I think you have some really inaccurate misconceptions of what a free market is.

A free market does not guarantee choice to be free of marginal costs. A free market does not guarantee you the right to get whatever you want from whomever you want, at whatever price you want.

A free market allows supplies to enter or leave a market at will. Microsoft has chosen to have XP leave the market. They are under no obligation to sell you something they dont want to, or to make it easy for you if they do.

And newegg. And tigerdirect. And so on and so forth.

That word doesnt mean what you think it means. I think what you mean to say is that the US government found Microsoft to be in violation of anti-trust statutes by tying products together in a market where they had a dominant position. The EU has also found MS to have abused their dominant position in a few situations, but that is still ongoing, and almost exclusively also about tying.

There is no magical hand-waving definition of 'monopoly' that means what you seem to think it means.

MS may have a dominant position in the desktops & laptops OS market, but they're far from the only player. There is a boutique player that is roughly the same price in the midrange and up segment. There are a ton of free/open-source products that compete and are available with or without support, through a commercial or not through a commercial product.

So its not like MS is even the only choice. Or even the only reasonable choice.

So what was it you were trying to say again?

Yes, that is correct and is how it works now. Dell has a choice to sell XP under the creator of XP's terms, or not at all.

Yes, they are in control. They can choose not to sell the MS products, or sell it on the terms that MS dictates, modified by the restrictions placed on them by the US government.

That is precisely the context by which MS has a say in the matter. XP will let them sell the product that MS created and owns, and has chosen to end-of-life, only in certain circumstances.

Given that MS created that product, and has sold and supported it for 6+ years now, that is entirely within their rights.

Either you misunderstood what the sales person was saying, or the sales person was ignorant or lying.

We buy alot of equipment through Dell.

There is a $99 charge if you're moving from Vista Home Premium (w/ no downgrade rights) to Vista Business (w/ downgrade rights).

If you're buying a machine that only comes with Vista Business, then there is no extra cost.

You should definitely counsel your friends not to buy consumer-targeted garbage.

If the like Dell, they should be buying Latitudes, Optiplex's or Precisions.

Just like for HP, dont buy Pavilions, or whatever they call the garbage they sell in Best Buy. Buy the corporate class equipment, most of which nowadays is Compaq labeled.

Thats one of the big 'secrets' of this industry, is that most of what the OEMs are selling in the consumer space is garbage. Lower quality parts, craptastical drivers, tons of adware & other pre-installed garbage.

I had a friend who bought this Toshiba POS laptop. He bought it because it was red and pretty.

It's so freaking terrible that the Function keys dont have native support, you have to be running their 'supreme' driver package for the function keys to work. And it crashes all the time on Vista.

It's just so bad. You'd think they would learn.

But we buy HP Compaq laptops and Dell Optiplex's, Precisions and Latitudes by the truckload (for our customers) and they all just largely work, and come clean, and all have windows discs that come with them.

Except it doesnt really work that way in real life.

If you are actively selling/producing a product, then there is an implied expectation of support, both of the 'someone to call' variety, and the 'my hardware should have drivers for it' variety.

Not to mention the gargantuan cost of testing for compatibilities, regressions, etc, for every actively sold product you have in the field.

My point is that its nice to say 'just give it away, no support', that doesnt work in the real world. Aside from the expensive practicalities I outlined above, it could create an actual legal liability for MS.

There's a reason software companies abandon older products. It's not (purely) because they're money grubbing, Dr. Evil types, but also because support and maintenance of multiple/older products is hideously expensive.

That is quite possibly the most ignorant statement I've read all night.

There are huge quantities of ancillary costs associated with selling a retail or channel product internationally.

Support, marketing, logistics, production (yeah, surprise, it will cost MS more than twice as much to press Vista AND XP CDs as it would to make just Vista, due to administrative overhead, contract negotiations, logistics, inventory, etc), channel relations, OEM & IHV support, etc.

It just goes on and on like that. People who make statements like you did make it obvious they've never been in any sort of senior position of responsibility in a software company, or owned one, because these comments hugely reflect an ignorance of the realities of business.

To sell at the scale of MS, it is obscenely more expensive to sell two different generations of a product simultaneously, rather than one.

Did you not read the post of the person you responded to?

Buy a maching without an OS.

Buy XP Home or Pro off newegg.

Install Operating System.

Profit!

This couldnt possibly be simpler.

If what you're suggesting is that the Universe, Lenovo and Microsoft should, out of the kindness of their hearts, change their entire business models to make that one person happy and save her 2 hours of installing XP for herself or paying some punk kid to do it for her, then you're really not living in the same world as the rest of us.

The universe does not owe it to this lady to make everything easy or cheap for her.

I also cant go to Mercedes and buy a brand new production of a car they made 20 years ago, though I'd like one. Does that mean I should sue them? ...

This is really such a sad discussion, but its like watching a train wreck, its hard to look away.

No he means new copies. Spend 60 seconds of research on newegg or google before asking questions that you could have answered for yourself.

It actually is, if you have the hardware to run it smoothly.

It makes for a much more stable desktop, that doesnt tear, lock up, or have as many issues as XP. Plus it doesnt get stuck or stutter nearly as much as XP did under load (though that could be more to do with their IO scheduler).

Again, if you have the hardware for it, its a much better experience, stability, smoothness, and speed wise, than XP was, especially when the machine is under heavy load.

Actually, its the opposite.

Education and Non-Profit get MS products for dramatically reduced rates compared to retail or corporate licensing. I mean really reduced.

And many of the licenses include 'use at home' for another $10 or so.

Thats the only way MS can keep a foothold in the education market, which isnt exactly flush with cash.

The vast majority of business users buy office.

The home users dont, but they just go to costco and get home & student version of Office for $89.

Thats the assumption you've made that likely isnt true.

My personal (and therefore anecdotal) experience is that the vast, vast majority of non-business users buying the mid to low end models are not doing the downgrade, they just take what Best Buy sells them.

The vast, vast majority of downgrades I see are savvy small & medium business users purchasing them. Only the SMB market of course because bigger orgs are already in licensing agreements that let them downgrade.

I think you should go back and re-read the history and documentation around that investigation and court case.

MS wasnt convicted of being a monopoly, as that is not illegal (as has been repeated here ad nauseum for years).

MS was convicted of illegally tying their browser to the operating system, given that they had a dominant position in the marketplace.

Thats it. The US government decided they did exactly one thing wrong, and that was to tie IE to the windows OS. Nothing else.

When you go around saying 'convicted monopolist' as though it has any meaning the way you're using it, you're just making it obvious that you dont understand the situation.

Not sure I would agree with this. You lose alot of things, including the ability to join a domain (you'd be surprised how many small business owners idiotically buy XP Home or Vista Home, and then get irritated when they cant join the domain).

You lose RDP, you lose the Security tab in Explorer, and access to a bunch of mgmt tools.

The flip side is that its arguable that MS is just making you buy the full product if you want downgrade rights. XP/Vista Home and lower versions are just cut-feature/cut-cost versions that are intended to target the marget segment that is more price sensitive. So you have an opportunity for some people to pay less and get less. This means more people overall can buy the product. This is the most basic of basic business tactics, and its common the world over.

Given that, I'm not too surprised they make you get the full product, or at least close to the full product, before giving downgrade rights. It goes along the lines of, if you want all the features/bennies, you need to pay full price.

Mind you, the 'full price' for Windows is still a bit ridiculously high, but thats another issue.

Or you just do the downgrade from a large OEM like Dell or HP.

Then you get both sets of media, and both keys.

And dont ever have to activate or deal with Microsoft in any way.