“PC makers and several states allege that new Microsoft licensing agreements, arrived at under the proposed antitrust settlement between the software maker and the U.S. Justice Department, impose harsher terms on some manufacturers than agreements currently in place.” The details make it sound more like this is a pricing structure change that lowers costs for low-volume OEMs, and raises them for high-volume OEMs. CNET has the story.
when will the insanity ever end?
I knew it was a bad idea to allow MS to write their own punishment.
seriously though, I am sure MS put a loop hole in the settlement that allowed some sort of Hig/Low volume diferentiation and let them have at it with the High volume OEMs.
from a business perspective is seems dangerous to piss off your top clients, such as Dell and HP.
Is this dell’s punishment for putting out a Linux-based server? It just seems so odd. MS is essentially biting the hand that is feeding it. That is setting a new standard for brazen.
Some speculate that MS may be trying to get into the hardware side beyond just the X box. Any opinions? It would be a nice source of growth from an otherwise flat industry.
Wal-Mart is selling computers without an OS. It is merely a test, but it could result in the day when you buy a PC and the sales person asks, “do you need an OS with that today?” If that day arrives you’ll see Windows XP sell for about $75 next to the $20 Linux or the $5 copy that the sales guy burned.
‘Some speculate that MS may be trying to get into the hardware side beyond just the X box. Any opinions? It would be a
nice source of growth from an otherwise flat industry.’
Tablet PCs
the link to Microsoft Quotes, I’m happy to see they are definately going down, hopefully breaking their 52 weeks low.
This gotta hurt more than any settlement they could have in court.
I don’t think it is the pricing so much as the patent issue.
“HP sent a letter to Microsoft specifically expressing concerns over the protection of its patents. The letter asserts that the new licensing terms create a one-way street, allowing Microsoft access to HP patents without paying for them.”
That’s a lot scarier than a $4 price increase.
>>>Steve Ballmer, made it clear they did not want to “create financial gain” from the new terms.
Creating financial gain is exactly what they are doing, making us all pay their legal fees, they know and they know everyone knows, and still it’s like they have to keep on liying and spit on us too. I guess that is why they call ’em the empire of evil.
At least now I know where I don’t have to buy, that is in smaller PC makers such as MicronPC, Concentric Systems and Systemax. There is a line here, if you support the wrong guys don’t count with me for my next renewal. Got ’em labeled, I’m going to spread it now.
A couple of years ago, Microsoft convinced my organization to move from the very nice MS Select contract to its new subscription contract which is based on “full-time equivalent” employees, which saved us about $20,000 per annum.
At our next renewal, Microsoft wants to change the way they count part-time employees so that they are now full-time equivalent. Such a change would double the cost of our current contract!
In three years, Microsoft has twisted things around so that we will pay twice what we did originally!
Oh, and should we want to srop the current leased software contract, we must pay the FULL RETAIL PRICE for all copies of Windows and Office that we have in use!!!
What kind of madness is that!?
I think if a PC dealer struck Microsoft off the list, and went for alternative solutions, marketing them correctly, they’re a chance they might capture the imagination of the public.
Especially with Open Office hitting the 1.0.0 stage and Gnome and KDE maturing.
“Full Office Suite and Advanced, Optimised Linux Operating System.” I mean, the OS would be optimised since they would be rolling it out on PCs. I think it would be very sellable. Just somebody on the periphery needs the balls to try it. Bit of a gamble I suppose.
Move in mass to opensource software.
OpenOffice/staroffice has more or less the same crash/issue frequency you have with MS Office.
And moving from a new MS Office release or move to StarOffice requires the same time for learning.
Have a GNU/linux with KDE or Gnome should not change the world of an avarage user.
(you just have to spend about 2 month checking that your old documents are correctly interpreted or save them in backward compatibility mode (so that the filters won’t have issues during conversion))
Seems to me like this time Microsoft may be treading on thin ice. I mean, the last thing they want to do is piss off the large OEM’s such as Compaq, Dell, Packard Bell etc.
If we were to see a revolt of the OEM’s Microsoft would be in some serious trouble as to Windows’s continued dominance!
Now if they could only find an OS to fill the gap!
Microsoft can and probably will piss off all of them. Why? Well, they control 90+ percent of the desktops. What will these companies package their computers with if they refuse Microsoft OS? Linux? Dell tried that,but later decided against it. HP is still offering linux, but they probably sell more computers with windows. The majority of their customers are use to windows and will most likely order a pc with windows. Even though Microsoft is a pain in their ass, these companies must bend over and take it.
For the average pc user, linux is still too complicated for them. Hell, people I know have trouble with windows. I’m usually the person they call for tech support. I couldn’t imagine them trying to use linux…it would be a freaking nightmare! I can hear it now,”What’s a command line?” Until linux becomes as easy to use as a Mac or even windows, I’m afraid that windows will still rule the desktops for the majority of pc users.
> What will these companies package their computers with if
> they refuse Microsoft OS? Linux? Dell tried that,but later
> decided against it.
Dell claimed to have stopped selling GNU/Linux-loaded machines because there was “insufficient demand”. Why was there “insufficient demand”? Because Dell practically made sure that nobody knew they were selling GNU/Linux desktop machines. There was no advertising, not even on Dell.com. All pages related to GNU/Linux were kept well hidden. Ironically, Dell was very vocal upon its decision to discontinue the arrangement (Coincidence? You be the judge.). The press picked this up and word spread quickly. Many GNU/Linux users (leave alone users of other OSs) didn’t even know that Dell was selling GNU/Linux on desktop systems before this announcement.
The whole incident reminds me of how MS forced Hitachi to hide BeOS on their systems. The customers lucky enough to discover its existance were forced to use a boot disc to get into BeOS.
> For the average pc user, linux is still too complicated
> for them. Hell, people I know have trouble with windows.
You make a good point, but I don’t think that GNU/Linux is as hard to use as people say it is. There are plenty of (above average, I’ll admit) people out there whom I reckon could handle a system like Mandrake Linux, particularly if it comes preinstalled on systems from major vendors like HP and Dell.
GNU/linux if correctly preinstalled isn’t difficult AT all.
what’s is different from a KDE or a GNOME desktop than a Mac or a Win32 desktop?
Just more option that you can just ignore if you want.
But correctly pre-install phase of linux is harder then
any other desktop OS… I’m not a computer newbe
and linux still gives me more trouble installing
and getting all hardware up and running then most other
Operation Systems. (even writing my own tablet driver was easier in BeOS)
The difference between KDE or gnome and the mac or win32
desktop is that it is not consistent or even easy to use
try downloading and installing a recent mozilla build.
in Windows its one click away. in BeOS it’s just one click
on expand and the archive extracts. In linux/BSD
I have to open a Shell and try to remember what options
I should give to tar -xvfz | gzip something…
tar -xzvf == unzip…
gnomevfs and konqueror I think can handle with one click that stuff…
on BeOS I use tar -xzvf since I’m used to the terminal.
On linux even mc let you open tar.bz2 and tar.gz files like they are directory.
anyway we aren’t mindless monkeys, we can remebene a bunch of commands.