microsoft tax

I normally love The Register, but this article doesn't have their usual analysis about WHY something has occurred and instead is basically an AP report.

Lenovo, like many OEM's, dipped its toe in the Linux water. My question is: Did they ever offer a side-by-side with-and-without the $50 (or whatever) Microsoft Tax unit?

I never saw one.

At a press conference in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to announce a new partnership between Microsoft and Novell .

billybob2 writes "Lenovo has stopped selling laptops pre-installed with Linux on its web site, only 8 months after starting the trial program.

This means that home customers won't be able to buy a Thinkpad without paying the Microsoft tax. Word has it that the decision to pull the plug on Linux came down from the highest levels of the Chinese company's corporate headquarters.

Computerworld: "It's time to give up our Microsoft habit. We used to be able to afford to pay the Microsoft tax. Those days are done."

Shadow7789 writes "I have been in the market for a new computer for the past few weeks and I know that I want to run Linux on it.

However, every time I look at (for example) Dell's computers that are preloaded with Linux, the question pops into my head: 'Why should I buy a PC preloaded with Linux?' They are more expensive, and it's not hard just to reformat the PC with Linux.

Los Alamos Computers is now selling laptops, desktops and servers preinstalled with gNewSense, the fully free GNU/Linux distribution.

This is even better than what larger companies like Dell and Lenovo have been offering -- and they are also donating a portion of their sales to the Free Software Foundation.

Stephen Lucy, executive director for Becta - which has consistently maintained an interest and a monitoring brief on the progress of Open Source software in education - explores some of the organisation's current thinking in this interview, and shares his vision.