I must apologize... 10093

On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 10:02:30 -0500, chrisv

IMO, this is a bullpoo argument. What you are saying is "Why doesn't Microsoft let anyone ride on their coattails?"

What you want is for your favorite product to get exposure through the purchase of Windows, thus getting free advertising paid for by your products compebreastor.

Microsoft most likely spends more money on advertising than all open source distro's spend on everything related to their product *COMBINED*, especially when you include things like co-op advertising, trade shows, conferences and expo's.

Why should Microsoft pay to advertise their product, only to have a compebreastor take a free ride along with it?

Now, before anyone argues that users don't even know what OS they're buying, that's not really the point. You want to include your product with Windows because nobody would buy it without Windows. Otherwise, you would simply sell it stand-alone without the whole dual booting issue at all.

Further, every OEM knows that even if the user was clueless about the OS, they certainly would not be clueless about the applications they want to use. They'd get a million returns because it doesn't run Office, or Sims 2, or Everquest, or whatever.