Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justin Banks who wrote (17091)	2/5/1998 11:41:00 AM
From: K. M. Strickler	Respond to of 24154

You can buy and build a system from Tiger sans OS, but I don't know how much you save, and I'm not sure what the ongoing support is if you encounter trouble. After all , only 'YOU' know the configuration that you built! Thoughts? Ken

To: Justin Banks who wrote (17091)	2/5/1998 11:56:00 AM
From: Reginald Middleton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

<Well, you can buy Solaris without a Sun> But you can't sice and dice the OS like you want to do with MSFT. <run mkLinux on an AAPL (although I don't think you can buy a box without an OS)> But you can't sice and dice the OS like you want to do with MSFT. <and they'll sell your Digital Unix (formerly OSF/1) sans computer> But you can't sice and dice the OS like you want to do with MSFT. Do you see a pattern here?

To: Justin Banks who wrote (17091)	2/5/1998 4:15:00 PM
From: Alan Buckley	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24154

[But, you can't buy a CPQ, DELL, or Gateway machine without the OS pre-loaded. That's the problem.] Is it? It's my understanding that MSFT agreed to discontinue the practice of charging based on systems shipped (rather than OS copies loaded) in the consent decree years ago. Michael Dell was quoted at the time saying he'd sell OS/2 if enough customers asked for it to make it worth his while. I'm not surprised the computer makers would be reluctant to sell systems without an OS anyway. They likely have diagnostic and test software that runs on Windows, in which case it would be a royal pain to load Windows to verify the system works, then remove it for sale (at less money). From their point of view it makes more sense to just say it's not an option. Few people want no OS anyway, and of those, even fewer would be willing to go buy from some tiny operator just to avoid getting one.