And in a related story from a few days back:
Have it their way when PC shopping zdnet.com
Only the dirty secret in custom PC making is that true choice is a myth. Just try to buy a PC without an operating system. It's a fruitless quest.
Inter@ctive Week asked three of its reporters, Connie Guglielmo, Steven Vonder Haar and free-lancer James E. Gaskin, to try to buy a Pentium computer of any type without Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system on it.
They called a wide variety of major suppliers, including CompUSA Inc., Dell Computer Corp., Gateway 2000 Inc., IBM Corp. and Micron Electronics Inc. Their request was simple: Please sell me a machine without Windows on it. Sell me a "clean" machine that I can install my own operating system on, without removing an existing operating system and reinstalling a new one.
They couldn't do it.
The reasons varied widely. The easiest to understand, in a fashion, was the assertion by one supplier (Micron) that in the burn-in phase of creating a new PC, an operating system needed to be installed so proper testing could be conducted. That's true, if all you intend to sell is PCs with a particular operating system in them. But testing can be conducted on components of a machine, regardless.
The custom-building process itself was not an impediment, in the main. Rather, the companies had contracts to install Windows on the PCs they sold; and, they sold only models on which they were required to install Windows. There were, in effect, no options on the desktop or laptop that did not include Windows.
But Microsoft is giving the customers what they want! Why would they want anything else? Innovative Microsoft business practice, or innovative Microsoft language usage- you be the judge.
Cheers, Dan. |
