Tony Arnold wrote: > I've never understood how or why this works! Why should the vendor of > the bloatware pay Dell to install it? Surelly, Dell should buy a license > for the bloatware from its vendor and pass this on to the customer. It > just seems counter intutitive to me, but then I work in a University and > have almost zero understanding of how business works! > It's the "free trial" principle.
The software that's included is something like a 30-day version of a paint program, or a 6-month subscription to an anti-virus product. Once the customer is hooked on the product, it's easier for them to get out a credit card and pay the fee to enable it for longer than to start looking around for alternatives. On the bright side, sometimes this approach gets people into FL/OSS software.... my brother, for instance, used the paint program until it expired, decided he needed a paint program, and now uses The GIMP. Once you've got someone on The GIMP, OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird, it's not a long stretch to get them onto Ubuntu.... M. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
