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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?"
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.
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.
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.
With a car you can kill yourself, the people travelling with you, and a good number of pedestrians along the way.
And the worst my mom can do with her computer is install spyware by accident, lose her e-mail archive and *.DOC with recipes she collects.
So paint me skeptical about your conclusions there. It's easy to be so demanding if you're well versed in computing, but things look in a different way if you're just not that well informed, or can't learn well enough (like elderly users).
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
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.