Windows Tax Debate

You never really pay for Windows. Most OEM vendors make up for the price of the license by installing tons of additional crap on every Windows they ship out, so practically Windows does not make your laptop more expensive.

Installing Linux in favor of Windows won't make computers cheaper. Microsoft sells OEM distributors their Windows 7 Home license for around $50. Then, the reason off the shelf computers come bundled with so much bloatware from the likes of McAffee, Symantec, and 100 free hours of AOL is because those companies pay for it. In many cases, pc manufacturers actually return a net positive on installed software.

Someone pays for the Windows licence too. It's folded somewhere in there too.

OEM gets money from crapware preinstalled on Windows. Also OEM Windows license costs peanuts, so computer without Windows can be actually more expensive.

you do realize Windows costs money and linux is free right?

I guess they don't want Windows to cost $10000 per licence.

People use to always talk about the “Windows tax” and say that computers would cost less if they didn’t come with Windows. Actually the opposite is true. With all of the deals they can make preinstalling bloat on their computers, OEMs could make more than enough to offset the cost of a Windows license. They couldn’t do that with alternative OS’s.

Windows will never be free to consumers, they still charge for new installs. A windows tax of 5%-10% on virtually all desktop/laptop computers is not small.

The problem is a lot of companies pay the manufacturers like Dell, HP to load on software. Google have done this, Real, and lots of less scrupulous players. So it may actually make the computer cheaper with Windows than Linux.Of course, another reason to get Linux, unless you intend to re-install windows. This does suck if you want to not give any money to Microsoft.I am pretty sure Microsoft don't charge $100 for the netbook version of XP.

Are they cheaper than the equivalent computers with Windows?