The End of the "Microsoft Tax"

astine: OH, that’ll get some cheapskates to Itry/i linux.

And I suspect most of them, quite rationally, will go buy a retail copy of Vista Home.

(No bloat? Hah. What do you want to bet that install has both KDE Iand/i Gnome installed? And runtime bloat gets nice and big once both sets of libs are loaded when someone wants kwhatever in their gnome session or gwhatever in KDE.

And then there’s OpenOffice. And the “oh so eleet” Beryl every idiot wants, to be “just like Vista”.

Linux and X Ican be/i lightweight. But default and typical-end-user installs of Ubuntu? Not so much.

And don’t worry about viruses. They’ll come (more accurately as trojans, which is a huge source of windows “virus” load anyway) as soon as enough idiots are running linux.

The same Iutter cluelessness/i that causes people to download and run a random .exe claiming to be a naked pop-star screensaver in Windows will cause them to do the same thing and “su to root so you can install!” in linux.

I’ve been watching and aiding complete clueless people install and use linux for far too long to imagine it’s a) a good idea for most of them b) actually lightweight the way they use and install it or c) going to save them from themselves.)

At least this will spark more linux driver support!

Apologies if I’m repeating … I just can’t read fast enough to digest everything that’s been said previously …

Another option that the Ubuntu Dell opens up is for people who just want to keep using Windows XP. Granted this only works (legally) if you own a retail copy of Win XP which you uninstall from an old machine and then install on the new one. But I have a friend who is in exactly this situation so it’s worth considering. After all Vista is supposedly being replaced in two years, right? Why bother with it if you’ll be just as happy with XP in the interim?

There is a still a “Microsoft Tax” of a sort when going this route though. Microsoft has decided that the product key for my friend’s copy of XP has been authenticated via the Internet “too many” times. Each time you install it to new hardware you now need to call MS to get the authentication key. It’s annoying as hell to have to call and ask permission to use the operating system just because you moved to new hardware. But then that’s what being a monopoly is all about, I guess.

-irrational john

Mike Dimmick:

So what? Though your MSDN license can’t be your primary workstation, all of my dedicated testing workstations are still subject to the tax.

I’ll also say that the MSDN FAQ is pretty contradictory and ridiculous on some of these points. They say that “Designing and writing a program to assist with internal order procurement and distribution” is an appropriate use of the OSes in an MSDN license, but if “a computer using an MSDN-licensed OS is used for any purpose other than development and testing (for example, a developer’s primary computer which is also used for corporate email), then a production-use OS license for the computer is required.”

That statement’s rather ridiculous – that one would have to actually have two machines just to send an occasional email related to your development work. So if you’re doing a build on a dedicated box and you open up sol.exe to pass some time while your app builds, you’re in violation of the license agreement.

This is why I don’t date chicks who are lawyers.

Actually i believe that Windows is costing Dell more than 80$ which i assume you calculated by a simple subtraction. I say this because Dell signed a deal with canonical for support or at least some knowledge transfer. It would be much more expensive for Dell to try to do things itself, canonical is already in that line of business.

So although a user can get an ubuntu ISO for free, commercial support does cost money and most institutions go for it.

Remember that the business model of free software(freedom) is that software should be free but you can sell support and services.

Regards,
Alaa Salman

OK, this time I actually DID read at least many of the Linux versus Windows argument posts which preceded my post. All I can say is, why on earth do you people even bother? Everyone knows how these threads play out and, frankly, being so predictable they are more than a bit boring.

Most surprising of all … to me, at least … is that I did not see anyone raise the possibility of how evolution of the Internet might change the dynamics of the current balance. One of the biggest reasons I’m again reconsidering giving up on Windows and moving to some flavor of Linux is because as time has passed I find I care less about whether or not I can install a given application under a given OS. What I care about is how well I can access the web-based applications I use.

I currently only have a very, very small toe dipped into the pool of web-based apps. Mostly because there is not a to choose from in the way of web-apps at the moment. But, thanks to Google, there are some. and as time passes there will surely be more of them.

Sure Windows dominates now because people still are used to installing apps on their PCs. But when that changes … and to the extent it does change … Windows will loose it’s monopoly power.

-irrationally john

@Sigivald

You’re comparing an Ubuntu, with both Gnome and KDE, Beryl, with OpenOffice, etc, etc, to a plain vanilla XP. Add the typical anti-spyware and MS Office and XP will be heavier. Vista is off the charts. I doubt that the Dell version will have both libs or Beryl pre-installed anyway.

About security, neither Linux nor Windows is foolproof. Windows actually is more apt to protect the users from themselves. However, Unix is far more resistant to hackers and viruses simply because it has so fewer holes and vulnerabilities (none of that activeX garbage for example). OS X, which also targets non-technical ‘idiots’, also has very few issues of security.

Besides, until Linux becomes far more mainstream, their won’t be many viruses or malware for it anyway. When if it does, this debate will have become moot.

Dell has been selling PCs with some free version of DOS (Not from MS) in India for quite some time:

http://dellstore01.sg.dell.com/public/catalog.jsp?c=INsid=12168927uvst=07168940578451558

Everybody loves Eric S. Raymond:

http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-12-19-001-07-NW-SM

You have to look at the market from the point of view of a PC integrator. You’re paying a fixed Microsoft tax, it varies, depending upon how much Microsoft likes you and how much you co-operate with their party line. Typically it’s maybe 80 to 100 dollars per machine. That’s something that looks reasonable when the price point of your total systems is around $2500, but when your price point is down around $300, – it’s too much. And this means that as the price of hardware drops, the PC integrators are coming under increasing pressure not to pay the Microsoft tax.

Ars Technica’s response

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070525-windows-tax-is-50-according-to-dell-linux-pc-pricing.html

Eric Raymond once famously predicted that when the price of PCs dropped to below $300 that Microsoft would “cease to exist” because nobody would pay an extra one-third of the cost of a computer in order to get Windows. That didn’t happen, largely because of the price incentives given by software companies as described above. Whether or not Linux bundling will put pressure on Microsoft’s OEM pricing remains to be seen, but it can’t hurt.

Errr… Seems to me either you don’t game or do graphics-intensive stuff and don’t care about graphics, or you’re going to buy a real graphics card anyway.

If I am not mistaken . . .

Dell offered linux in 2002-2003 but cancelled it for lack of interest by the market. Back when linux was trying to make a major move to the desktop.

Ubuntu supports alot of laptops and their drivers right out of the box with very little tweaking or configuration (synaptic and apt-get take the fun out of it).
//works on my machine (no seriously, even a noob can do it)

It seems that Dell has updated there website to change the specifications of the machines to prevent people from comparing like you have done.

I predict Dell will sell a couple of thousand at most, then withdraw them for being uneconomic.

Raymond Chen wrote something about focus groups saying they’d pay X amount for a given feature, then when the product actually arrived in the market, it didn’t sell.

Never bought a Dell PC, but the Windows that comes with PC’s is usually a hardware-tied OEM license with just a recovery disk tied to that hardware. So even experienced Windows users who’ve been bitten by this might prefer to order the Linux version and buy a full Windows license separately.

I think the one thing that Vista has taught me is that drivers do matter. Just getting a box that runs UBuntu, does not mean you can load Vista on it without problems. Hardware vendors do not always buy the “exact” same hardware that is available to joe user at CompUSA. Therefore the drivers that are available from the hardware vendor’s may not work perfectly for that tweaked hardware that Dell put into your box.

So before buying the Linux box and throwing Visat on it, remember that Dell only provides support for the OS that they installed. If you have problems and call Dell, they will likely have you “re-install” the original OS as part of the troubleshooting process.

Well, I’m tech-savvy enough to handle ubuntu. It will do all of my e-mail, web browsing and office-like stuff fine. Some of my machines at work run various linux distros.

But I can’t run Civilization IV at home under linux. If someone could post some links, I might try it sometime.

Until I can run MS Windows games, I’m not planning to switch my home PC to linux (or Apple). When I can, I’ll switch pretty quickly. However, I don’t expect to see Civ IV out for linux anytime soon.

People always complain about the MS tax in reference to installing other OS’s on a machine. What about us MSDN members that are essentially paying for Windows unnecessarily when it is contained in our MSDN memberships? Bah!

While asking “who will buy this” is a question every company should ask, in this case, it’s already been answered: I will. Me, and other Linux users, will be buying Dell from now on, just as we buy Intel for graphics and non-Broadcom for wireless. We’re used to buying from companies that pay attention; the Thinkpad line, for example, was always known for its good Linux compatibility. Even though it was not officially supported, you’ll find greater-than-average Thinkpad use among Linux users to this day.

The Linux community is relatively small, compared to the group of XP/Vista users, but we (A) buy more hardware than most and (B) know good computers when we see them. When it’s time for me to get a new desktop (Probably sometime this summer), it’s going to be one of these.

I’m not sure it matters the value in the hardware – the fact that I can buy a computer from Dell, and know that I’m not putting money into the pocket of a company I very much dislike, and knowing that I’m not tied to them via any means makes me happy.

The principle of the matter alone is enough to make me buy.

I’m so glad that Dell has finally done something right. I use Linux (Ubuntu) myself, so now I may actually have /some/ incentive to buy a pre-built computer.

I thought that they originally sold computers with NO OS on them (a while ago), but those actually cost more than buying it with the Microsoft OS, because they lost money if you didn’t buy Windows.

At any rate, this may help push Linux out there, thumbs up to Dell ^^,