Bob I wrote:


Gordon wrote:

"Bob I" wrote in message
...


Gordon wrote:


"Eric" wrote in message
...



I hear the price of a German car is higher in the US than in
Germany. What's up with that?



So don't buy a German car. there's plenty of other choices.
Microsoft's actions over the last 15 years have ensured there IS no
other choice for the vast majority of people - it's called
"monopoly".....


Interesting concept. A free operating system, against a operating
system you have to pay for, equals no choice.



Certainly up until recently, yes. Microsoft's actions ensured that
OEMs, which is where the vast majority of machines are sold, would
suffer drastic financial penalties if they sold machines with either
no OS or a competing one.....


Actually, the OEM's were eligible for greater discounts based on the
various conditions contained in their agreements. "Penalties" is
implying that they had to pay additional sums.

Actually the OEMs where held to pay an "Operating System" royalty for
each computer shipped, whether or not the computer had an operating
system or not and whether or not it even held a Microsoft operating
system. If, for example, IBM wanted to ship a new computer with OS2
they had to nonetheless pay Microsoft a fee for DOS or Windows, even
though no Microsoft products were installed, thus inflating the cost of
the non Microsoft pc and making it harder to compete. The stick used by
Microsoft to hold the OEM's to the agreement was that their access to
DOS/Windows would be ended if they refused to cooperate. Computer
manufacturers who wanted to sell Windows based computers couldn't sell
other computers without paying Microsoft anyway, so Microsoft was being
paid for BEOS, UNIX or OS2 licenses! To protest meant that the OEM was
in peril of loosing access to DOS/Windows thus loosing a large
percentage of its computer sales. Many OEMs simply decided to not even
offer non Microsoft computers, not because they didn't want to sell them
or not because there was no requests from customers but because the risk
of having a dispute with Microsoft over the licensing was too onerous to
consider. Part of the whole scheme was the now infamous unlawful "Non
Disclosure Agreements" and the unreasonably long contract terms that
Microsoft had the OEM's bound to.

John