Comment Re:Which is why.... (Score 1) 833
The cost of the competitor is irrelevant. What is relevant is that a company with a stranglehold on the desktop PC market is using that monopoly position and the familiarity with the desktop product to lever its way into the netbook market. The cost of the competition has no bearing on the concept of predatory pricing as it is the act of reducing the cost of Windows, an OEM product that everyone else has to pay $ for to zero with the express intent of levering Linux out of the netbook market.
"They're providing very strict licensing terms for what they can and can't put XP for netbooks on. It's no different from compared Office licence costs for business to the teacher and student edition. One costs about 1/4 of the other."
This I'm afraid is total bollocks. The limit on who can use student and teacher edition is laid down in the licence, i.e. students and teachers. If a competitor emerged in the education market and Microsoft reduced the cost to zero long enough to kill it off and then raised it again, that would be predatory pricing. I
I don't see how this concept is so difficult to grasp. The fact that this free issue of XP is ONLY in the netbook market at a time when every source is saying that Linux threatens Microsoft is in the netbook market is what differentiates it.