Mike Miller wrote: > On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Jonathon Jongsma wrote: > >> On 1/30/07, tclug at natecarlson.com <tclug at natecarlson.com> wrote: >>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Jonathon Jongsma wrote: >>>> One other option: you can get a notebook from dell without windows as >>>> well (it comes with freeDOS but I don't know if it's even installed or >>>> not). I believe they only offer this with the 'lattitude' series >>>> through the "small business" store, and they're not necessarily any >>>> cheaper than the ones that come with windows, but at least you can let >>>> them know that you have no need for windows. >>>> >>>> http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/nseries_nb?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd >>> I just picked up a Latitude D820.. it ended up being $600 cheaper to buy >>> it with Windows than without. >> You're sure you were comparing exactly the same system? Because I was >> just shopping for a D820 about two days ago and they came out to exactly >> the same price with and without windows. The one big difference seemed >> to be that not all of the same options were available depending on >> whether you were looking at the with-windows or without-windows options >> (for instance, without-windows seemed to offer me more choices of >> processor speed on the higher end and less choice on the bottom end... >> Don't ask me why...) > > > Obviously, Dell and most other manufacturers have agreements with > Microsoft. Do Intel and Microsoft also come up with agreements? It could > work like this: Microsoft can make their system run slower so that people > are motivated to buy new hardware. Microsoft doesn't have much > competition, so they don't have a lot of motivation to optimize their code > for speed. Why wouldn't they help Intel to make a buck? > Microsoft's history was that it was hardware agnostic. They wanted you to run Windows whether you were using Intel, MIPS or Alpha chips. I can't see them intentionally favoring one CPU over another, especially given how quickly CPUs have been changing. I certainly couldn't see Intel getting tied up in that kind of arrangement. > Related point: Microsoft is a monopoly, or near monopoly. When Vista > comes out, what is its competition? Well, it's mostly XP. Wouldn't it be > nice for Vista if XP wasn't so great? Sure. They knew this day would > come when they made XP. Maybe that explains why XP isn't so great. Same > for Vista and everything else produced by Microsoft. When you have a > monopoly, not only is there no incentive to produce a better product, > there is a disincentive -- it is better to produce a bad product so that > you can sell upgrades more readily. > There were a couple of times when they floated the idea of charging for service packs - I think XP SP1 was one instance. That went nowhere. They've suggested charging for security updates/software and again it went nowhere. You also run the risk that new hardware is going to end up running OS X or some variant of Unix. I think what is going on is that MS is being buried under a pile of crappy code, some for backward compatibility, some newly written. They are so scared of having to compete without the inertia of legacy applications that they're committed to a path that increases bloat, complexity and bugs. They'll also sell out their users' security in an instant if it benefits their business partners, but that's another story :-) Compare that to Apple who routinely breaks compatibility in both hardware and software, dump the 68K for PowerPC for Intel; dump Mac OS for OS X. The technical press wailed about it being a fatal mistake every time, but they came through fine and now they're running a relatively clean OS on bleeding edge hardware. They also understand a lot about how to manage those breaks without pissing everyone off. MS is screwed. Mac and Linux will keep on chipping away at their OS market share. As people move to more open document standards the dominance of Office will start to erode as well. Just look at the Zune and try not to laugh out loud ... an MP3 player that only a Soviet could love :-) --rick