Dell No Longer Selling Systems w/o Microsoft OS

Some Sys Admin sent in an email that he got from Dell which basically says Microsoft will no longer allow Dell to sell PCs without an operating system. Please note that Microsoft is not a monopoly, and does not use their monopoly power to squish competition in the market place. The message itself is attached below, and is worth a read, especially the last bit.

UPDATES

1. Effective 8/26 - New Microsoft contract rules stipulate that we can no longer offer the "NO OS" option to our customers beyond September 1st. As such all customers currently purchasing a "NO OS" option on either OptiPlex, Precison or Latitude for the express purpose of loading a non-MS OS will have the following options:

1. Purchase a Microsoft OS with each OptiPlex, Precision or Latitude system.

2. For OptiPlex and Precision - purchase one of the new "nSeries" products (offered for GX260, WS340 & WS530 - details in the attached FAQ) that are being created to address a different OS support requirement other than a current standard Microsoft OS.

We must have all "No OS" orders shipped out of the factory by September 1st. The "No OS" legend code and SKUs will be I-coded on 8/19 and D-coded on August 26th to ensure shipment of orders prior to September 1st. FYI - this effects all of our competitors as well.

Comments

the judge will not know

[Lewis Mettler, Esq.]

This announcement will not have any affect upon the current litigation. At least not the case by the States.

The reason is that all testimony has already been taken.

It is just like the stupid decision by the appellate court that Microsoft did not try to monopolize the browser market. That was clearly incorrect but the court is strapped with the evidence in the case as of the testimony. And as of years earlier, Microsoft only acheived about a 50% market share. And, with those facts before the appellate court, you are likely to get such an opinion.

However, when the AOL case gets to the jury, facts will be completely different. Then 90-95% will be evidence. Very different indeed.

That is a basic problem with the legal system and it is why Microsoft lawyers can lie in public the way they do. Microsoft lawyers lie to the press and to the public based upon old facts that are clearly no longer relevant. But, to the ignorant, it is a sale.

Funny, however, that Microsoft again starts to lie about having a monopoly.

But, they are just a bunch of cheap liars anyway. They have proven that numerous times.

Remember the idiot under oath who told the judge that SUNs JVM was not included with XP because of the GPL?

And, remember the idiot that told the judge that Microsoft will withdraw from the market if it does not like the judgment?

And, remember the three stouges that each claimed they thought removing icons had something to do with commingled code.

Microsoft's lies are not even credable and yet they spit them out to defraud consumers. And, the judges as it turns out.

Probably does not include servers.

[expunged]

It should probably be noted that this probably does not include PowerEdge servers. While I have never been able to figure out how to get an OptiPlex system without a Microsoft OS, I believe the servers will still offer the no-OS/linux OS option.

I didn't receive the e-mail, but the snippet above does not mention servers and they are usually handled differently.

Re:Monopoly

[Sj0]

No it isn't. BeOS is(was) easy. Device drivers auto-detect on bootup(so you can literally remove a hard drive from one computer and place it in another and BeOS won't give two shits), so there's no need to manage anything at all. Installation requires hitting next once(or going through a Windows setup screen, depending on whether you bought it or not--it was free for download). Installing software is just a matter of unzipping it into the home directory(which for the most part, BeOS took care of for you) or using the included package manager(which meant simply clicking on a software package and hitting next). Changing the video mode is a matter of going to the preferences tab in the BeOS menu(which had everything you needed to change there in a standard way).

BeOS was a very user freindly OS, but thanks to practices such as these ones, it never got into any OEM products(though the OEMS wanted them, but Microsoft sent their lawyers around to fix that)

Re:I see this two ways....

[AntiNorm]

This company pays only 1.8% in federal taxes

No they don't. M$ pays **NO** federal taxes (and no, I am not making this up).

'No OS' still an option for servers.

[redbeard_ak]

That's what I'm buying for my clients.

Here's a link to one of their server config menus.

On the menu is Win2k, Netware and no OS. So MS doesn't have the strength to do this on servers as they do on desktops. That would be my conclusion, as they'll only do whatever they can for their own profit - consumers be damned.

Re:It's a shame...

[Prior Restraint]

What kind of Econ-101 textbook did this come from? Maybe "exploiting economies of scale" is important to some business professor, but real businesses are in business for one reason: to make money. Lots of money.

Whence the term capital-ism?

In any event, I don't care about the motivations of the individual participants within capitalism, I'm talking about why capitalism works.

Using capital more efficiently is based on the idea that the business people are motivated by society's greater good.

No, you're thinking of community-ism (communism). Again, I'm talking practical application, not motivation.

While I don't particularly like greed, history has shown that the economic system based on greed has worked much better than the one based on society's greater good.

I'm a pragmatic individual: if being a money-grubbing bastard tends to improve society overall (and except for a few notable cases, it does), then go for it.

Re:I see this two ways....

[jpmorgan]

Well, according to this, Microsoft paid $1,288,000,000 in income tax on $4,026,000,000 of total earnings in 02q1. That's closer to 32% than 0%, by my calculations.

Re:Just so people know how this works...

[anticypher]

This isn't news, Dhell has been doing this for a few weeks now. I was talking with some people on wednesday evening about this very topic.

Dell has dropped all their OS-less machines, and now only offer machines with M$-OS pre-installed, at an increased price which can't be negotiated away. Even for their largest customers. Even for corporations with site-license agreements with M$. All because M$ used a carrot-and-stick approach, threatening to remove all discounts unless non-OS options disappeared, and offering a greater discount than H-Paq if they went with a 100% M$ offering.

Dell is fucking freaked by the HP-Compaq merger, HPaq is a giant more scary than even M$. Although everyone in the press is laughing about the mis-match of HP and fuckPaq, Dell and IBM aren't laughing. H-Pucker is huge, and will (already started to) create a nasty price war in the corporate PC industry. One of HPricks competitors is going to go out of business, and you can be sure IBM will most likely survive. So M$ hit Dell hard in the negotiations a few months ago, and now we see the results; make every corp client pay twice for M$ products, or lose the war before even being able to fire a shot.

Doh!ll caved in, and probably are spinning this to their share holders as a great oportunity to increase profit margins over HPhuq.

The sad reality is that there are now lots of corporate clients on M$ license 6.0, where they have already paid per-seat/per-user/per-cockroach for copies of M$-OS. Then when they look at the $$$ amount from Dell, and the same spec machines from and IBM or H-dreck, the costs of that "Pay twice for your OS with every machine" are going to look pretty bad. Dell has phucked themselves over bad this time around, you can bet they aren't going to see any long term profits from this move. The boycott from a very tiny percentage of free-OS freaks isn't going to make a blip in their books, but 50K+ corporations jumping ship in the next 3 years will kill them.

As a very astute industry insider predicted wednesday night over a few beers, "that bitch Carlie may have killed the old HP, but if she secretly carved up the PC market with Bill, then Dell has been doomed from the start"

the AC