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Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
Me wonders if MS's Surface has pissed of any laptop maker, say Acer or ASUS, enough so they will dump Win8 on their next generation computers and sell them with Linux pre-installed with a discounted price equal to MS licensing fee?
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ACER seems flustered enough that the founder believes one thing--Surface is just to establish Win8 and will be dropped after it succeeds--and their European chief thinks it will fail altogether because of channel conflict alone, regardess of the quality of the product.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-574...ol;editorPicks
In that view, it (apparently) isn't the quality of the software or the hardware that sells PCs, it is the partner OEM brand and anything without it is doomed to failure.
Ohhh-kaaayyy...
As to doing Linux alternatives, *all* the OEMs are doing it *now* and have been doing it for years. The ones complaining about MS undercutting and bypassing them have long tried to undercut and bypass MS for years.
One notable case was DELL who has repeatedly offered Linux variants... for a while but ends up dropping them because the demand is low and the support costs high enough to outweigh the license fee. The most recent try was with Ubuntu:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...buntu-PCs.html
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“Dell has offered select consumer systems with Ubuntu pre-installed for more than two years, and is continuing to do so,” said the company in a statement. It said that it had decided to remove the Ubuntu machines from its online sales channel because the platform was better suited to advanced users and computing enthusiasts.
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Translation: "If you know how to maintain it we'll sell it to you."
ASUS also tried it early in the Netbook era and the Windows-less netbooks *were* cheaper...because they came with cheaper hardware. Equally equipped, the ended up the same.
The thing is MS doesn't just give the OEMs a master disk and go away to count the money until the next release; MS provides the OEMs a lot of ongoing services and support--up to assuming all legal liability over Windows IP issues, which nobody does for Linux and Google refuses to do for Android licensees. Take those services away and the OEM has to do them inhouse. In most markets the cost of the services outweighs the Windows license fee or the *profits* from the desktop/laptop. (Servers are a different story.)
The main exceptions are in some of the asian markets; most notably China.
So, expect grumbling but no retaliation: MS already threw the OEMs a big bone--the assurance of feature and price parity.
In other words, they promised them that *if* they build tablets as good or better than Surface, they *won't* undercut them. Implied, of course, is that if they make too much of a fuss that *could* change.
The OEMs can't expect "loyalty" they never offered.
It's business, nothing personal. And the stakes for Win 8 are too high, as the ZDNet folks (above) have made all too clear: the entire non-iPad customer base is at stake.