“If the final product sold for $50, and didn’t have product activation, I’d be interested.”
If it sold for $50, activation would not be necessary for sure. I would think they could do this if they wanted. I doubt Dell/HP/etc are paying the $100+ OEM license price an individual has to pay.
Microsoft may have much deeper problems with the Vista/Windows7 track though. Non-profits I deal with are looking seriously at Mac even though it will cost them more initially. They perceive Mac as a safer platform out of the box, less prone to virus/malware/etc threats and for general office needs it solves their problems as well if not better than Microsoft. They also think there will be a shorter training curve. Since most are XP based now anyway, they are looking at fork-lift upgrades now matter what they do. I think Microsoft will have their work cut out for them to not loose significant market share over the next few years.
I don’t know what corporate customers are considering but sooner or later, they will need to leave XP as well. I don’t know if Mac or Linux are truly enterprise ready, but the fact people are beginning to look around should concern Microsoft.
What major Virus issues has Vista had?
All of my non-profits are converted to Linux, and more would like to come on with me to get a similar conversion. It is my unfortunate circumstance to be a one-horse tech shop, and I do tech work for non-profits that I support free of charge... So demand is always very high, and I cannot serve them all.
But free OS and free tech seems to suit non-profits best of all.