Is There An OS On My Hard Drive?

stm2 writes "Thanks to an agreement between Lindows and Seagate, from October you will be able to choose a hard drive with or without Lindows. Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water", because now you get for free something you used to need to go after (people used to go to dentist to get their Fluoride). According to the PR, the OS can autodetect and configure itself on the host machine."

Comments

Unanswered question...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Just how much does this agreement add to the price of a Seagate drive?

Either there are two versions of every such drive - one with Lindows on it and one without - or the software is there to be installed on all of them.

In the former case, the price premium for LindowsHD is clear, in the latter case it's hidden but not non-existant - Lindows hasn't given away its technology for free yet and I doubt it's starting to do that now.

Even if Lindows isn't charging Seagate for the software itself (perhaps because it's hoping to sell subscriptions, using the razor/razor blades business model), there's an associated cost for actually making sure the software's on the hard drives.

And who pays this cost? Well, at the end of the day, it's the end customer. That's fine and dandy if that software's of some use to you but it's not so great if you're never going to run Lindows. And, if that's the case, why not just stick the damned software on a CD or two and send it to anyone who's interested rather than come up with some zany (but far from novel) marketing scheme to shift a few more hard drives and/or Lindows subsriptions?

Am I the only one who thinks that the strategy behind this "strategic alliance" is flawed?

Re:To clarify

[HanzoSan]

Shouldnt it be Lindow's job to test it before they certify it?

Its absolute genius. Wait for the next MSblaster

[HanzoSan]

When the next round of viruses and trojans destroy peoples harddrives forcing them to upgrade, alot of people may not mind Lindows.

Consider the fact people didnt rush to take WindowsXP off their machine to use Windows95(which was more compatible) why do you figure people will remove Lindows?

But flouride is considered harmful when injested!

[Baloo Ursidae]

Most of the major water systems in Oregon opted against flouridating their water. Good thing, too: It turns out while flouride helps your teeth when directly applied like in flouride treatments you get at the dentist or in toothpaste, it's carcinogenic when injested. I'll follow up if I can find the studies into this again (they were published in all the papers around the time the City of Beaverton, Oregon ran a measure to flouridate the water (it failed by a narrow margin and was the only thing on the news for about six weeks before ballots were due), but drinking flouridated water is a lot like smoking with your digestive tract in terms of increased risk of cancer, with nearly zero effect on dental hygeine.

Microsoft's software would be the one best associated with flouridated water: Almost everybody has it, nobody in their right mind would use it. If Lindows really wants to make such a dubious claim, they can go right ahead, but it's not one I would make for good PR.