On Tuesday January 28 2003 01:49 pm, Charlie wrote: > AFAICR the agreement between Dell and Microsoft says that Dell > can't ship barebones boxes; but doesn't exactly specify what > operating system must be included. Note: included, not installed. > One of the ways that's been found to circumvent MS's heavy handed > interference was to just toss a copy of FreeDOS in with the tower > and ship it. > > A 70 to 80 Euros discount is certainly better than none; but I'd be > curious to know how much of the actual OEM price they're passing > along in that discount. Last I checked here in Canada Retail Win XP > Home Edition goes for CDN$159.00.
The main reason OEM's sign up with M$ is to get discounted licences, but also "either sign up or get none". So about half price seems sort'a reasonable (CDN$159.00 = 100 USD = about the same in Euros, roughly). OTOH, it's also a tool M$ uses to force them to only load winsux ...either do, or loose your discount. 'Course if you don't sign you also get none. Most OEM business is still with the unwashed M$ users worldwide, so there's no alternative except to sign up. M$ keeps a vigilant eye on what percent of units an OEM like Dell ships (brokers is more accurate, they don't really manufacture 'em, particularly laptops) without their OS. The legal aspects mean little, the discount and availability from M$ does. One'a them under the table deals and arm twisting M$ is infamous for. Unfortunately not known of, or cared to know about by the unwashed masses. I also suspect there's a M$ tax, that "even if you do ship an allowed percentage without M$ OS, you still gotta cough up x $$'s per non M$ unit" ... to keep your M$ discount. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
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