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Dell To Offer Windows-Less PCs

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the backdoor-in-the-fine-print dept.

An anonymous reader submits: "As a follow-up to the Slashdot story Dell No Longer Selling Systems w/o Microsoft OS, News.com is reporting that Dell will sell systems without Windows. Microsoft's new licensing terms stipulate they can't sell PC's without an OS (hence the removal of the NoOS option), so Dell will be offering FreeDOS as an option for some computers. It will come with the computer, but not installed, so that users may install any other OS that they wish. It's a very creative interpretation of Microsoft's licensing terms, and one I imagine Microsoft didn't have in mind."

3 of 547 comments (clear)

  1. Two key points from the article by klieber · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. The systems will cost just as much as if you'd ordered them with Windows in the first place.

    2. They're aimed primarily at large companies and won't, for the most part, be available to consumers via Dell's web site. (their workstations will, but not the generic line of optiplexes.

    Given point 1, I fail to see how this is a Big Deal, other than the obvious snub at Microsoft.

    --kurt

    --
    Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
  2. Let's face the facts by coryboehne · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft can do pretty much whatever they want and most people and company's just don't really care all that much, however this last move was a bit too far and most definately an example of anti-competitiveness rather than the anti-piracy measure they would have you beleve it to be. However not being able to buy a PC without an OS is not a concern for the mass majority of people. Now, we're all /.'s and we definately care a great deal about this, mostly just because we're all nerds and geeks who like to install an OS for the fun of it, but another perfectly valid reason for our caring (and in my opinion more important) is the fact that it seems Microsoft is trying to be a bully agian and we are all just really, really tired of that position from MS, as a matter of a fact if they started to act decent I might actually have a few good things to say about them.

  3. Re:Go Dell! by rseuhs · · Score: 5, Informative
    In real life, MS did very little.

    IBM gave them the OS-monopoly on preinstalled IBM-PCs back in 1981.

    After that, they just followed the industry and were late on every computer related motion there was. The GUI, multitasking the transition to 32 and 64 bits are things where Microsoft was always very late. Bill Gates assured us in 1993 that he's not interested in the Internet for example.

    That's pretty much it. Everybody would have made billions with that monopoly. actually Microsoft are not evil genuises, they are just lucky and pretty incompetent.