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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.
If you had bought a Lindows system, why would you wanna buy XP. You've obviously made a choice not to buy windows.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I mean, do we *really* want Lindows to be the thing the masses at large associate with linux, or alternative OSes in general?
Machine9dotNet
Like the friendly neighborhood drug dealer, Bill says, "Here, have this first taste on me..."
Price dumping implies Microsoft is selling it below cost. It costs far less than $50 to produce a WindowsXP CD.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
So, the main competitor to M$ 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.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Now, this might be right and it might not be. But I wouldn't take Michael Robertson as a reliable source on things Microsoft related, particulary with (at this point) no evidence to back him up. The man who put up a large sum of money to effectively sponsor the XBox hacking competition doesn't seem to be especially objective.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
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!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Maybe we should pool our resources so we can offer a cheap version of Linux to people who buy systems with Windows XP!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
This product called Linux is offered for FREE for users of Windows.
Now that, my friends, is price dumping.
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?
No surprise that TigerDirect would do something like this. Bill is probably giving them a hefty profit margin on the sales too. TigerDirect would sell their own mother into slavery if it would turn a profit. About 6 years ago I bought some rinky-dink thing from them and got on their spam-list. Ever since then, I get spam about once a day from them. No matter what I do, phone, email, snail-mail, "unsubscribe" via their web server - nothing will get me off the list.
Not only that, but they sell (er, "Rent") their spam list to other spammers. I know this because I have my own domain, so I can track who does what with my addresses - for example, amazon thinks my address is amazon@mydomain.com and tigerdirect things I am tigerdirect@mydomain.com - so when I start getting non-tigerdirect email sent to tigerdirect@mydomain.com I know they gave away my address. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill has bought a list of TigerDirect's lindows customers to use for targetted FUD. Hell, if he has their email addresses, they may end up being the recipient of the world's first linux email trojan...
I've long since put any mail addressed to tigerdirect@mydomain.com into a direct-to-devnull kill filter, but according to my logs they still keep sending me crap. Don't trust them for a minute.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I recently bought a bare bones, no-OS system from tigerdirect. I later received a survey from them via email that was a thinly veiled survey direct from Microsoft. They offered an $80 gift certificate off the purchase of XP if you filled it out. I filled it out anyway. It basically asked what OS you use, how many computers you have, what word processing program you use, and why (i.e. price, performance, features, etc.)
For several days, the Ars crowd has been discussing this. The discussion is worth reading through
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.
There have been a lot of posts claiming that Microsoft is "dumping" XP on the market at below cost to drive away competition. There is a problem with this: as another poster has mentioned, "dumping" is defined as selling an item below the variable cost (i.e. per-unit cost). A full XP box set costs less than $50 to produce, so this is not "dumping."
Secondly, Microsoft is doing exactly what every company does when presented with competition: they are lowering their prices. They see Lindows as a competing product to their own, so they are lowering the price. Now, their ability to offer that discount only to buyers of Lindows machines is a result of a tool called "price discrimination." Under perfect price discrimination, each consumer of a product would be charged exactly the maximum that he is willing to pay for the product. There is nothing inherently bad about this, it simply creates several prices for a single product, similar to what Amazon was accused of doing in an earlier article here.
Microsoft has simply lowered the price of XP to customers of Lindows only, because they know that other consumers will continue to pay the higher price. This is textbook price discrimination and nothing more.
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?
no conspiracy here. Just the simple fact that OEMs pay less for Windows than Joe Schmoe would at retail.
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.
Not many people know of the the wintergreensys.com connection with Lindows and Tigerdirect.
... back in October wintergreen started making budget PCs similiar to Microtel/Walmart machines ... but with a Duron processor,modem,and floppy drive. Making money on these machine is hard due to the almost non-existant margins. Needless to say the quality of these machines was poor ... and due to the inexperience of the manufacturer the quality control was poor. This all equates to one of the highest return rates that Tiger Direct ever had for a system ... though the hardware and software problems are lumped together in that rate ... the excessive hardware problems helped to inflate that number alot. Over time the hardware situation has improved greatly and the system that wintergreen put out are much less likely to fail. But all of this has left a bad taste in Tiger's mouth. Another thing you have to understand is that Tiger Direct gets money for promoting a product ... Lindows hasn't paid and left a prime positiion open for Mircosoft. Microsoft has given money to Tiger in return Tiger will give the names of past Wintergreen/Lindows system owners and send them a rebate for XP home to put on there machines. So that is some history directly from a Wintergreen employee.
A little history
This is what Micheal had to say about microsoft paying off TigerDirect:
After my expose piece on Microsoft last week, I promised one reader that I wouldn't write about Microsoft again for awhile. Unfortunately, I think I have to break my promise and here's why: As I've written about previously, the real key to desktop Linux gaining momentum is to get retailers to sell computers with Linux preinstalled. Sure, some people are smart enough to download software from our web servers then burn a CD and install it, but the majority of people want to buy a computer, plug it in and have it ready to go. Getting Linux computers onto store shelves sounds easy -- what store wouldn't want to stock computers for $200-300? (I just bought a computer for $249 and upgraded the RAM from 128MBs to 256MBs for 30 bucks and it is a solid little performer!) Consumers really want affordable computers and any retailer who stocks them sells large quantities of them. It seems like it would be an easy decision, right?
There's one additional dynamic that comes into the equation - Microsoft's money to discourage retailers who start selling large numbers of LindowsOS computers. Microsoft routinely offers financial inducements to computer companies to not carry LindowsOS computers. With $40 billion in the bank, it's an easy decision for them to use a few million dollars to block Lindows.com from major retailers. Every month that Microsoft keeps their monopoly position, it is another billion or so in profit. You've probably heard rumors of such behavior in the past and maybe you're skeptical because the tales are, not surprisingly, light on facts. So allow me to give you the facts from one such retailer to convince you.
LindowsOS computers have been available from TigerDirect, a popular mail order technology business, run by a savvy CEO, Gilbert Fiorentino. After selling thousands of LindowsOS computers in the last few months, TigerDirect describes their experience with LindowsOS in their most recent catalog, saying they have found it to be "faster, leaner, and more stable than Microsoft Windows," mentioning how "...LindowsOS never crashed, even in extreme testing situations," and then go on to say that they are "more enthusiastic about the LindowsOS than ever."
We've met with TigerDirect in the past and they've remarked what great sellers the LindowsOS computers have been for them and how they were surprised at the demand for Microsoft alternatives. However, at these same meetings, they talked to us about e-mails and phone calls from Microsoft attempting to bribe them to stop selling LindowsOS computers.
While TigerDirect has resisted Microsoft's pressures in the past, recently Microsoft has stepped up orders to their staffers to increase the financial incentives to impede LindowsOS sales at TigerDirect. At some point, Microsoft's monetary inducements become so large that it makes economic sense for just about any retailer to abandon LindowsOS - no matter how many computers they might be selling. TigerDirect is in the business to make a profit and if Microsoft will guarantee them a profit, nobody can begrudge them for taking it.
Microsoft's latest offers to TigerDirect are extremely lucrative and I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately cave to Microsoft's pocketbook. Microsoft is giving TigerDirect unheard of discounts on Microsoft software, allowing them to sell Microsoft Windows XP for just $50 to all of their customers who have purchased LindowsOS computers. TigerDirect is paying less for some copies of Microsoft Windows XP than even the largest Microsoft customers like Dell. Besides radically discounting their software, Microsoft is agreeing to spend a lot of marketing dollars to advertise their products through TigerDirect and more specifically to past LindowsOS computer buyers. Additionally, Microsoft is paying TigerDirect to collect market research on Li
Jesus Chr*st that is NOT captialism. MS being an monopoly CANNOT sell it's products for $1 each in order to keep competitors from entering its market. That is illegal plain and simple.
Your vision of what captialism is is whacked. The worst thing that can happen in a capitialist market is one company gaining complete control. Sorry but being a strong advocate of capitialism myself I see this as among the worst things any company could do to maintain a monopoly.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I want to see what happens when the large OEMs demand the same pricing. The pressure for M$ 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.
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.