M$ Violated First Rule of US Economy (Flame Bait)

[GnomeProject]

****This is Flame Bait*******

I thought I would share a good idea for an article on ZD-NET or somewhere on here...

I just read the article on ZD-NET where Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) claimed M$ is more innovative than Linux and thought I would point out that M$ has violated the first rule of the American Economy...

"People vote and choose products based on their Pocket Book almost 99% of the time..."

Now, if M$ really wanted to dominate the market, why not cut their prices below $50 for almost everything...they would still make a hell of a profit, if not more, and would purty much blow most of the IT world over with one breath.

That is...most people who don't use M$ b/c of monetary concerns right now would switch but not those that enjoy freedome of choice...

What do you all think???

****This is Flame Bait****

-Gnome

[TheCatMan]

[list=1]
It's a great idea, if they would drop their prices I might even consider dual booting... except I'm fast running out of things I could do better if I had a MS OS. Further, if they did drop the price of each product, they would probably make each product smaller and update them more often, which could (in theory) encourage some actual innovation.

According to your definition, Microsoft has not necessarily violated the first rule of the American economy: If people spend less than 2% of the time choosing operating systems, they can base that choice on whatever they please while still allowing "nearly 99%" of the time to base other product choices on their pocket book.

[/list=1]

[gibhunter]

It wouldn't work. For one, retail sales are not a big part of MS' profits. It's OEM and business licence sales that made MS what it is today. Since basically every OEM already includes MS products no matter what price it is, then it would make no sense for MS to lower its prices.

Assuming you could save $300 if you went with Linux and open office over what you would have to spend to pay to the OEMs what they spend for it when it comes preinstalled on every system they sell, would you? You would, but then such an OEM would no longer get disounts from MS, and in turn its workstations with WinXP and OfficeXP would cost about $400 more then competition's plus it would incure substantial support costs trying to support newbies using Linux and basically such an OEM would very quickly find itself out of business. That is ofcourse unless Linux suddenly became very popular and such an OEM would be able to sell such machines to corporations keeping up its profits. Since most other software that big corporations use is not compatible with Linux platform, such a scenario is simply not going to happen.

Basically, it's up to the government to regulate the IT industry. The government could force every federal and state agency, schools etc. to use Linux based systems, but the cost of such an undertaking would be huge. Yes, over a period of say 10 years, it would pay for itself, but the initial conversion of software, support staff and employee retraining is so enormous, that it borders on impossible.

[kryrinn]

many users probably use MS because they dont know about linux. or dont want to take the chance in losing data... and ms has made it alot easier to just stay with their product, and they just bully those who dont use their products... the world needs a company the size/popularity of gateway or dell, that promotes linux. sad to say, the only corporation that doesnt have a big contract with ms is wal mart

[Alistair]

Yo,

Actually, a company does give a big support, and has been around a lot longer than Dell, or any of 'em. IBM. Yep. IBM has spent like 2 Billion in development, and support of Linux. :-P


Just for you info,
Ali

[gibhunter]

Originally posted by Alistair
Yo,

Actually, a company does give a big support, and has been around a lot longer than Dell, or any of 'em. IBM. Yep. IBM has spent like 2 Billion in development, and support of Linux. :-P


Just for you info,
Ali

IBM's primary business, is high end servers and business solutions. They could give a rat's *** about discounts from Microsoft and judging by how much their laptops cost compared to Dell, HP or Compaq, they probably are getting none, other than regular volume discounts.

[lugoteehalt]

One problem with what your proposal is that it would be bad for social control. If more people could afford M$ stuff, then, however bad it is, power differentials between groups in society would be diminished. M$ knows it has to keep power sweet, so isn't going to do it.

[zdude255]

yah most companies "support" Linux

HP and Gateway and all don't really do anything though. They support it where they want to, which is crap IMO

Dell actually does strongly support Linux servers. They are selling more than Windows servers.

M$ makes money off businesses. Which is the market Linux is sucking up. According to M$ they think that something free is cheaper. I don't buy the retraining arguement. Any admin with knowledge of windows can easily learn linux in 1-3 months.

[LrngTheHardWay]

Originally posted by GnomeProject
That is...most people who don't use M$ b/c of monetary concerns right now would switch but not those that enjoy freedome of choice....

Hmmm...... Drop m$'s prices below the 50-buck line?
(Interestingly enough, they're whining to the SEC about the prospect of cutting prices.)
It's still overcharging in my book. My criteria is: does it work well? m$ doesn't cut the mustard.

I'll pay more for Linux than I would for m$-anything, given the choice.

Originally posted by zdude255
...Any admin with knowledge of windows can easily learn linux in 1-3 months.

ROFLMAO!!!!
...and any monkey, with knowledge of his fingers and toes can easily solve a quadratic equation in about the same time-frame.
Thanks for the laugh. :D

Originally posted by gibhunter
...You would, but then such an OEM would no longer get disounts from MS, and in turn its workstations with WinXP and OfficeXP would cost about $400 more then competition's...>snip<...such an OEM would very quickly find itself out of business.
Uh...it's called cliff-pricing and m$ did it all the time. That's how they got where they are today, and it's also illegal. Loads of OEMs did go out of business during the late 80's-early 90's for that very reason.
Despite that, m$ still does it.

Originally posted by GnomeProject
...they would still make a hell of a profit, if not more...
::: snicker ::: They could have made a hell of a lot more profit if the s/w engineers had gone on strike instead of compiling a critical path analysis on the 'Bob' project.

[dungscooperdave]

Originally posted by LrngTheHardWay
That's how they got where they are today, and it's also illegal.
So how come nobody does anything about it?

[GnomeProject]

Because M$ has soo much money which translates to ownership of judges and key business/govt. employees...so why would you bite the hand that feeds you?

[Darksamurai]

Dude... The reason M$ can ramrod people for money is 'cause 90% of the software on the market is for MS or compatible stuff... Even Macintosh has "Virtual Windows" (don't even get me started on Mac's price gougeing on software...)

All in all, as I've stated in a couple other threads... I'm really hopig Linux becomes "THE" operating system choice...