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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?"
With the deals that Dell gets, the "Microsoft tax" is about $6. Hardly worth it for them to break up a uniform production process for that kind of money.
...than any other manufacturer. They'll follow the money trail. If they can sell more PCs by no allying tightly with Microsoft, so be it. If they can sell more PCs to the home market by appearing to be best buds with Microsoft, well, they'll do that, too.
Nothing to see here.
"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?"
Sure, it might soon be possible.
the money. I'm sure more people than you (collective) or I at Dell are in the know about something. Perhaps they see the opportunity to ship BluRay drives earlier than if they ship HDDVD drives. If they wait for HDDVD, other OEMs will eat their lunch sitting around waiting for an os that makes an appearance in a year or so. And Firefox shipping is likely due to customer complaints about spyware and malware, enough people complain about something, you save money on tech support by moving to something secure.
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.
Microsoft can't afford to upset Dell. It would be unfortunate for MS if the income stream from Dell dried up, and disastrous if Dell boxes started going out with non-MS software routinely given priority.
Dell, on the other hand, increasingly has viable alternatives to offer and probably an increasing number of customers asking about them, particularly on the Windows vs. $OTHER_OS front. And of course, they can more effectively compete against other workstation and particularly server vendors if they aren't paying the Microsoft tax, and they have more legal shielding than ever against reprisals by MS.
Today, Microsoft is getting a very bad name in some areas, particularly among the techies who probably buy 99% of the Dell servers and a heavy majority of the workstations and support contracts. At a time like that, if you'll forgive the horrible cliches, it pays to know which side your bread's buttered, and not to have all your eggs in one basket.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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,
I don't know about a cohesive theory to tie all of it together, but for the HD-DVD thing, I would suspect Dell's not supporting it because it keeps getting delayed, because they can't seem to get their shit together finalizing the AACS "content protection".
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's famous quote from Cosmos: "Observation: You couldn't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs."
/. do we see "Dell not supporting HD-DVD" --> "DELL MIGHT SPORT LINUX!!!" The economic realities of this situation just won't allow Dell to NOT use Windows. Nobody's going to know what this linux thing is (or, as my sister calls it, "that weird thing"), nor how to use it, and they'll be quite upset when they discover they can't play their games and applications on it.
Call me a cynic, but only on
It's a nice thought, but this is little more than daydreaming.
"Pioneer just released a Blu-ray DVD drive for PC's"
Living up to their name I see.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Today we have news that Dell is not going to support HD-DVD, despite reported incentives that recently induced HP to do so.
First off, this is because Dell is in on the advisory staff that came up with the Blu-ray spec. They have never said "No we are going to sell it", they have only taken the safe road in saying they will stick with their design until the market says otherwise. This probably won't take long since you won't be paying for the patent license at $30 a unit like you will with the Blu-ray product. Not to mention, media will end up costing less for the Microsoft product based upon the same premise.
Yes, Microsoft is trying to get in quick with the incentives, but that is only because they don't have quite the advantage of having Sony on their side. Sony/Dell/and company are going to end up losing out in the long-run for the excessive patent fees. Pair that with Sony being the biggest single contributor to our RIAA pains, and you don't have a great deal of support for the company.
I'm not saying Microsoft is great, just saying they'll be less likely to sue folks for utilizing methods to backup/copy their discs.
Dell is under no obligation to ship IE with their machines
Unless IE has been decoupled with Windows recently without anyone being told, Dell, like everyone else, has no choice in the matter.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
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."
Apple uses software to sell hardware. If Apple licenses it, they give away their reason to exist. I don't think you'll ever see that.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
First off, this is because Dell is in on the advisory staff that came up with the Blu-ray spec. They have never said "No we are going to sell it", they have only taken the safe road in saying they will stick with their design until the market says otherwise. This probably won't take long since you won't be paying for the patent license at $30 a unit like you will with the Blu-ray product. Not to mention, media will end up costing less for the Microsoft product based upon the same premise.
So why do so many people have DVD burners now when CD burners are so cheap? The players cost more, so does the media.
While not quite the same order of magnitude as the difference between DVD and CD storage, Blu-Ray simply offers more storage space than HD-DVD and that makes it much more practical to use as a third-tied backup for things like 400GB drives. That's why I plan to get a Blu-Ray burner soon after they come out. Even if the media and the drives are more expensive, being able to use half the number of discs and half the time (especialy half the time) to do the same backup is a huge draw for computer users.
Now come at it from the media angle. Consumers are not going to buy movies because the PC supports playing that format. When they will do is buy movies when they have a dedicated device, like a DVD player, that will support them. Who is almost guaranteed to have millions on millions of said devices in homes that are not even all early adopters? Sony, with the PS3.
On Microsoft could possibly have the hubris to think they could stop or even slow what is coming, which is a slam-dunk for Sony and Blu-Ray. And they could have done it to if they had delayed the 360 release to include HD-DVD drives in more expensive bundles.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
Yes. Soon. They will also come with a life supply of candy covered chocolate bunnies that will cure cancer and make you smile!
Dell has their own brand in the fire with Sony so it's not at all a surprise they may be bucking MS on this. Because Dell is already probably selling more systems than any other competitor and has more deals with third party makers they aren't going to miss that added "incentive" the IP royalties would mean more to them in the long term than the discount coupons from MS.
But more than that I think it stupid to keep going on about this "Microsoft tax." You can buy a pretty ripping machine from Dell or Gateway or emachines (I mean Gateway) at a very, very good price. These prices are possible because of the huge volume these makers sell, and that volume is possible because everyone knows, no matter how much it may or may not suck, when they get the machine home it will be "familiar" to them and they can go to the gazillion warez and spyware repositories and install whatever crap floats their boat.
Bot more improtantly it's that volume that beckons other OEMs. Third party makers like Adobe and Epson and Norton and others offer Dell and Gateway juicy licensing deals because they know the distribution of their "demos" and their cheapass printers with the ridiculously overpriced ink and paper supplies will benefit them in the long run. So while MS gets paid by Dell, Dell gets paid by Adobe and Epson and Norton. Whether it's money that directly offsets the cost of licensing windows or the cut rate hardware that allows them to make "special deals" that help them blow out thousands of machines at a whack, in the end it's Windows that is driving down the cost of the hardware.
Until there are third party OEMs like Norton and Adobe offering well recognized linux tools that will help sell even more machines, Dell would make LESS on each system by NOT including windows. Twice the support costs (now they have to field both linux and windows calls) but LESS PROFIT. They would have to charge MORE FOR LESS, which is exactly what you see now.
It makes zero sense for Dell to sell bundled linux systems and that isn't going to change until linux has evolved into a "killer brand" in its own right. And that's not going to happen because fo Dell, it's only going to happen because someone, somewhere, develops a desktop that offers something more than windows and does so in a way that is tangible to someone who doesn't spend their life working on this stuff.
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.
It's been known for a while that Dell is building its own operating system. It's a Dell version os Windows, sort of. It is called Delldows.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
the thing with the M$ monopoly is that it has traditionally been that what's right for M$ is (quite deliberately) what's right for Dell, so that's what they've done. With that monopoly weakening every day we'll see more and more of this, particularly as the cost of the hardware continues to drop while the cost of the M$ tax is reasonably static (if not on the rise). Bear in mind also that given that Internet Explorer Sucks (with only 7 days in 2004 without an unpatched, public security hole), this reflects badly on Dell and is likely to be one of their major support costs (imagine how many 'my machine runs 10 times slower now than it did when we got it and i'm constantly harassed by popups' calls they get!). In contrast, Firefox on Windows was 7% unsafe (still a ridiculously high number - this should be very close to zero) - it's a no brainer.
It could be that is the reason for the drift away from MS, either because he wants to make friends with Steve Jobs or a backroom deal has actually already been done.
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.
"People aren't given a fair choice between running the Windows and Linux *OS* since the software,drivers and support for Windows is not available for Linux."
And why is this? Could it be due to the fact that manufacturers are reluctant to expend vast amounts of time and effort supporting a huge number of incompatible distros whose total number of desktop users put together is dwarfed by people still using Windows-95, who those same manufacturers have also stopped supporting?
"It's what we call a vicious circle".
No, it's what's called an insignificant and hopelessly fragmented market. OS X has a similar market share to the sum of desktop Linux, but it is far better supported by hardware and software manufacturers. This would not be the case if there were hundreds of different variants, each incompatible with all the others in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways, with different desktops and window managers, different versions of core libraries, update cycles that are not synchronised with those of any of the other variants, etc., etc. If you want manufacturers to support Linux, then give them a fixed target to aim at, not hundreds of annoyingly different little targets flitting around like starlings in a hurricane.
"Microsoft also uses unethical and possibly illegal deals with OEMs as one of it's many methods of what I and various anti-trust lawyers consider are illegal practices to ensure they maintain their monopoly."
1. The legality or otherwise of deals they made with OEMs has no bearing on anything, because said OEMs would not have been coerced into such deals if there was not a significant consumer demand for Windows. Big companies don't get pushed into positions that aren't favourable to them without having a very good reason for it. In Microsoft's case, it was the fact that consumers were overwhelmingly demanding Windows at a time when it still had several commercial competitors (OS/2, GEM, etc.) that they could also have bundled, but _chose_ to sign exclusive deals with MS instead.
2. Microsoft were convicted of leveraging _an existing monopoly_ in desktop operating systems to obtain monopolies in other sectors. Note the term "existing monopoly", because it is very important. Where did that "existing monopoly" come from? You can't claim it was from DOS, because MS had been trying to push Windows for years to DOS users without any notable success. The turning point came with Windows 3.X, which people started buying in large numbers because it was a compelling product that _they wanted to use_.
"There have in fact been several high profile anti-trust cases that Microsoft have basically lost."
See above. They lost because they illegally used _an existing monopoly_ to establish new ones. They still had to gain that existing monopoly in the first place, and they could not have done so if they were selling something people didn't want.
"It's just that none of the proposals to open up the software market to fair competition and stop the Microsofts monopoly abuses have been successful."
And they won't be, because (a) the law moves far too slowly for a rapidly changing ecosystem like computing, and (b) when legislation gets mixed up with high tech. markets, the end result is almost inevitably worse than if they'd simply left things alone. The current "hand content producers everything they demand, and treat consumers like criminals" trend by Western governments is an excellent example of this.
NB: a lot of Microsoft's success can be traced back to the general incompetence of the competition. Some examples:
1) Apple pissed away a large market share because "professional management" kicked out the original company founders, and then ran things as if there was no difference between selling computers and soda (there is an important one: computers cost a lot more than soda, so people aren't anything like as willing to buy one just to see what it's like).
2. Netscape's founder shot his mouth off about how the browser was the new pla
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.