
>manufacturers to install the OS on every machine. This went back to the 
>days of CP/M, MS DOS and DR DOS.

*Licensed* for every machine, not necessarily installed.
The issue is having to pay for it even if you don't install it.

>Is it monopolistic for a company to say "if you install our OS on every 
>computer you sell we'll sell it to you for $30 per copy, but if you only 
>want to install it on some of the computers you sell then it'll cost you 
>$40 a copy?"

It was in fact seen as abuse of market power.

You have no idea what you're talking about (as usual).

-- 
John

"It is better to sit in silence and appear ignorant,
than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." -Mark Twain
"A little learning is a dangerous thing." -Alexander Pope
"Being ignorant is not so much a shame, 
as being unwilling to learn." -Benjamin Franklin