No deathgrip, just supply and demand. Let's address your rather onesided argument:
<1. These manufacturers have the very worst OEM pricing from Microsoft.>
Vendors in every category give volume discounts. You act as if MSFT is doing something out of the ordinary here. The small OEM's also get the worst pricing on thier hard drives as well, yet you can't villify Seagate, now can you?
<2. One can't act as though we were just talking about Windowsand DOS here. We are also talking about NT. The price of which has risen dramatically, and already is over 20% of the cost of such a PC.>
The price has risen with the ability of the product to perform. There is a massive difference between NT5 and NT 3.51, performance, app compatibility, stability, scalability, etc. You are also doing the same thing you accused Rudedog of doing. NT is a high(er) end product that is not marketed to the retail consumer. It is clearly an enterprise OS (server and workstation) and should be compared to others in its class. Sun, SGI and IBM all outprice NT in these categories. IF NT is price gouging, you better explain that to Sun who is losing workstation business to the under priced PC OS.
<3. To get full functionality in the Windows OS from Microsoft, you must buy add-on packs. This raises the price to the consumer considerably for those who buy this.>
Correction, to get the maximum functionality from Windows, you must buy add on packs. This is the same with practically any other product whose vendor has any depth in their offerings. I (a power user) bought a notebook with Win 98 and I am sailing along quite fine.
<4. Worst, you are using the wholesale figure for Windows OEM pricing to the biggest manufacturers and mixing it with the retail price of the high end PC. If you are going to make this comparison at all, and I don't think you should, you should at least compare that OEM price to Dell's other costs of parts in manufacturing that PC - probably under $1000, or compare retail to retail.>
I take issue with this whole software vs. hardware pricing debate. They are two different industries, with different cost structures, dynamics and economics. Simply because elasticity drops in one is not a reason to force it in another unless the market dictates so. When the market does do such, it is beyond the control of any us. MSFT practically created the PC OS industry. Before then, when software was considered and economic after thought that was thrown in with the hardware, did anybody attempt to coerce the hardware vendors to drop the price of the hardware down to that of the (free) software. Gates had the vision to see superior economics in the software model and the widespread acceptance of the PC.
I am going to bitch to Mercedes Benz because the price of the 500 SLs did not drop as fast as the cassette tapes used in the car radios. |
