On Mon, 2007-12-10 at 19:15 +0000, Greg Thomas wrote:
or: c. a commercial operation factoring in the kick-back they no doubt get from installing all the 30-day trial versions of Office/PaintShop Pro/Broadband/etc. that just doesn't exist with a Linux based OS.
Bravo, This is exactly my suspicion. I think to the large volume OEM's like Dell or HP an OEM sticker probably costs them something like a 10th of what it costs me. Then once you add the kickback from putting on a trial of Norton that expires and offers renewal after 30 days, plus say a signup wizard for AOL I suspect that to the manufacturer the MS licence is practically free.
This I suspect was the leverage MS were using or accused of using to convince the OEM's not to offer OS free machines (and at one point machines with alternative Operating Systems) i.e Play the game by our rules or pay the same for an OEM sticker as Joe Bloggs system builder.
Greg
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