Windows tax

Windows tax

Posted Sep 20, 2008 0:25 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Lenovo redefines "commitment" to mean nothing at all by iabervon
Parent article: Lenovo halts online sales of Linux-based PCs (ComputerWorld)

Last I checked, OEMs get the equivalent of a site license to install Windows on whatever they ship, for a price based on their volume. If they don't want this, they can instead pay list price for each install, but that's much more expensive for anyone other than Apple.

So that whole big lawsuit was for nothing?

IIRC, Microsoft used to offer only the site license thing and a court, after untold millions in legal expenses, decided that was anticompetitive. So now Microsoft customers get a choice, but all choose the same thing that was forced on them before?

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