Will Microsoft Subsidize WinXP For Lindows Buyers?

kinema writes "Ars Technica has an interesting little article about Microsoft's alleged "dumping" of Windows XP. It seems that Microsoft is selling XP through TigerDirect for only US$50 to customers who have purchased a Lindows computer." Note that Tiger says nothing like this on their site (No, you can't buy WinXP for $50 there); Lindows CEO Michael Robertson says (in the linked column) that "Microsoft's latest offers to TigerDirect are extremely lucrative and I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately cave to Microsoft's pocketbook." PR ploy or reality, you decide.

Comments

Why

[Cackmobile]

If you had bought a Lindows system, why would you wanna buy XP. You've obviously made a choice not to buy windows.

Re:Why

[twstdr00t]

Because if the decision was based mostly on price, $50 looks a lot better then $200.

Re:Why

[Blacklotuz]

If you'r buying a Lindows box with the intention of runing XP, you either already own XP or plan to pirate it.

Re:Why

[llamalicious]

...and then you use it, can't communicate effectively or share files 100% with the rest of your family, see a cheap way to get that "Windows thing my sister, brother, aunt and uncle have" and say, hmm, only $50...

Not trolling, I'm dead serious. If one of my less technically inclined siblings bought a Lindows machine from Wal*Mart, you can be sure after a few days or weeks of using it for emailing stuff back and forth (excel, word, ppt, whatever) with the other family members, they be begging to get Windows on their computer (Why can I open this CoolStuff.ppt on my computer??.) Ok, in fairness, they wouldn't necessarily be begging for Windows, per se, but they'd be begging to be able to have a working solution. Just for the numerous kids educational titles out there they'd get it.

Please, don't start in with the run it on Wine shit either, unless your going to provide free on-site tech support to resolve library and native vs. Wine dll issues on each piece of software they have.

Yes, I do know I reference MS Office file types up there, which cost far more than the discounted $50 XP. I'm over-generalizing just to make a point. IMO Lindows is great, for someone who *knows* they want to get away from Microsoft, or want to get started in Linux without starting up a distro from a Floppy, network install or CD and figuring it all out. But not for any typical home user I know...

Now, to my actual point:
Yes, I've used a Lindows machine a family member bought on a whim; it's no longer running Lindows. You better believe they didn't know it didn't have Windows. Lindows/Windows... it's all the same... right??? He didn't have a clue what he was getting. None. I'll be a good chunk of all the Lindows machine buying folks don't know either.

Ahhh... well, that's my big rant for the day, time for some coffee to calm me down.

Agree/disagree...? I wanna hear about it.

Re:Why

[jeffkjo1]

Yes, I've used a Lindows machine a family member bought on a whim; it's no longer running Lindows. You better believe they didn't know it didn't have Windows. Lindows/Windows... it's all the same... right??? He didn't have a clue what he was getting. None. I'll be a good chunk of all the Lindows machine buying folks don't know either.


This is because too many people think computer *means* windows... That is, unless the computer looks like a gumdrop, in which case, it means *kooky macintosh*, but they wouldnt know what to do with that either.

Re:Why

[Quantum Skyline]

Agree wholeheartedly.

The average user doesn't know the difference between Windows/Lindows, except the fact that there is no Word, Excel, Outlook (Express), etc yet. No one's heard of WordPerfect. Barely anyone I know uses Netscape. I would have to explain why Kazaa doesn't work...and they don't care about alternatives - its Kazaa or bust. Can't run MSN Messenger? Screw it. Even if Sim or Everybuddy or GAIM is better.

Most people who are buying a computer that cheap are buying it because it is that cheap. They don't care what's on it as long as it runs the games it needs without any extra work. I try to educate users about licensing, but explain to a 12 year old like I did this weekend the concept of copyright and licensing. It goes right over their heads. And since parents probably know less than their kids about computers, parents will ask "Is this what you want?", get an affirmative, and pull out the Visa.

Kids get to play their games, parents get rid of another headache.

Re:Why

[mgv]

Excuse me, if you want to open Words, Excel, etc, you can use Open Office. It works fine for me.

Then you haven't tried to put motion video into your talks. I do alot of talks, and they have alot of video's in them - 1 second repeating loops to be precise, for technical reasons. But the problem applies for any video. (I have actually though of reencoding some of this stuff as an animated gif, which would be a really ugly solution ....)

Open office doesn't do video, or other fancy includes. It doesn't do the macros for excel right.

That doesn't make it bad, but it does make it less than 100% compatible.

I'm not here to troll on this one, but if open office could do my talks, I would be doing them all on a linux laptop now. But it doesn't, and any amount of people on ./ saying open office does everything isn't going to make it so. Sure, it works for you. It is getting close to better than word for doing wordprocessing. It isn't that close on excel, nor powerpoint. We won't even talk about porting over access databases ....

As soon as OO does this stuff reliably, I'm switching over. Until then, I _HAVE_ to use microsoft for this part of my work, and windows stays on my laptops, even with a room full of linux servers & workstations at home.

Michael

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Legislatures make laws, not companies.

You appear to have only studied the theoretical workings of government. In "practical" application in modern times, businesses not only make laws, the install governments and control the judicial process.

Re:Why

[mcrbids]

Exactly. Non-OEM version. Unless you're building machines for re-sale, you are NOT entitled to buy the OEM version of the software. You have obtained your software through fraudulent means, and are in violation of the Microsoft EULA, ....

The terms of the EULA (at least as of about 3 years ago) indicate that the 'doze copy must be sold with a significant amount of hardware - and either a motherboard or hard drive suffice.

There's no requirement that they be *new*, or is there any restriction on *price*, or even that said motherboard or hard drive have any guarantee of functionality. We even called their piracy hotline, verified this, and even demanded a ticket number that we could reference later.

So, as the owner of a computer store, we kept a box of "questionable" hardware that we sold for $1 USD. Anytime we replace a Hard disk or Motherboard, we'd indicate on the replaced item with a permanent marker its status and put it in the $1 box.

And, when we sold an OEM copy of Windows, we included the $1 hard disk or motherboard!

Now, as far as I can tell, we followed the EULA right to the letter, and for some reason, many of the people who bought these hard drives and motherboards left them behind!.

True or not, does it really matter?

[Machine9]

Even if it's true (something which is far from impossible considering microsoft's attitude towards the competition), does it really matter?

I mean, do we *really* want Lindows to be the thing the masses at large associate with linux, or alternative OSes in general?

Re:True or not, does it really matter?

[Speare]

Why not? Choices make the world a better place. Lindows isn't Debian. Lindows isn't Red Hat. Lindows is Lindows. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not a good product for some people.

If somebody forks over some cash for a Microsoft-free product, it still sends a message to Microsoft. If somebody's happy with Lindows, great! If somebody's unhappy with Lindows after trying it, they can decide to go back to Microsoft or they can try something else, but they know they have a choice.

Hooked on Crack

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the friendly neighborhood drug dealer, Bill says, "Here, have this first taste on me..."

Which flavour of FUD would you like with your news

[SkArcher]

So, the main competitor to M$ for home-user computer Operating Systems allegdes that M$ is discounting windows XP when specifically targetting Lindows users?

Could be, certainly within the GatesBorgs resources and methodology. Equally however, this could be a cleverly designed ploy to increase the profile of Lindows.

I'll wait on some hard evidence.

Note: I'm not saying I like M$, but I'm certainly not about to go off on some raving Linux-fanboi rant without seeing some evidence first.

What happened to the Law?

[SerpentMage]

IF and it is a BIG IF, if this is true then what happened to the Anti-Monopoly laws?

Interesting that in all of their supreme intelligence the DOJ and judge thought that their measures would tame the beast.

AND IF and again it is a BIG IF. It it is true. MS should be split right then and there into multiple companies... Sometimes the buck has to stop!

Hey, cool deal!

[dochood]

I would think this would be great for Lindows users.

This would make it cheap to make a dual-boot computer! I wouldn't mind having a Lindows computer for some daily work and piddling around. I would setup the dual-booting for games that only run on Windows. I could see paying $50 for it, but not $200...

I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but I am a game fan.

dochood

Re:dumping?

[Washizu]

To all who replied, here's a quick business lesson.

You have the development costs of creating WindowsXP (Cost A)

You have the support cost of maintaining WindowsXP (Cost B)

You have the manufacturing cost of producing a single copy of WindowsXP (Cost C, and let's assume that all fixed maufacturing costs such as the buildings and machines are included in the fixed development cost)

If MS sells n copies of XP, their costs are A + B + ( n * C ).

So if they sell 100 copies, it's A + B + 100*C
If they sell 10000 copies, it's A + B + 10000*C

A and B are already factored in. They know they have to pay for those no matter how many copies they can sell and they must price WindowsXP with some margin over C, and not worry about A or B.

If they can sell many copies of WindowsXP for a large margin over C, then they'll recover A and B very quickly. If the margin is small, it will take longer to recover those costs.

Microsoft estimates how many copies they can sell at various prices and chooses the price that allows them to recover A and B the fastest.

With a relatively small variable cost, it's almost impossible for Microsoft to "dump" their prices in the traditional definition of the word, which is temporarily selling below your variable cost to eliminate competition.

In the Lindows case, they're just reacting to market pressure.

That's what pays their developers' salaries.

Microsoft admits that Windows is overpriced

[Anonymous Coward]

The only surprise here is that Microsoft is acknowledging how overpriced Windows is. I loaded OpenOffice on my son's computer for his homework last night. For the average user with light word processing needs, Redmond's bloatware much too expensive as well.

That arguement is so wrong

[bogie]

Jesus Chr*st that is NOT captialism. MS being an monopoly CANNOT sell it's products for $1 each in order to keep competitors from entering its market. That is illegal plain and simple.

Your vision of what captialism is is whacked. The worst thing that can happen in a capitialist market is one company gaining complete control. Sorry but being a strong advocate of capitialism myself I see this as among the worst things any company could do to maintain a monopoly.

If it's dumping, Linux distros are more guilty

[JoeBuck]

You'd lose the case, because about $50 is what MS charges companies like Dell per copy when they buy in bulk. Their lawyers would say that this is the fair value, and the rest is markup for the retail distribution system. Pretty high markup, but hardly unprecedented.

In any case, if Microsoft can be accused of dumping for charging $50 for their software, couldn't a case be made against Red Hat for providing free ISO downloads? Isn't that dumping? It costs more than $0 to provide that service, so they are clearly dumping it.