Re:Why? (Score 1)

First off, I'd like to note my surprise at the (relative to slashdot) objective comments posted- Typically when given a chance, there's a staggering deluge of "OSS good, Microsoft bad" responses, very articulate but staggeringly biased, and in their attempt to sound intelligent by going with anything not MS, commenters pretty much degenerate to "Mongo Smash!" I completely agree- part of it is that it requires significant resources on Dell's part (support or explanation of lack thereof, distributing CD's, preloading compatible java runtime, manhours spent on streamlining the installation, etc) would be significant, but the return would be quite minimal. I think another part of it, though, is that OpenOffice just isn't as good as MS Office- There are benchmarks all over the web showing staggeringly slow (relative to MS Office apps) execution times for starting the applications, opening, saving, and closing files... Not to mention compatibility with MS Office files isn't anywhere near perfect- just close enough to lull you into a false sense of security until you have to open an important document with complicated formatting, written in MS Word, or MS Powerpoint, or something along those lines. And, while this may sound like a horrible joke, in personal experience, OpenOffice apps just tend to crash more often than MS Office equivalents. Incidentally, while it may sound like it, I'm NOT an OSS hater. I hold Firefox, 7zip, Eclipse, Rails, and some flavors of Linux all very dear to my heart. I'm just saying, credit where credit is due. Sometimes, when comparing products, you should look at the actual software instead of the licenses attached. And Microsoft Office is (I'm putting on my flame retardant suit as I write this) a quality suite of software.