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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.
Is it even possible for software to be subject to "dumping" laws? Doesnt the product need to be sold for less than it's manufacturing cost? Sorry if i am misinformed.
This sounds as if a lot of users bought Lindows thinking it was Windows (the average walmart user isnt going to realize there is a huge difference) and then wondered why [insert game name here] didn't work,
the average user is only influenced by price, they dont care if its closed or open source just wether it works and runs all the latest games etc,
this confusion can only get worse, but then what did Lindows expect ? they purposley named their product as close as they could to their biggest competitor (by 1 letter no less)
you get what you pay for
Everyone should expect to see small things like this begin to trickle out of Microsoft over the coming few years--they're seeing that the slow push of lost market share is starting to hurt them. Add in the fact that whole COUNTRIES are deliberately dumping Windows (Germany, India), and they're going to start resorting to things like this which will put a hit over time onto their massive cash reserves of $40 billion. You can compare it to the TV networks and their endless pathetic grabs for ratings with reality TV--they're desperate, hungry, and scared, but won't admit that they're losing the battle to cable television. Does anyone really think Bill Gates will hold a press conferance saying "Linux has us by the balls, in the long term"? No; we'll get things like this, quiet little sad grabs for market share.
Dude, where's my packet?
Some of Linux's purported advantages over Microsoft are:
1. Lower licensing fees ($0).
2. Freedom from proprietary encumberment
3. Better security
4. More rapid bug fixes
5. Community support
It just sounds like Microsoft has chosen to compete on the first point. It's really only monopolistic behavior *if* they try to force deals by taking unfair advantage of their monopoly position. Competing on price is not that.
Or you read that with a Lindows box, you can get XP for $50 rather than $200. Assuming that Lindows costs less than $150, this is an extremely good deal! Looks like a good way to get Windows users to try out Linux ;-)
IIRC with WinXP you are only purchasing a subscription for a year or so. So, assuming that and no price hikes, if the effective life of your system is 3 years, then $50 / year is still $150 and for 5 years it's $250.
At least with Lindows, its yours, you own your copy. Not only that with, with Lindows you retain the right to continue to access your data
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Assuming the article is true, MS is specifically offering deep discounts on WinXP to those who have bought Lindows computers, not to the general public. This would obviously target those who are sitting on the fence with respect to Linux and try to herd them back into the MS camp. This would have the effect of cutting into Lindows' $99/year "click and run" subscription revenue stream and hopefully drive Lindows into bankruptcy. Does "We're going to cut off their air supply" ring any bells?
Not sure how the law is in the UK but in the US you can buy OEM copies of software as long as you buy "hardware" with it. One store I go to defines "hardware" as something as simple as a CPU fan. I imagine this is pretty legitimate, as this store is well-known in the area and has been operating for a number of years.
Windows XP for $50.00 wouldn't surprise me. Here at The University of Akron, the students and faculty can buy a University copy of Windows and/or Office XP for $20.00. That's actually expensive, seeing as just over a year ago I purchased Windows 2k for $10.00. Obviously when Microsoft wants to push its product in a certain market it is willing to kill its profit margins. And I agree with many of you - I don't like it. Reminds me of Apple and the way they pushed themselves into the education market. That combined with a techno-stupid administration meant I had to grow up in a school district saturated with useless computers that weren't compatible with what I had at home. Also - as stated above, I can see where people who purchase Lindows machines would want "what everyone else has". My family, for instance, would not be able to handle the differences and technical issues. Well - they would - it would just mean I'd be spending all my free time playing "volunteer technical support guy"...screw that! And really I'm included in that group. I still run Windows on my main box. It's just easy. I don't have to worry about dependencies and software issues - I just click and go. It's easy, convenient, and to many people it is worth the $50.00. Is it ugly business practice - hell yeah! - but who's going to stop them?
I submitted this story 2 days back. 2003-06-08 15:11:43 Microsoft wooing TigerDirect with cheaper software (articles,microsoft)-(rejected)
....(articles, microsoft)-(rejected)
/. worthy? It really pisses you off when you put all that work in, only to receive the harsh words "rejected" without any reason given.
Heh, same here...I've have 2 articles rejected. Although the editors may have reasons for rejecting articles, Slashdot really needs a better way to handle rejection. You find a great story, research it for authenticity or dupes, then find alternate links, and finally write up a paragraph with good HTML and perfect grammer. After all this, you recieve this notice:
"..don't gripe, you'll get you modded down..."
Another example of Slashdot editor's lack of professionalism. They need to tell us why was it rejected. Not catchy enough? Someone already submitted it? Not
Slashdot should have a section titled "rejected stories". It'd contain all the rejected stories submitted to the editors that day. I'd love to see those! Sure, some will suck and some will be dupes, but there's all those rare gems of stories we'll never get to see.
Assuming you're not trolling...it's called capitalism, pure and simple. Microsoft is finally competing on price, not on draconian licensing agreements with resellers and OEMs.
Most of us that use Linux are looking for stability and power, and that's something Microsoft can't offer. The rest of us that use systems like LindowsOS or another flavor with a GUI are users who like stability, power AND an easy to use interface. I was born and raised on a command line, but there are times when I just like to "click and run".
Have you hugged your penguin today?
My less-technically-inclined parents are begging me to put Linux on their computer.
Why?
Because their Windows system has hosed itself or been wiped out by viruses and trojan horses four times in the last year or two. Every time they get it all working again, suddenly they have an infestation of pop-up penis enlargement ads, or everyone they know starts getting e-mailed virus file attachments. Even when Windows is not obviously hosed, it tends to crash and otherwise behave erratically, because they're not technically astute, so they don't know how to tune Windows to be reliable.
They only use the computer for e-mail, web, word processing, spreadsheet, and other simple tasks that can easily be handled with open source software. They only occasionally need to exchange documents with other people, and OpenOffice's compatibility will be fine for that purpose.
What they want is a computer that's reliable--both in the sense of not crashing, and in the sense of continuing to work without being reinstalled every six months. Not having to pay Microsoft annual fees is merely a bonus.
So I'm gonna give 'em Xandros, just on the off chance that they really do still need one or two pieces of Windows software. If they don't, they've got a Debian system, so it's all good. I'll set up a bunch of Debian mirrors for dselect/apt, and when my dad wants a piece of software to do whatever, I'll tell him to open a terminal window and type apt-get install [whatever]. If there's a security problem, I'll tell him to do apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade. In fact, I'll probably set up an icon on the desktop to do it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
You're running windows 2000 Pro on 128 MB Ram? That's how much memory you get with the $200 model (which is actually $220 months ago, and now with a rebate, at TigerDirect).
Citrix is for windows.
Here's my experience:
I bought the lindows $220 boxes through TigerDirect. I had an account already at TigerDirect. I could have saved $20 by buying through walmart instead, but then I'd get a slower celery processor, instead of the 1.3 Ghz Duron I got from TigerDirect. And I'd have to release personal info to another company, walmart, and their privacy policy sucks, and they also collect sales tax in my state.
While the hard drive was advertised as 10 GB, my boxes formatted out to 13.9 GB.
What am I using them for? I didn't try to put citrix or win2000 on them, especially not with 128MB of Ram. I got rid of Lindows immediately, and installed suse 8.0 on them. I've recently upgraded to 8.1 on one box, and will be finally upgrading them to debian, afterwhich the upgrades will be automatic and perpetual. They are happily file and print serving, serving web sites with apache, serving music and video files on the lan, serving a database, and more.
I have a friend who's installing them in his lab as terminals for his workers. At $220 plus shipping, it's a joke. He's ditching the DOS 6.0, windows for workgroups 3.11, and novell 2.0/upnetone database server. Someone else is porting the upnetone database to MySQL, and I'm helping with the terminals, file/print server, database server, remote X server, and related installations. After lengthy testing, everything has been working flawlessly with a few users and dummy database data. The setup is a one dual processor box that will run all the server software (he already bought the box from ebay with a new novell license for their latest release, don't know the number), and 37 of the Lindows boxes for the employees (a spare for emergencies/backup, plus some boxes that will be running software related to his laboratory without users, he has less than 30 employees).
It's a little retarded to run citrix/windows 2000 on the stock lindows boxes. As terminals for remote X from a server, that's the sweet spot for these boxes. And for loads using linux, (not citrix) that would rival a much beefier box running windows 2000.
And the wildcard is going to be the knoppix distro with the openMosix patch. I can't wait to try this out on my gaggle of Lindows boxes. Thanks to this new distro (knoppix/openMosix), I'm putting everything on one Lindows server (apache, MySQL, mail, dns, music, and more) and will be connecting additional boxes to this one, via the openMosix cluster patch. And the additional boxes will be set up to be backups of the main box. So I'll have a web/database/mail/dns/etc cluster of debian-based/openMosix boxes.
I've run the TigerDirect/Lindows boxes (using suse) for many months as apache web servers, and they've hummed along without any problems, never requiring a reboot, shutdown, or crashing. And my local linux group uses them for student training, since they require the students to purchase the computers before starting the Linux 1 class they teach. They are priced right for me, and for the classes, and when the students are done with the classes, they leave with a fully functioning server on their hands that they can administer themselves. The satisfaction has been high in the classes with these boxes, and we haven't run into any problems installing suse, slackware, and other distros on them (the manufacturer does futz with the bios a bit, making it hard to boot from the cd, but you have to play with the settings and reboot a few times to overwrite the Lindows software).
One good tip would be, don't buy the lindows boxes if you are going to use them for citrix/windows. Buy them if you are going to use them for their intended purpose: flawlessly running a linux os with incredible uptimes, stability, and value.
FYI, MIcrosoft discloses costs by business line Windows and Office have total costs in the 20% range, variable costs are probably about 50%-75% of those total costs. Anti-trust dumping is considered selling below marginal or variable costs (since no business person acting rationally would continue to operate if they were unable to meet variable costs, unless they were acting anti-competitively), but the courts often use average cost because it's easier to measure. Anti-trust dumping is usually only used in a specific market, but I don't think there have been many cases that had dumping at the focus after Standard Oil. Most modern anti-trust cases deal with tying or other more subtle methods of monopolizing an industry.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
If you've installed windows you've probably violated the EULA.
EULA's don't mean much in the EU.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I want to see what happens when the large OEMs demand the same pricing. The pressure for M$ to discount had to be really high, especially for them to offer such a deal to TigerDirect knowing full well that larger customers would squawk.
In ancient times, the OEMs were bullied into doing whatever Redmond said, lest they be cast aside from the DOS/Windows herd. The ultimate effect of this little exercise is to show the OEMs how much power they have. Just start talking about Linux, and wait for the discounts. Wait another 6 months and you might see M$ paying the OEMs to pre-install the product.
The silly thing is that if they do this, then the quality of submissions will eventually go up because people will start to understand what makes a good submission. I'm sure that 20% of the Slashdot crowd submit 80% of the articles anyway.
Slashdot should have a section titled "rejected stories". It'd contain all the rejected stories submitted to the editors that day. I'd love to see those! Sure, some will suck and some will be dupes, but there's all those rare gems of stories we'll never get to see.
Agreed! This means that you get a different view on the stuff being posted - not just what the Slashdot editors like and dislike. Also, if it had the reason why it was rejected - you can understand what makes a good submission and so the quality of submissions will go up.
Finally, something I put in sourceforge idea tracker was that they should only show the "Submit" button when you've previewed at least once. This will force people to preview, close any open tags and generally think a little more about their comment. It also serves to piss off slightly more the "First Post!" trolls.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
>> Legislatures make laws, not companies.
Yeah. This is true. But with big companies lobbying (and owning) congress the way they do, this might not be true for long...
RIAA, MPAA ???
Huh?
I'd say about 90% of those pc's will not be powerful enough to even boot XP nor run very fast.. so the users will just switch back to Lindows.
Both specify "must be purchased with hardware" which is apparently related to the deal they have with Microsoft. This is probably intended to be sold to people building their own computers, as that's the primary business of the referenced site, so Microsoft's 'with hardware' clause may have been intended to mean a processor and motherboard etc... but a $5 cable satisfies the formal requirement.
The $93 price has been pretty constant at that site at least a year, so the $50 price mentioned in the article doesn't seem like the dramatic, unusual thing the article's author claims it is. I suspect the low price for 'purchase with hardware' there is for similar reasons to the Lindows case- people who build their own computers have to actually choose Windows instead of having it preinstalled for them, and there are SuSE and RedHat distributions sold at the same site. In a competitive sales environment, the price of Windows goes down.
> A EULA is not a law.
Granted
> Legislatures make laws, not companies
But wha!? Where have you been living the past 10 years??
Look at all the laws bought by companys...
Copyright, DMCA, all drug laws, any law that involves the internet (generally having the word 'cyber' in it) that is obviously different from its real world counter-part law, any/all deregulation laws... The list goes on and on.
Then on top of it, there are three types of lawsuits all handled differently.
Person vs person. Company vs person. and Company vs company.
They are all handled Very differently in reality.
Person vs person = Generally this is the only way our legal system works as it was intended.
Company vs Company = whichever has the largest legal team wins.
Company vs person = company always wins.
You dont think this wasnt encouraged and backed by companys to keep this aragement?
Copyright has been changed by companys (one company, disney, mainly) so a company doesnt have to pay for copyright and can keep their works forever.
Drug laws were created purely for racist segragation (The white christian government didnt like the fact other countrys workers used a standard drug, wanted those workers gone to make more jobs for said white christian workers, and so made outlaws of the group by making the comon drug of the time illegal)
They are currently enforced because, for example, if weed was legal, the entire oil business would pretty much go away, as hemp oils burn over 50% cleaner and are way over 10 times cheaper to produce, plus will never go away as the case with oils refined from ore. (Just one example, there are many others)
All the laws that already have real world counterparts but because it now involves the internet its somehow different.
If I stole a CD from a store, i get a fine, and on my 2nd offence MAYBE a day or two of jail time. If i download the same data from the internet, its somehow changed into 5 years of prison time and $10,000 per song.
Deregulation laws. Yes, basically in english they all read identical:
"If you can make a better product than I do, cheaper, we will sue you for preventing us from making money" (See airlines, phone company, sony, etc)
Any law that only helps a small minority while at the same time hurting the entire majority is most likely made by a company and bought.
That pretty much describes all of the laws passed in the past few years...
Sad but true *shrug*