From: "Adam Flinton" 


"Paul Ranson"  wrote in message
news:3e4a34d7$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> "Adam Flinton"  wrote in message
> news:3e4a2dd5$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> > Because they are competing on hardware. How is bundling Win XP on both
> Sony
> > & Dell boxes doing that? If dell get some 3'rd party hardware "XP
> certified"
> > then Sony can use it too in just the same way.
>
> XP is a level playing field, everybody pays.
>

Not true. The large system builders undoubtably invest in making usre their
choices of hardware & software work well with XP. White box builders
probably don't & are tagging along "for free".

> You are suggesting Dell will invest in Linux and let Sony use the result
for
> free.
>

That presupposes that somehow Dell are not investing in Windows & are
just slapping machines together while relying entirely on MS / Windows to
solve all the problems.

Do Dell spend 0 USD on making sure that when they release a new desktop or
server that the various bits of hardware & software work well with
Windows? I don't think so.

So they invest in Windows & guess what,  Sony (& all others) gain
that work for free as part of the Windows "product".



Adam

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