I'm sympathetic to any small company that finds tough sailing due to competition. It sucks. That said, this really isn't surprising. The major hardware manufac

I'm sympathetic to any small company that finds tough sailing due to competition. It sucks. That said, this really isn't surprising. The major hardware manufacturers are geared to sell Windows computers, not just computers. Make no mistake, the every-computer-has-Windows-8 structure is a decision by the manufacturers to gain discounts toward the cost of the OS. They do the same thing with video cards, hard drives, memory, etc. It's enough so that it makes a huge economic difference to do so. In terms of a business problem, this is a supplier issue relative to the cost of doing business. If the existing set of suppliers have a cost factor that doesn't work in your model, you find another supplier. And if no suppliers meet that criteria, then the market is making decisions for you. From the sounds of it, the major manufacturers don't find the desktop Linux market to be worth it for them to service. However, I've ordered a few systems from ASUS with no OS on it, so I would think there are still suppliers available that could do business.