4 ms·
It would have been very interesting if things could have worked out where OEMs refused to pay that MS tax and instead provided instructions on how to purchase a
by tenebrisalietum 7y ago
It would have been very interesting if things could have worked out where OEMs refused to pay that MS tax and instead provided instructions on how to purchase and install your own operating system separately.
- JohnFen 7y agoI remember that some OEMs (including one or two major ones) had started to go this direction, offering "naked" PCs without an OS at all. Microsoft's response was to demonize the practice as encouraging piracy. Their argument was that obviously nobody wants a computer without Windows, so people buying them that way were clearly intending to install a pirated copy.
- wmf 7y agoBack in the day it wasn't easy for people to find OEM licenses so they would have had to buy far more expensive retail Windows licenses which would have essentially raised the cost of each PC by ~$200. The "MS tax" actually saved money for the vast majority of customers. Also, I suspect many people would have failed to install Windows. People used to say that Linux was hard to install, but they were comparing against a PC with pre-installed Windows.