[JimH443]

Ok, I can see your argument concerning the car example. However, big corporations don't listen to anything but their bottom line. Until that gets hurt, they won't do a thing. That is my point. If it costs, rather than saves, them (whether it be MS or the mfr) money to image hard drives in large batches then maybe they'll stop doing it??


Edit: Besides... in the analogy, the 1.5 liter engine uses the same fittings, mounts, etc that the 455 ci engine uses. The 455 even magically evaporates (offering no impediment) during the installation of the 1.5 liter engine. :)

[WinTard]

The deal is you can buy brand name computers, without any operating system loaded.

Dell qualifies as brand name? It's the number one or two PC manufacturer in the world, based on volume numbers and revenue. And yes, Dell sells more computers than Apple.

In addition to bare-bones, all their industrial strength rack servers, come with various operating system (including Red Hat Linux) loaded optionally. The initial offering is blank. And the same applies to HP and IBM. A noteworthy exception is Apple, but I digress...

Oh, all the aforementioned manufacturers um, manufacture in China, including Apple and even Sun Microsystems or Motorola. The founders of ATI, and nVidia are Chinese. All motherboard manufacturers are Chinese. Now do you understand why I trust clones, and build my own computers from parts (from China, of course) ?

On Dell website, it says "Dell recommends XP or Vista" but you got the choice in the menu as you configure a system.

The point is whatever is on the menu and price list is decided by each manufacturer.

And FOSS offerings, Linux, FreeBSD, & al, are free, thus is the glass half-full or half-empty? Why should any for profit business offer support on something that is free and self-supported? The very definition of business is to offer a service, for renumeration. The anti-thesis of FOSS.

Even though it's based on Linux, Red Hat is a business for profit too... They provide support and accountability for a fee... If you want self-support, get CentOS, a clone of Red Hat. For free! So Dell, HP and IBM do not offer CentOS or the other 100+ free Linux distros. What's the point? But they all offer Red Hat on their enterprise systems.

Basically, all FOSS flavors, mainly run on the industry defacto standard, Intel x86 or compatible (i.e. AMD, and others). Thus answering your question as to what's the deal?

Please google: Results 1 - 10 of about 12,800,000 for centos [definition]. (0.08 seconds)

>www.centos.org - The Community ENTerprise Operating SystemCentOS -- Community ENTerprise Operating System is a free rebuild of source packages freely available from a Prominent North American Enterprise Linux ...
>www.centos.org/ - 40k - Cached - Similar pages
>Downloads
>CentOS-5-i386
>CentOS-5 Documentation
>CentOS-5-x86_64 4 ISOs
>Wiki
>Forums
>Donate

PS: The ad campaign fails, that is why Microsoft is the largest software company in the world. Software engineering isn't like selling Coca-Cola, or Pepsi-Cola... But with the ridiculous Mac ads, now you can see a marketing company at its best! And their resulting market share after 33 years of the finest spin! They cater to the feeble minded, impressionable and unknowledgeable public. Advertising works! Obviously. Sexy car, attractive cheerleaders, nothing under the hood... That's what advertising is all about. Hype, style, spin, illusions... Has anyone noticed the difference between a Big-Mac on the display, and in reality?

[rgreen4]

If you understood a little about business, you would understand that when you sell hundreds of thousands of a particular run of computers, then it is more cost efficient to image large batches of hard drives, probably in the tens of thousands at a time. But when someone wants a system with an OS that has low demand and you sell hundreds, you only image hundreds.

If millions of people were demanding Linux pre-installed on their machines, or even if millions were demanding XP on their machines, the situation would be different, but the're not. If they were, the the Linux market share would be more than 2% and the market share of XP wouldn't be falling.

Everyone thinks that companies sell people what they want the people to buy, but that's not true. The first rule in business is that you sell what the people want, not what you like. Cars are a case in point. Car companies got criticized because the lots were full of large SUV's and Pickup trucks when the price of gas hit $4, and weren't selling fuel efficient cars. Yet a year before they couldn't give away the small cars and had a tough time keeping the SUV's and Pickup trucks in stock. The market did a 180 in the space of two months, and it takes years to change the production mix. Then the credit crunch added insult to injury. Even the much vaunted Toyota with it's Prius had scaled back the production of the Prius and had made the investment to quadruple the production of the Tundra large Pickup truck - just in time for the rapid drop in demand. There's a Toyota dealer near here on I-75, and they have a boat load of Tundra's on their lot facing the Interstate, and the line of trucks isn't getting any shorter.

[Evildave]

What people THINK they want (what the ADVERTISING TOLD THEM TO WANT) is crap. Beyond TV commercials, M$ pays for favorable studies, articles, reviews, etc. They even pay for shills to go around on the web and argue with people about how 'wonderful' all of those Micro$uck products are.

The car companies got BURNED because they built big cars and kept building them even as gas prices threatened to pass $5/gallon.

Then they committed the ultimate marketing sin. They've all announced that they'll make electric cars in a couple of years. Now for some 'mysterious' reason, everyone will put off buying a new car for 'a couple of years'.

Like BIG OIL, Micro$uck is universally loathed.

People only BELIEVE that they don't have a choice but to drive a fossil fuel powered car.

People only BELIEVE that they are stuck with Micro$uck.

Yes, I do know that I can order and configure a barebones PC however I like.

Most people DO NOT know this.

MOST people drive their SUV to the big box store, complaining about gas all the way. They buy big box with a computer inside. They drive the SUV complaining about gas all the way home, get tech support to tell them it needs to be plugged into the power outlet, then complain that M$ Orifice is a demo version or complain that M$ Works doesn't open M$ Office documents, and M$ Office people can't open their documents, and they don't even understand WHY. In a few months, the system will be crawling, and they won't understand THAT, either.

Maybe they go to the car dealer the next day, and see nothing but more big American gas hogs on the lot, too. And tiny 'economy' cars that can't even get 40MPG. And they wonder when they'll be able to get an electric car and stop complaining about fuel prices, too. Too bad those second generation cars will come with Lithium cells, instead of NiMH like the first. Chevron MADE VERY SURE of it. It'll make great press for the oil companies when some people's houses burn down or cars catch fire on the highway. It's all just advertising. Consumers are just herds of stupid animals to big corporations like Chevron and Microsoft.

Talk sweetly to the cow before you put the bolt in its brain.

[peterblaise]

.
Bushwhacked again -- the successful felony monopoly suit against Microsoft did exactly what to break up the monopoly over the computer marketplace?
Sadly, XP isn't innovative in any way, just better and more familiar than Vista -- which isn't saying much since DOS/WordPerfect were neater/cleaner/faster 15 years ago.
The lawsuit is appropriate -- Microsoft demands that you pay for Vista in order to get XP, classical monopolistic practices, classic lack of innovation and lack of benefits for the consumer.
That's why we have anti-monopoly laws -- to protect our interests in commerce. Microsoft has shown complete disregard for the US Commerce laws and the US Citizen.
You go girl. Others of us, as mentioned, have just avoided buying new computers at all, instead buying used computers with XP already installed, a double savings.
.

[coastie65]

Hey rg, point well taken and your right. I am all for free enterprise, but when you have a company that controls roughly 85% of the market and is seemingly exploiting that position, that some constraints need to be put in place by an outside entity to help protect the consumer from predatory or exploitive business practices. That was my point. One question to ask yourself is this: Are OS's being written to keep up with the hardware or are the OEM's having to build hardware to keep of with the OS ? If it is the latter, then Micro$oft has too much control. coastie

[laplane]

i am sorry, but it's you who are wrong! when i needed to buy a new computer about a year ago, i had no choice but to buy one with vista installed. bestbuy was claimng that xp-installed computers were no longer available. i've been living with the vista and all its tzuros [problems], but i also bought a reconditioned xp computer in order to use programs and saved documents from my old xp computer that would not work on vista.

[laplane]

now that's creative thinking!

[coastie65]

WinTard said:

Hey coastie65, I disagree with you. Even more governmental interference? What about free market and capitalism, which our society is based upon? Last I looked, we are in a democratic society, and are not socialists or communists. The EU are talking about forcing Microsoft to pre-load competing web browsers other than IE. They are not saying not to load Windows. That choice is made by manufacturers. If they wish to do so, they certainly can offer no-preloaded operating systems blank machines. It is legal. And Dell does it. Just check it out online at http://dell.com .

Hey Win, Yeah, my thought processes got a bit off track and I missed my point by a mile. I have posted since you posted this, and hopefully, was a little closer to being on point. I was over at Dell the other day, but missed something that TechieXP had pointed out. I have a couple of XP installation disks around here just looking for a home, so no problem. I thought the EU issue with Micro$oft was dealing with more than just the browser, but maybe not. I don't particularly have an issue with that aspect anyway as there are plenty of browsers out there, although you need IE to get your updates. Any way, again, I have since posted and hopefully was closer to point. Sometimes after i post, I go back and read it and end up disagreeing with myself. coastie

[rgreen4]

What programs are you attempting to install and run on Vista that will not work? Some games I was aware of at the beginning because the programmers liked to write their graphics straight to the video without going through the kernel. MS had warned them starting more than a decade ago not to because this would end. I had some programs on Win 98 that would not run on XP, but all the ones I had on my XP box ran fine on my Vista machine.

[coastie65]

rgreen4 said:

What programs are you attempting to install and run on Vista that will not work? Some games I was aware of at the beginning because the programmers liked to write their graphics straight to the video without going through the kernel. MS had warned them starting more than a decade ago not to because this would end. I had some programs on Win 98 that would not run on XP, but all the ones I had on my XP box ran fine on my Vista machine.

Yeah, they were porting the graphics rather than go through the kernal ( short cut ). The problem as I understood it was that micro$oft wouldn't give then the information necessary to go through the kernal, claiming proprietary issues, so the developers were pretty much in a catch 22 situation. Trial and error is never a good way to develop something.

[laplane]

i reply to your post redfaced! i don't know the program names. one example i can give is that i can't upload video from my zr30 camcorder on my vista machine, but i can upload same on my xp. so i obviously wasn't able to load the program for same on the vista, but i was able to load it onto my newly acquired rebuilt xp. and there are loads of discs on which data was saved in the xp that simply are not recognized by vista.

[piyushsingh]

laplane said:

i reply to your post redfaced! i don't know the program names. one example i can give is that i can't upload video from my zr30 camcorder on my vista machine, but i can upload same on my xp. so i obviously wasn't able to load the program for same on the vista, but i was able to load it onto my newly acquired rebuilt xp. and there are loads of discs on which data was saved in the xp that simply are not recognized by vista.

Have you tried using the same ZR 30 on ubuntu 8.10 or maybe Open Suse 11.0 or what about Leopard ?
Instead of saying its vista , ask the hardware manufacturers to write drivers and proper software for popular OSes.

[piyushsingh]

Evildave said:

People only BELIEVE that they don't have a choice but to drive a fossil fuel powered car.

People only BELIEVE that they are stuck with Micro$uck.



Yes, I do know that I can order and configure a barebones PC however I like.



Most people DO NOT know this.

Oh my gawd, some people are so narrow minded.

Whats wrong with advertising ? Whats wrong with trying to sell your product in a legal way ?
Isnt Apple promoting their products ? Isnt Ubuntu offering free OS discs shipped right to your door steps ? Its totally fair. People SEE and then CHOOSE what they want ?

[number6]

[quote name='JimH443']
> [quote name='number6']
> >

JimH443 said:

> > Do they have a RIGHT to XP? Maybe not. However, it seems incredibly unethical to force someone to buy a computer with Vista installed (just try to buy brand name computer without it installed) and then charge them extra to have the OS they would have preferred to have preinstalled in the first place. To me, that's like selling a prebuilt computer with a Blu-Ray burner, then charging extra to have it removed and replaced with a regular 4.5 GB DVD burner.
>
> Ah, but we don't legislate ethics, do we? Governments are instituted to punish criminals and protect people's rights. Her rights weren't violated and it shouldn't be illegal to sell an OS for any price the author chooses.
>


And you have given an excellent explanation of why this is not being heard in a CRIMINAL trial. Civil trials are, by their very nature, based on ethics. The woman was harmed, and she's seeking redress.

She wasn't harmed, anyway. They did her a favor by agreeing to sell her something that was theirs. If she didn't want Vista then she shouldn't have bought it.

[number6]

JimH443 said:

She chose to buy a brand name computer - she obviously wanted the hardware. Returning it for a full refund is not a viable or even reasonable option.

Then why does she care which OS she has. If it's the hardware she wants she should take whichever OS is provided then buy the OS she wants. Hey, that's what she did.

[number6]

WinTard said:

I agree with you everyone should be entitled to purchase hardware without operating system preloaded. Do you agree?

I would agree if there were a seller willing to sell it that way, but if you don't like what's available you shouldn't force anyone to make it available.

[laplane]

as a non-techie, i'm not into researching for different programs that might work both with vista and my camcorder. nor would i be into doing that for the other xp-friendly programs that weren't vista-friendly. because this wasn't the only thing from the past that was giving me problems with vista, i decided to invest instead in a second computer - one with xp. i was using this example to show that vista is problematic in a number of ways, and in my case at least i had no choice at the time but to accept the vista-loaded computer. i was stuck with a monster that can do loads of things that i don't need but is not able to do loads of things that i do need, and that i had no problem doing with xp.

[number6]

rgreen4 said:

Why not? The normal engine is in the normal production run which means that all the fittings, mounts and assembly tools are already engineered and in place. Then someone comes along and wants an engine not in the option list, so they have to engineer the mounts, connections, fittings and take the car off the assembly line and manually mount the engine in the car. I suppose you expect them to do all the extra work free gratis?

In the case of a computer being shipped with Vista, the hard drives are imaged in large batches. In order to install XP, they have had to go back and find all the drivers for XP vs Vista and image a few drives since XP is not in high demand. This is borne out despite the protestations of the small but vocal anti-Vista crowd by the fact that despite the fact that XP has not been shipped to on line vendors in the last 7 months, both Newegg and Tiger Direct still have a selection on line.

If there was such a pent up demand for XP, the shelves should be bare by now, unless the ordered tens of millions of install CD's, which I doubt.

Those are all very good reasons for charging more, but Microsoft doesn't need an explanation. It's their property. They have a right to use, sell, or do with it as they please. If one wants it, he does what the owner demands.

[TechieXP]

LOL...The fact that she went to Wal-Mart to buy a PC says it all. I know everyone in the world isn't tech savvy and may not understand technical terms. But teh guys at general retail outlets don't know anymore about computers that you do. They can really only ask you how much you can afford to spend and make a recommendation based on the cost.

For a person buying a PC who needs to talk to someone who knows about computers should, maybe consider talking to an IT Person where they work...that way they can take them online an explain a few things. Maybe the person can go online themselves and do a lil homework. If it is still confusing and I totally understand it can be, you can pick up teh phone and dial toll free any OEM.

THe only people who should ever buy a computer from a retail outlet, shoul be people who know how to make that type of purchase. I would never buy a computer from Wal-Mart or any electronics beyond a console or CD Player. Thats why this lawsuit is a big deal to me. This is proof that people don't have common since. Everyone knows when MSFT drops a new OS, OEM will only make available an older one until stock is gone. MSFT does not force OEM's to carry only the new product. However it is teh OEM's job to promote the new OS. There are lots of outfits where she could have easily still purchased a brand new system with XP. All teh OEM's are still offering systems with XP only. However you do need to take time and find the links.

Example I just went to Dell's website. They no long so a upfront link showing they still offer systems that you can configure with XP. So I simply typed Windows XP into the search box and it took me to this page http://search.dell.c...lse&~ck=anavTop

Its filled with systems that come preinstalled with Vista, however you can use customize and choose XP. She could also still have gone to a few stores and purchased systems with XP. though there won't be many, stores like Microcenter and Fry's still have a few. I am sorry she has no excuse.

This lawsuit is no more different then teh last one. The fact the other woman tried to be cheap and buy a laptop that didn't qualify for free upgrade to Vista Premium and now she want to sue. Its BS and bad press for MSFT. They have never forced anyone to buy any new version of Windows. When OEM's and retail outlets stop sell older versions of Windows, there are plenty of stores where you can still get them. Amazon, Newegg, Fry's, Microcenter, Craigslist, EBAY and so many more are selling factory silled version of Windows XP Professional. There was a guy who owns a store that was selling OEM copies for as low as $50. According the Eula, in order to purchase a OEM copy of Windows, you must also purchase a piece of hardware. Lots of places don't do this anymore and will sell you a copy outright.

Both of these cases are proof positive that some people can't be left even to make simple decisions. MSFT especially in tjis case commited no crime. If the women bought a system that is Vista only that never offered Windows XP, that means teh OEM would need teh time to take a Windows XP disk and install it for her. Why should she think it would be free? Best Buy will also charge you $50 to take a brand new system you just bought and downgrade it to XP. They are charging you for teh labor/time to do it. It is not a fee by MSFT.

The lawsuit is BS. If you want to take her side you have than a right too.Flat out, she was simply plain stupid. People will try to sue for anything these days. MSFT isn;t who charged her a fee, its either the OEM or the retailer who is charging her the labor and they have a right to do so. If she had called me to her home to downgrade her PC for her, and she already had the CD I would have charged her $60 for the hour of my time. People always want something for nothing.