However, I will continue to make the point that PCs are sold with Windows installed because customers want PCs with Windows. The few that want Linux instead, unfortunately, will have a harder time finding hardware that suits their needs at a reasonable price. They account for less than 5% of the market (my guess is less than 1%) and this minority market is not profitable for most computer manufacturers to cater to.

I am certainly not going to claim that there has never been any manipulation in the computer market (hardware, operating system, software, etc.), but this is not the dominant driving force behind the selection of available operating systems (either Mac’s OS or Windows, depending on the hardware) available with a desktop computer.

Jason (collaborating with M80, working with Microsoft to help promote Windows Azure.)

However, the available offerings on the market reflect the demands of the masses.

Because… why? Because the computer market is immune to manipulation?

The subprime meltdown is relevant because credit rating agencies whitewashed the risk by giving ratings to bundled mortgage obligations far exceeding their actual quality. Without that distortion of the market, originators would never have had the incentive to engage in the get-rich-quick scheme (because they wouldn’t have been able to unload the risky mortgages onto someone else). Similarly, the markets for personal computer hardware and software can be distorted by manipulating just a small number of players.

I don’t want to give the impression that I am anti-market; it’s just that for as long as they have existed, people have tried to manipulate them to their personal advantage. For all players to retain confidence in the market, we need to be vigilant and defend them from manipulation.

Lastly, Windows is pre-installed on most PC’s because that’s what the market wants.

Sorry, I can’t let this go past. If the market truly decided, I’d be able to buy any Dell or HP system with no operating system installed.

Think about it this way: how many purchased but unused OEM Windows licenses are lying around? Why did those people buy licenses if they weren’t going to use them? How does this compare to unused Apple OS X or Linux OEM licenses?

Appealing to “the market” as an infallibly neutral, intelligent arbiter is about as wrong as it gets. It can be, and has been, rigged many times. Don’t forget that “the market” brought us the whole subprime mortgage meltdown.

Second, Microsoft, like any other product vendor that relies on their product being packaged with another’s, definitely spends a lot of money marketing to computer manufacturers, but they are not “enforcing limits” as you suggest. If they had this kind of power, wouldn’t they also use it on server-manufacturers? As you know servers that runs OS’s other than Windows (usually flavors of UNIX) are easy enough to find.

Even in the desktop world, other than the PC manufacturers that sell machines without Windows, you can also very easily find a non-Windows machine in a Mac store.

Lastly, Windows is pre-installed on most PC’s because that’s what the market wants. Most PC users want Windows to be on their machine when they purchase it. Otherwise, the demand for non-Windows machines would be much higher.

On to another comment to this blog, Yonah, I agree with your main point, but I think the author (ble) has some valid points (I may not agree with them, but they are valid nonetheless) and your judgement is way too harsh. Of course ble is not objective – but who among us is? In any case, that’s the point. She has $20 riding on her being correct .

Back to the topic at least *I* am most interested in: cloud computing. There is lots of competition in the cloud computing field right now (Amazon, Google, etc.) and this will increase when Microsoft exits beta and fully releases Windows Azure. With all this competition from major players in the software world, who are also very well-funded, Gordon can hardly suggest unfair practices on Microsoft’s part in the world of cloud computing. The leader will be decided by the market.

Are you suggesting the odd piece of defiance (yes defiance is the correct term when standing up to a bullies demands) by a retailer of Microsoft’s wishes represents the norm? Yes, you can indeed find new PCs without Windows pre-installed, Dell have a few too. The difference is that you have to hunt for them, jump through hoops to find them. Many retailers are so strangled by Microsoft that they don’t want punished for daring to offer the customer anything other than Windows. Microsoft also like enforcing limits on the numbers of non-Windows PCs they can sell too. It’s getting better, the more Microsoft are exposed for these crimes, but it has a long way to go before it’s right.

The picture you show displays a message about the failure to connect to a domain controller. Perhaps the machine lost power and some other networking hardware connected to the ATM was didn’t come back on-line. There is simply no way to be sure Windows itself was at fault, but people like you are quick to make snap judgments without the data. You are not objective, thus poorly suited to try and educate or inform others.

> Microsoft have shown how good their cloud service will be by losing
> data for the Danger / T-Mobile customers.

The Danger/Sidekick incident was certainly not something Microsoft is proud of. However, I’d like to point out that Danger was it own company that was only aquired by Microsoft in 2008. Microsoft largely left Danger’s original technology in place, which is very different from what Windows Azure is built upon. They are also completely separate teams. Lastly, Danger apparently did not have mirrored copies of the Sidekick data in place. I do not know enough about the details of their implementation to comment on this, but Windows Azure has multiple mirrors of the data on multiple servers in in multiple geographic regions. These are two very different technologies and setups that can’t really be equated.

> Add to the fact that Microsoft ensure that when you buy a new PC,
> you have THEIR choice of Windows as something you can’t choose not to have.

Not actually true anymore. Lenovo, for instance, has sold PCs without Windows.

> Microsoft themselves use Linux servers for their critical internal services

Also not true. All of their critical internal services, unless acquired from a third party and not yet ported over, are run on Windows.

Oh, yeah – Danger runs on UNIX.

Microsoft have shown how good their cloud service will be by losing data for the Danger / T-Mobile customers. Every week there are more self inflicted wounds coming from Microsoft that will lose them another chunk of customers as they wake up to the reality that all Microsoft seem capable of is producing expensive, locked down third rate software with a LOT of marketing, lobbying and lawyering deception to ensure customers can’t choose anything else.

I have to hand it to you, at least you’re adding the disclaimer that you’re working with Microsoft to promote Azure”. Most Microsoft employees try to pretend to be normal neutral users when commenting on blogs etc, another illegal act Microsoft have yet to be held to account in a court for.

I do agree with you on one point though, a 50% market share by summer 2011 is a wildly optimistic figure that nobody would bet on. When you have such a domination, even with a succession of failures, and a hemorrhaging of resources it’ll never drop close to that number in that time. If it’s a goal to aim at for FOSS, that’s great but anyone in management who set obviously unattainable goals will see them not even being shrived for as they know the result will be a fail. Setting realistic, achievable goals will have the intended effect.

“Market share” is always going to be hard to quantify, when both Apple and Microsoft have sales figures and shares in companies who do the counts, they will choose to count sales where FOSS is almost non existent. They won’t count downloaded .isos as not all are burned and installed. How many Linux users download a new distro just to try or review it? An .iso that is burned may not be installed, or it may be installed on many PCs. Do they count connections to a site? How many PCs are behind routers so maybe 100 PCs appear as one to that website?

Add to the fact that Microsoft ensure that when you buy a new PC, you have THEIR choice of Windows as something you can’t choose not to have. “I want XP” “It comes with Vista” “But I hate Vista, I want XP” “OK, since you’re speshul, if you give us more money you can leave with XP installed” “YAY!” ….Microsoft counts every one of them as someone CHOSING Vista.

Not forgetting the companies they use, will use US stats and present them as if they apply globally. Most poor countries can’t afford Windows or OSX, FOSS is a natural choice there in terms of both price and freedom from US control, not to mention native language support.

You can easily argue that the FOSS / Linux / Unix market share of PCs connected to the internet is VERY high, if you include the server farms who all know better than to trust their business to Windows. Every time you use Google, you use Linux. Yahoo use FreeBSD. Even Microsoft themselves use Linux servers for their critical internal services, and leave the customers data at the whims of their own Windows servers. That must really stick in their throats.