[ale] M$ refund

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 12/04/2008 08:43 AM, Mike Harrison wrote:
>> total price to the price of the same system with Vista and report to us
>> the apparent cost of the OS?  With Dell, it looks like about $40, would
>> be interested to compare.
> 
> $1199 - 1051 + 49 = $99 for the OS.

interesting.  I've actually been seeing sales (on laptops and desktops
at least) recently that make it look like preinstalled linux versions
are possibly slightly *more* expensive than windows systems on
comparable hardware.

Looking at the recent windows pre-installed systems, i came to the
conclusion that the cost of the proprietary operating system may
actually be subsidized by the huge amounts of pre-loaded
advertisements^W^W^WSpecial Offers! and "trial software".  The "trial
software" that comes on most of these machines seems designed to let you
use it long enough to lock you into file formats or UI patterns, and
then disable itself until you fork over another hundred bucks or so.

I've never worked on that side of the industry, but i wouldn't be
surprised if there were software companies that paid to place their
"offers" and "trial software" on machines by default.  Companies like
that probably wouldn't touch a pre-installed linux system with a 10 foot
pole at this stage of development, because they probably figure that
they'd be bought by users who were techno-savvy enough to avoid the
traps :(

I'd be curious to know if anyone knows of any documentation of this kind
of business practice.

	--dkg

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