On Tuesday 25 January 2011 23:34:48 Shamit Verma wrote:
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 9:19 PM, jtd jtd@mtnl.net.in wrote:
Logical error. You dont dvelop a model without os. You simply sell whatever model without OS. The reason they dont do it is because M$ signs deals that subsidises ads, and M$ products very very heavily, while charging for every machine shipped. ASUS was forced to stop the EEPC cause M$ showed them the agreement fine print (stick) and plenty of carrots.
You need to develop that product because:
- Without OS, remote diagnostic tools wont work and they would
have to pay for two-way shipping for diagnosis (or dispatch a tech). This adds to cost. BIOS of such models is much more exhaustive. E.g. BIOS has HDD diagnostics tools/network diag tools.
Inband Remote diagnostic tools work only for a small subset of problems.
- Tech Support is hard to script. With OS, most problems can be
solved by "Restore factory image"
you mean most problems are conned over.
- They lose revenue from "Crapplets". Every trial version (E.g.
90 days subscription for anti virus) means revenue for Dell/HP.
True
Thats why when you buy laptops without OS (available for enterprise, typically order of few thousand Units) these cost more. That is even when tech support is handled by Organization's IT.
That is true too. But none of the above requires "designing" hardware to run without OS. ALL hardware are software agostic. Stupid / crooked hardware vendors then proceed to hide the architecture, register and bug details, preventing software implementation. On the contrary, In the case of virtualisation M$ products actually did not have the neccessary architecture to exploit hardware features and would be termed as incapable of running on certain hardware whose details are available. I have yet to come accross such a situation for FOSS.
-Shamit