On Mar 30, 2007, at 3:23 AM, Paul Walsh wrote:
(do manufacturers have to pay M$ to allow them to pre-install Windows?).
Yes.But it's actually worse than that. They pay MicroSoft based on their total sales numbers. Not just the number of machines they happen to install Windows on. So Dell won't save a penny by selling you a machine with Linux on it. And they may loose some revenue by not being able to put "free trial" stuff on the desktop.