Guardian on Dells Linux stratagy 42

S.Heenan

I don't understand what you're trying to say, but maybe my personal troll-stalker-unofficial press officer Daeron-Mentohl will explain.

(Incidentally, it's not my fault Daeron was a week late with his post: as we all know, he's not exactly the brightest star in the firmament....)

Meanwhile, back in the plot, Mike Dell was making the simple commercial point that variation costs money (cf "any colour you like as long as it's black"), and that increasing the cost of one model increases the cost of all models. In sum, it's cheaper for Dell to supply 80% of the market and let other companies fight for the other 20%.

I think it was, in fact, really stupid of Dell to even dabble with Linux, but I buttume the company was fooled by all the pro-Linux hype and lies about its viability as a mbutt market desktop operating system in 2001.

Dell's model works when the company is a late entrant in well-defined, well-established markets (printers, handhelds, LCD TVs) where it can exploit its manufacturing efficiencies without taking on costly market development.

I'm not sure how much price pressure Dell's Linux excursion put on Microsoft. We know those vicious bastards from Redmond competed totally unfairly by giving OEMs quanbreasty discounts (what sort of business does that, for goodness sake!) and Dell is well known for buying parts at low prices (clearly that's completely unfair as well).

Obviously the PC industry would be much better off if the US government fixed the prices of things like operating systems, as well as deciding what features they were allowed to include.... ;-)

Rgds, Jack

S.Heenan