PJ - I was designing microprocessors before microsoft existed. You are the one putting a spin on the way the industry works.
You say You take a very simplistic approach to my statement - see, the problem arises when I already have a license for a specific product but in purchasing the new PC, I had to pay TWICE for the same product! Why?
Well, I have dozens of perfectly good VGA cards, many which are more than adequate for my needs. Also dozens of hard drives. Why should I have to pay TWICE when I buy a new PC? The answer is pretty simple - BECAUSE IT WOULD COST THE OEM MORE TO TAKE IT OUT THAN IT IS WORTH!!! Same with DOS. OEMs were not REQUIRED to put DOS on the PC - it was just easier. The big OEMs were paying about $3 for a copy of DOS. Do you really think that they could put out a "special" for $3? If you think that, you don't know anything about the volume PC business.
By the way, for a while CPQ offered a $5 rebate to anyone who did not use the factory-installed DOS. Almost no one took them up on it.
it has to do with giving me a choice.
You have a simple market choice. Buy the cheapest product which will support your needs, or the one you want. Maybe you already have a perfectly good set of tires and would like to buy a new car with no tires so that you could exercise your right of choice, but I think you would find that hard to do also.
All manufacturers I spoke with explained that it was due to their OEM agreement with MSFT that they could NOT ship me a PC without the bundled software.
Funny, extensive testimony in the current DOJ action failed to uncover ANY contracts like that. If the manufacturer really said that, they were just giving you an easy answer rather than the truth - they could ship whatever they wanted, but it was cheaper and easier for them to put the bundled software on and leave the fringe cases to the customer.
MSFT is inflating their sales figures but FORCING software (thru OEM deals) onto people who ALREADY OWN the software!
Well, if you read your license agreements, you don't OWN the software, ever, unless you write it from scratch yourself. But let's ignore that for a moment.
I was involved in a number of OEM negotiations for software licenses in the mid-90s. MSFT was not forcing anything - they offered a variety of license options, and OEMs picked what they wanted. Surprise - the OEMs usually pick the one which gave them the software at the lowest price.
But most of the big OEMs ship "vanilla" boxes. Large accounts already have the ability to put the OS and other products on the boxes through "select" agreements. DELL was the first to do this in a big way - offering "select" customers a PC with no software. The cost difference was less than $100 but for a big purchase that was significant. CPQ, IBM and HP followed suit pretty quickly.
you say no ONE COMPANY OWNS the power standard!
Yet it was exactly the kind of "standardization" which MSFT has done in the software industry that made 110V 60 cycle the standard in the US. MSFT does not "Own" the software standard either, and likewise they don't control the standards. I have been involved in a number of efforts over the last 10 years in which the standards leadership was driven by Intel, or CPQ, or IBM. Think of networking, I/O, PCI hotplug, disk storage... MSFT is a "fast follower" in virtually everything they do. Perhaps you could give me an example of a standard that MSFT has dictated. Offhand, I can't think of any. |
