Re: Netscape, XyWrite, and the Media

[Paul D pjd@xxxxxxxx]

At 10:09 PM 2/21/00 -0600, you wrote:
>I bought a perfectly good and useful PC from Transcend PC
>(www.transcendpc.com), which they shipped with a barenaked hard drive and a
>startup floppy. Not buying the OS saved me about a hundred bucks.
>
>When I get my hands on a new computer, the first thing I do is wipe the hard
>drive and do a custom install of the OS and other software. No trashware
>that way.
>
>Meanwhile, my neighbors (who are much more computer mainstream types) think
>Bill Gates is personally putting icons in their system tray, without their
>approval. I imagine the average DOJ lawyer thinks the same thing.
>
>My next task: Use that swell 98Lite to skin back the OS on my laptop to a
>>
>> Uhh... you mean to say MS does *not* have contracts with manufacturers for
>> installing their OS before shipping? You mean, we can go and by a PC
>> *without* Windows installed? Can you tell us where?
>>

There was a study which was published in "Harper's" in the summer of
1998 showing that _NO_ manufacturer of PC's would provide a system
with anything other than Windows. One or two said they would _remove_ windows
and give you a blank system but they would not thereby reduce the
price. If you insisted on , say, Linux, some would not do it, some would
do it and charge extra.

There is also evidence that MS bullied European manufacturers if they
would not install it, and that a system with DR DOS installed woould
be deliberately dumped with error messages (leading, according to
its owners, to the demise of DR DOS. MS settled a suit with Caldera
recently over this issue)

regards
-pjd