On 5/14/2011 5:32 PM, Jack Stein wrote:
On 5/14/2011 11:52 AM, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
On 5/13/2011 7:49 PM, Jack Stein wrote:
On 5/13/2011 11:02 PM, Doug Winterburn wrote:

Problem is that PCs come with Windows and the built in bump in price
because of that. If I don't want Windows, but Linux instead, I still
have to pay for Windows.

Moreover, your PC comes with windows already installed. Go to best buy
and try to buy a PC with Linux installed. In the 90's I bought a PC
from Gateway and was running OS/2 on it. When the hard drive died the
first month, Gateway replaced the hard drive, and I they told me it
would come with windows installed on it. I told them I didn't want
windows installed on it, they said there was no choice. Indeed!

The result of this anti-competitive crap is everyone thinks they are
getting viruses when there horribly designed OS is what is kicking
their ass, over, and over and over.

Jack

There are more choices today than ever.

There never was much in choices. Saying it doesn't make it so.

This is directly attributable to
the fact that the Microsoft-Intel duopoly created a de facto standard onto which
other systems could be grafted.

It is directly attributable to Microsoft using the gift granted to them by IBM to prevent retailers from marketing competitive products.

If Microsoft is a monopolist, they are a very poor one.

If Microsoft was not violating federal anti-trust laws, anti-trust Judge Sporkin would not have been horrified when he heard what Gates had been up too.

Their product comes with incrementally greater numbers of features, their product price falls
in real terms, and they have very real competitive threats from companies
like Google.

The one feature there Operating System doesn't feature is quality. It does not work well because it's competition had been stifled by anti-competitive tactics.

But most of all, it is simply nobody's business what Microsoft does with
their own property.

It is my business when I am forced to use the worlds worst OS because of illegal, anti-competitive tactics of Microdsoft.

The anti-trust charges were trumped up and entirely political, concocted by Netscape,
Sun, et al because they didn't have a clue how to compete in the consumer space.

They all have a clue. It doesn't take genius to take a market bestowed on you by IBM, use that market to force retailers to carry only your product, or die. Judge Sporkin is/was clean as it gets, unbribable and unafraid of the Billions and Billions of ill-gotten gains of Microsoft.

Personally, I have used BSD Unix for many years, but Microsoft has been
*good* for the industry notwithstanding I am unenthusiastic about their
products ...

Personally, I used UNIX system 7 for years, OS/2 for years, and Dos/Win for years. DosWin is a PERFECT example of how anti-competitive practices can result in the worlds worst product dominating a market. Judge Sporkin was made keenly aware of this when the DOJ brought charges against MS. Unfortunately, imo, the DOJ was more interested in bilking MS of $ than fixing/addressing the problem. This was made clear when the DOJ appealed their own court VICTORY.


Your understanding of 'forced' is, um, bogus. No one forces you to use Windows, or for
that matter a computer *at all*. It's absurd to complain that you cannot buy what
you want at the store. Hardware vendors voluntarily entered into a deal with
Microsoft to get preferential pricing. Bear in mind, that NO hardware vendor had
to agree to Microsoft's terms. They could simply have sold bare metal and let the
consumer decide what to put on it. They didn't because they (rightly) understood that
consumers wanted a turnkey system.

For about a decade now, there have been a dozen or so Linux distributions, 3 or 4
major BSD variants, FreeDOS, WINE, and host of other lesser choices available
for *free*... And the consumers still have consistently chosen Microsoft over
all the above. This is not the behavior of a predatory monopoloy. It is the
evidence of a satisfied customer base, nothing else. Microsoft makes "good
enough" technology. It's good enough for most people, most of the time. It's
not "great" because consumers wouldn't pay for great ... or at least they haven't
been willing to thus far.

You're grumbling because the Chevy dealer won't put Ford sales literature in the
showroom...