The Rampantly Unofficial Linus Torvalds FAQ 16735

Everything you get with the computer is included in the price, amos! The company makes their money selling the computers and that money has to cover all the expenses that they go through to get you to buy it. You are paying for the ads that they might run in Computer Shopper, too. You are paying for the sales manager's first clbutt plane tickets to the Vegas trade shows. You are paying for the box that the computer came in. Focusing on one single element that you think can be eliminated is silly. A computer OEM sets a price for a product that they think that they can sell a product for and then they try to make money at that price. Whether you agree with their packaging decisions or not is not important or germane to anything. If you, as a consumer, can get your computer cheaper without buying one with Windows pre-installed, it is only interesting to those who might want a non-Windows computer. Not so many of those folks around, but there are some. Are there enough to make a profit? There are no pure plays in this market that I am aware of, other than some litany of very littly guys who have no history to analyze.

I used to put computers together myself, buying a motherboard here and a case there and a hard drive and a CPU and memory and I-O adapters and all the other pieces. In the past 5 years or more, I have found that the price for a complete system has become significantly lower than the price for the parts to build your own. Make up a list for the parts needed to build a typical PC and see for yourself.

So what conclusions do you draw from that life's experience, amos? People who sell computers for a living sell them with Windows installed to people who are not interested in complaining about it. That is 99 or more out of a 100 buyers. It is simply not worth the time and effort to argue with grumps who want to question the system that is in place. The person doing this for a living wants to get done with the sale and get home to dinner and the kids and watch Law And Order or CSI or Judging Amy or the basketball game as the case and time may be. They don't want to talk to you at all. The people who do software for a living manage to sell enough of it to get rich enough to create a lot of envy in spite of any piracy that may go on. The system works for me and it certainly works well for Jobs and Gates and even McNeely and the others. The software and media trade groups cry about piracy, but their members all live in nice houses and ride in nice cars anyway.

I think it is all just noise being made because the world expects it.