Dell is finally selling OS Less PC's

I came across this not to long ago but i guess its something they have done for some time. But now you can buy a PC from Dell without an OS. This is great news for people like me. I can finally just buy a PC preassembled without having to pay the Microsoft tax. Here is the link Dell PC's N Series.


update: Apparently Dell has pulled the wool over my eyes! They are selling PC's with no OS at a higher price than the Windows equivalent or at least that is what it seems. They have made it difficult to compare the two by the custom options being completely different from each other. Which leads me to the conclusion that Dell doesn't want them to sell they just want people to think they are more expensive to keep those sales down.

Wow Windows Vista

I heard that Bill Gates said the newest Windows to arrive on scene will "wow" you. I guess that can be left up to interpretation. Wow, this is such a piece of crap. Wow, I have to spend another 100 dollars to make this run on my system. Wow, this looks a lot like the Macintosh. Wow, 5 years in the making and there will be a service pack in around six months to fix all the problems it currently has. Wow, the DRM is nice and restrictive. Wow, maybe I will just stick with Linux!

I am sorry Bill just another failure in a long line of failures that your company has forced upon us. In fact this probably is so lacking in any amount of respect from customers they will have to give it away with pre-built PC's to get any amount of people to move to it. Business customers probably wont buy into the rhetoric for another year.

I feel if you are reading this and you are wanting to know what operating system to go with and you are not skilled enough to handle Linux, move to a Mac. Much better product in fact so good it was copied by Microsoft.

Government Use of DRM

A debate over whether it is appropriate to allow governments to use proprietary DRM standards. For example Norway's government is using them from Microsoft for a video streaming technology. Of course an Microsoft employee thinks it appalling that people think its wrong. Here is my take on it. What this proprietary format does is limit choice and stifle innovation. For one thing people who choose Linux are impeded from viewing the videos. Secondly those who write software to view video content are blocked from creating players to view the video. For the blogger employee from Microsoft, you should know that blocking content to all but Microsoft customers is the part that is immoral. Norway citizens should have the choice if they decide to view content from their government who they support of what platform they do it from. For my government if they provide content of which I want to view then it better be in a format i can view. Something open and free that is the nature of a democratic government.