Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Is the Dell/Microsoft Alliance Fracturing?

Posted by Cliff on from the holiday-speculation dept.

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?"

5 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Microsoft Tax by ottothecow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  2. Firefox preinstalled in EU - At MSFT's request... by Gilatrout · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. No OS installed by jarek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  4. Re:Theories? by aralin · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I think Dell has a smart management team. They realise that they are a market leader in hardware, and the balance of power is shifting.

    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.
  5. Microsoft tax is probably negative. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I worked for a software company that had a pretty big business in paying OEMs to pre-install crippleware and share back the revenue made off of upgrades.


    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.