From: "Geo." 

"Adam Flinton"  wrote in message
news:3ecb3d62{at}w3.nls.net...

> It's not that...it's mostly about market position. For one thing most
> commercial linuxes are bought for a fee which normally includes some
> form of support. Given that MS hasn't said that the free windows would
> come w/o any form of support then it is an artifically depressed price
> being put forward by a monopolist in the market.

You used the words "microsoft" and "support" in the
same sentence . I think the correct way to deal with it is to tell
MS they can cut the price if they like, to everyone or to noone.
Monopolists should not be allowed to "do specials".

> Would there be no support? With linux I am quite happy not to have any
> support but most comps would want some form of vendor support & thus
> would pay for that. I would assume Windows would be the same. i.e. if
> they were to say "Windows for free but no support" then the 2 offers
> might be the same.

Last I checked, the price of Windows and the price of Support were two
different billable items. What I'm trying to avoid is some sort of logic
that says no matter what anyone does, the price of windows can never come
down because at one time MS was found to be a monopoly in the desktop
market. The whole idea of competition is to keep prices balanced. When a
monopoly has to compete using pricing, are they still a monopoly? Are the
findings of "monopoly" an everlasting label or does that change
at some point and if so at what point?

Geo.

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