Not so much Anti-trust, but shareholder lawsuits. A director at Disney can't just throw business to Apple because he owns a stake in both companies -- if the hand isn't played perfectly, other shareholders at Disney will be quite angry.
Another nice feature of Windows 98 is that you could hold down F8 during startup, and it would only use 100KB or so of RAM! -- Yet you could still run top-notch productivity applications! Clearly Windows 98 is vastly superior to Linux in resource usage.
I've got some PII class notebooks running Windows 2000 just wonderfully, even in ~128M memory.
This would have been pretty high-end hardware when Windows 2000 came out. I ran it as my day-to-day OS on a Pentium-133, and even that isn't all that impressive.
It's nice that you can cutdown your window manager to W2K-like levels (or below), but try finding something with the features and footprint of MS Office 2000.
In most companies I've seen, most users don't really interact with the Windows desktop anyway... they usually have some weird, awfully designed GUI running fullscreen or maximised when they log in, and it encompasses everything they do.
You clearly have not seen enough companies to be commenting on this.
The word on the street is that Dell pays Microsoft per unit sold, regardless of what you get from them.
Yeah right. I'll bet your "inside sources" are a bunch of slashdot conspiracy theory dumbasses. Microsoft has been legally prohibited from doing this since 1993.
I'm not absolving people of responsibility, but if you think that they are going to say "oh, it was my fault for not reading the dialog box full of legal mumbojumpo", you're kidding yourself.
Dell also offers most of their desktop machines as "bare" (FreeDOS).
I don't know if that means all that much. Once they have absorbed the startup costs of "Open Source Desktops", there is not much cost in offering additional models in that configuration (especially because they are nearly identical internally).
Let's summarize those 13 points: "Most people want Windows on their computers. Therefore, only buy these if you are really certain you don't want Windows."
Is anyone here going to argue with that? Ultimately Dell doesn't care, they're just moving boxes.
Dell recommends Windows XP Professional.
Even "IBM Recommends Windows XP Professional". Gotta get the OEM discount.
No, I'm saying that in general, (signed bands) are much better than (unsigned bands) because (unsigned bands) include a ton of shit. Sure, ocassionally you'll walk into a bar and buy a unsigned band's CD, but I'll bet most of the music you listen to is on a label of some sort.
Actually, Dell workstations generally offer a direct-choice between Windows and RHEL Linux, and the prices are exactly the same (except for the fact that RHEL subscriptions are more expensive than Windows).
Dell also offers most of their desktop machines as "bare" (FreeDOS). These are the machines that are "buried" on the website. Sometimes these machines are cheaper than the Windows versions, sometimes the same, sometimes more expensive. Apparently this is because vendors like Real pay Dell to bundle their software.
Anyone who thinks the price disparity is due to MS kickbacks is on crack, because such a practice is totally outlawed by the antitrust decree.
History: Microsoft was shipping WfW and NT with TCP/IP in 1994, and IBM didn't match them until 1996 or 97 with "Warp Client". This was due to some fucked up internal IBM politics where they were hoping that LANs would go away if OS/2 ignored them.
IBM had a full netboot system around then for managed PCs. This was more useful to them than trying to convince consumers that a fugly "object desktop" and craptastic web-browser was useful to them.
All information is biased, so that is a non-statement. And it doesn't stop me from calling out claims that Linux is bigger than MacOS as stupid and wrong. Linux is a invisible spot of nothingness in the desktop market.
The Shit/Size ratio is exactly how "better" is defined in this argument.
Once you get up to around 256kbps there's no huge difference between any of them -- the reason OGG/WMA/AAC are considered "better" is because you can get away with a 128Kps or less file in some circumstances.
> Without any f***ing help from any f***ing music label.
The problem is that there are so many bands and musicians that it's nearly impossible to come to a decision without some editorial process involved. Remember the old MP3.com? Living fucking hell.
The editoral process that happens to be in use is called a "music label". Basically the market has to pay someone to filter out all the crap or nobody would listen to anything at all. The process isn't perfect, and downright sucks at times, but your alternative is useless.
The free software comparison were those old SUSE distros that came with 12 versions of "Notepad". Most people have better things to do, so eventually distros wised up and picked one or two.
Eh, while Linux has a lot of "counterculture" users right now, the future of the Linux desktop is super-managed PCs in large corporations and governments. Forget any sort of consumer or small business marketshare - it just ain't happening anytime soon.
Desktop Linux is sort of a new OS/2 -- they tried to pretend it was cool with "WaRp", but the reality was the only people who bought it were stodgy banks and insurance companies trying to keep PCs under lock-and-key. Doesn't play music? That's a feature.
But, by every reasonable estimate I have seen, world-wide desktop use of Linux is easily larger than that of Apple.
This is plainly false. Web statistics (which are a "reasonable" way to estimate desktop installedbase) show Linux at around 0.5% and Mac at 2%-3% (in line with Apple sales statistics).
[Yeah, yeah Linux users are so "saavy" that 80% of them are editing firefox config files to change their UA string. Whatever.]
Not to mention, as the whole "Linux Gaming" experiment showed, most of those "Linux" users have a Windows install readily available and thus don't represent a distinct purchasing market that could be targetted by ISVs, including online music services such as Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
and there's no worries about anti-trust.
Not so much Anti-trust, but shareholder lawsuits. A director at Disney can't just throw business to Apple because he owns a stake in both companies -- if the hand isn't played perfectly, other shareholders at Disney will be quite angry.
Another nice feature of Windows 98 is that you could hold down F8 during startup, and it would only use 100KB or so of RAM! -- Yet you could still run top-notch productivity applications! Clearly Windows 98 is vastly superior to Linux in resource usage.
I've got some PII class notebooks running Windows 2000 just wonderfully, even in ~128M memory.
This would have been pretty high-end hardware when Windows 2000 came out. I ran it as my day-to-day OS on a Pentium-133, and even that isn't all that impressive.
It's nice that you can cutdown your window manager to W2K-like levels (or below), but try finding something with the features and footprint of MS Office 2000.
In most companies I've seen, most users don't really interact with the Windows desktop anyway... they usually have some weird, awfully designed GUI running fullscreen or maximised when they log in, and it encompasses everything they do.
You clearly have not seen enough companies to be commenting on this.
The word on the street is that Dell pays Microsoft per unit sold, regardless of what you get from them.
Yeah right. I'll bet your "inside sources" are a bunch of slashdot conspiracy theory dumbasses. Microsoft has been legally prohibited from doing this since 1993.
I'm not absolving people of responsibility, but if you think that they are going to say "oh, it was my fault for not reading the dialog box full of legal mumbojumpo", you're kidding yourself.
Dell also offers most of their desktop machines as "bare" (FreeDOS).
I don't know if that means all that much. Once they have absorbed the startup costs of "Open Source Desktops", there is not much cost in offering additional models in that configuration (especially because they are nearly identical internally).
Let's summarize those 13 points: "Most people want Windows on their computers. Therefore, only buy these if you are really certain you don't want Windows."
Is anyone here going to argue with that? Ultimately Dell doesn't care, they're just moving boxes.
Dell recommends Windows XP Professional.
Even "IBM Recommends Windows XP Professional". Gotta get the OEM discount.
I would have thought that RedHat would be responsible for configuration support on those machines. Maybe you just called the wrong number.
No, I'm saying that in general, (signed bands) are much better than (unsigned bands) because (unsigned bands) include a ton of shit. Sure, ocassionally you'll walk into a bar and buy a unsigned band's CD, but I'll bet most of the music you listen to is on a label of some sort.
They are called "Open Source Desktops" or "n-Series" -- I see a link right on the Small Business Desktop page.
a spx/desktops_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.
I picked up an old IBM laptop for nothing and it runs linux fine on 192 mb of ram and a pentium 3 400 mhz.
That's a really facinating story, but most people who buy workstations are looking for computational machines and don't care about your old crap.
Actually, Dell workstations generally offer a direct-choice between Windows and RHEL Linux, and the prices are exactly the same (except for the fact that RHEL subscriptions are more expensive than Windows).
Dell also offers most of their desktop machines as "bare" (FreeDOS). These are the machines that are "buried" on the website. Sometimes these machines are cheaper than the Windows versions, sometimes the same, sometimes more expensive. Apparently this is because vendors like Real pay Dell to bundle their software.
Anyone who thinks the price disparity is due to MS kickbacks is on crack, because such a practice is totally outlawed by the antitrust decree.
History: Microsoft was shipping WfW and NT with TCP/IP in 1994, and IBM didn't match them until 1996 or 97 with "Warp Client". This was due to some fucked up internal IBM politics where they were hoping that LANs would go away if OS/2 ignored them.
IBM had a full netboot system around then for managed PCs. This was more useful to them than trying to convince consumers that a fugly "object desktop" and craptastic web-browser was useful to them.
Which to trust?
You now have a different argument than "every reasonable estimate".
Anyway, the actual number doesn't matter, because what counts is "show me the money" (which isn't happening).
All information is biased, so that is a non-statement. And it doesn't stop me from calling out claims that Linux is bigger than MacOS as stupid and wrong. Linux is a invisible spot of nothingness in the desktop market.
OS/2 otherwise had every possible hooks to be really cool.
Except networking. When you look at how OS/2 was actually designed, it was aimed for the Mainframe/SNA big blue bank crowd.
The Shit/Size ratio is exactly how "better" is defined in this argument.
Once you get up to around 256kbps there's no huge difference between any of them -- the reason OGG/WMA/AAC are considered "better" is because you can get away with a 128Kps or less file in some circumstances.
> Without any f***ing help from any f***ing music label.
The problem is that there are so many bands and musicians that it's nearly impossible to come to a decision without some editorial process involved. Remember the old MP3.com? Living fucking hell.
The editoral process that happens to be in use is called a "music label". Basically the market has to pay someone to filter out all the crap or nobody would listen to anything at all. The process isn't perfect, and downright sucks at times, but your alternative is useless.
The free software comparison were those old SUSE distros that came with 12 versions of "Notepad". Most people have better things to do, so eventually distros wised up and picked one or two.
> OGG is better than MP3 in every way.
Marginally better than MP3 (maybe 20%), but hardly better than AAC or WMA.
Not to mention OGG's player requirements are higher, which makes it "worse" in the portable market.
Eh, while Linux has a lot of "counterculture" users right now, the future of the Linux desktop is super-managed PCs in large corporations and governments. Forget any sort of consumer or small business marketshare - it just ain't happening anytime soon.
Desktop Linux is sort of a new OS/2 -- they tried to pretend it was cool with "WaRp", but the reality was the only people who bought it were stodgy banks and insurance companies trying to keep PCs under lock-and-key. Doesn't play music? That's a feature.
But, by every reasonable estimate I have seen, world-wide desktop use of Linux is easily larger than that of Apple.
This is plainly false. Web statistics (which are a "reasonable" way to estimate desktop installedbase) show Linux at around 0.5% and Mac at 2%-3% (in line with Apple sales statistics).
[Yeah, yeah Linux users are so "saavy" that 80% of them are editing firefox config files to change their UA string. Whatever.]
Not to mention, as the whole "Linux Gaming" experiment showed, most of those "Linux" users have a Windows install readily available and thus don't represent a distinct purchasing market that could be targetted by ISVs, including online music services such as Apple.
But that is the problem. Most Linux users are much more saavy and will not tolerate spending money for lossy, DRM-laden music.
This is a nice way of saying "Nobody uses Linux at all, except a few wingnuts with wacko political beliefs".
(Not that I don't have the respect for the Free Software crowd, but let's face it. market-wise Linux basically doesn't exist as a desktop OS.)
> The ITMS launched with the most lax DRM of any store that existed at the time
Apple Propaganda.