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

Re:Monopoly

[rainer_d]

About the only one of those three that MS-Windos has over linux would be the ability to switch display modes quickly.

Which is very useful on a Laptop, where the LC-Display can actually only show one resolution and interpolates the rest (with mixed success).
When did you switch the resolution on your Laptop last time ?
The ability to switch resolutions was useful some years ago, when you had only, say, 2 MB VRAM and either wanted 32 bpp or 1280x1024.
Nowadays, PDAs are aproaching that limit...