Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 22:28:02 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

>>>     Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new car
>>> without an engine.
> 
>> That's a false analogy. A better analogy is, "go to your local car dealer
>> and see if you can buy a new car with the tyres of your choice."
> 
>     How is that better? Nothing in your car depends upon what tires you have 
> on. But all of the rest of the software on your computer is dependent upon 
> your choice of OS.

Within rather broad limits, you can put any tyre you like on your car, but
it is not practical to change your engine.

Within rather broad limits, you can run any OS you like on your computer.

Car manufacturers *like* the fact that there is enormous competition in
the tyre market. If (say) Bridgestone had an effective monopoly, they
could charge whatever they liked and car manufacturers would have to pay
it, or else not sell cars at all. So car manufacturers do not discourage
consumers from choosing their own brand of tyre. If you, the consumer,
cares enough to ask for Brand X tyres on your car, the dealer will fall
over himself to please.

PC manufacturers, on the other hand, do discourage consumers from choosing
their own brand of OS. As a result, the royalties they pay to Microsoft
per PC is frequently more than the profit they make. Most white-goods PC
resellers are lucky to make $50 profit on a PC, *before* wages.
(Presumably Tier One vendors make more than that, but not that much more.)

And that is the mystery that needs to be explained. H-P/Compaq, Dell,
Toshiba, and all the other Tier One and Tier Two vendors have no problem
selling servers without operating systems. Some will even pre-install
Linux on them for you. So why are consumers forced to make the choice of
either paying for Windows with their laptop, or no laptop at all?

You will notice that only 30% of servers run Windows (lots of competition
in the server market) and over 90% of desktops (no competition in the
desktop market). Coincidence? I think not.



-- 
Steven.