Quote:
Originally Posted by afa
You say that as if it's not true... 
I don't think the problem was ever Microsoft "forcing" PC makers to buy Windows. How would they do that, anyway?
The problem was that they were bundling IE and Media Player, etc. with the OS, which was considered to be an example of them unfairly using their position as the dominant market player to squeeze out competition (Netscape et al.). |
With that, initially it was MS brokering deals with PC makers to preload their OS, and after a while so many machines had microsoft products, that it was expected. If you didn't, you were at a disadvantage to the competition, since the buyers wanted DOS or Windows, because their last computer had DOS or Windows, and they wanted their stuff to work. Even if they didn't have stuff prior, they still wanted to go MS because most of the software available was for DOS or Windows, or their friends had it and could help them learn to use it.