From: Adam Flinton 

Geo. wrote:
> "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".
>

True. Discriminatory pricing is part of this.

>
>>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?
>

They can not sell at a loss so as to exclude competition. If they can sell
at 0 & it's still profitable then that might be a get out clause.

Adam

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