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Is the Dell/Microsoft Alliance Fracturing?
An anonymous reader asks: "Dell has historically been the most loyal of all Microsoft's partners. Even today, it is very difficult to avoid paying the Microsoft tax on most of Dell's desktops and notebooks. Recently, two things have made the news where Dell is not toeing the Microsoft line. First, was the announcement that Dell is trialling shipping desktop and notebook PCs in the UK with Firefox as the default browser, instead of IE (announcement confirmed here). Today we have news that Dell is not going to support HD-DVD, despite reported incentives that recently induced HP to do so. So, what are some theories as to why Dell has lately been less of a friend to Microsoft, and what does this mean for the future? Does it mean that it might soon become possible to order Dell's full line of personal systems with Linux installed, or no OS/FreeDOS to save the Microsoft tax?"
Especially when if you are crafty and willing to spend time/go to small claims court, you can get the entire retail price of XP refunded to you (just think of it like a mail in rebate on top of the price of the dell)
Bottles.
Apple-Intel-Dells (I know the OS is Mac, but I couldn't resist) Apple is on the blu-ray foundation and is switching to Intel chipsets, Dell is the largest consumer of Intel chips, Dell has an established 'PC' friendly name that is basically a 'go to' for the direct purchase pc order industry. This has the makings of a win-win-win situation, provided that Apple gets the final veto on all computer/peripheral designs.
What are the odds?
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
Of course they want to use firefox! It will save them a fortune in support calls.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Your right. Sorry about that.
User-friendlyness not only depends on the interface but also how fool-proof is the software. It is a difficult ballance between keeping people who don't know what their doing away, while allowing those who do to work. In some ways, I think Microsoft has managed to do this (at least they provide a link allowing users to look at the files), but I think that there is still more to be desired. My own personal suggestion would be to make a user that only has certain privilidges like mounting and apt-get'ing (if you are using Debian or something similar). If you installed GNU/Linux for a friend, offer them some technical support, and don't tell them about root. Let them figure it out for themselves. When they do, they will probably be smart enough not to delete the files.
It's more than that -- in the long term, Microsoft doesn't want the general-purpose personal computer to exist at all. They want to replace everything with locked-down, XBox 360-like "appliances" running everything as software-as-a-service with a recurring (monthly, pay-per-use, etc.) fee. Most importantly, they don't want it to be able to run anything they don't approve of (AKA "Trust"), such as Free Software.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Consider the fact that MS is in pretty warm water in the EU. It does not take a huge leap for MS to put a bug in Dell's ear to preinstall Firefox. It doesn't cost them anything. Windows is still installed, and paid for, and Firefox is no threat to Windows. Firefox drives 0 users away from Windows. So if it makes the EU happy, then it makes MS happy too.
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Dell in Sweden allready ships laptops with no OS installed. We recently bought two. I only asked the sales rep which laptops works best with linux. They suggested a model (latitude D610) and shipped. I actually expected there would be some MS stuff installed but when I powered them up they turned out to be empty. Quite lovely. They both now run Ubuntu. I had to work a few minutes to get native screen resolution though. /jarek
I think this is exactly the reason. What you need to realise is that half of M$ income is comming from the M$ Office package. What would happen to this if Dell would, for example, decide to preinstall OpenOffice.org 2.0 on all the new customer machines as a value add? Why wouldn't they? I think the next five years will see a dramatic changes in the power distribution thanks to this one bargaining chip.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
This amounted to a pretty big subsidy for the Windows versions of computers; and if you add up all the software companies doing this game, I bet it vastly exceeds the cost of windows.
Until the crippleware subsidy industry gets as big for Linux, I expect you'll always see the OEMs prefer Windows.