By Andy McCue, 27 September 2007 16:24
NEWS
UK businesses have backed calls for computers to be sold 'naked' - without a bundled Microsoft Windows operating system.
Earlier this week European think tank the Globalisation Institute made a submission to the EC proposing that all PCs and laptops should be sold without an OS in order to foster competition and bring down prices, saying the current practice "imposes an extra cost on virtually every EU business".
Three-quarters of silicon.com's 12-strong CIO Jury IT director panel have now backed that call for naked PCs, although the argument is far from straightforward.
Carl Whitehead, IT director at Betbrokers, said naked PCs without an OS would probably increase choice and reduce costs for about a third of buyers.
He said: "The rule should be that wherever a PC or laptop is sold with an installed OS, it must always also be available without an OS but with any utilities the manufacturer feels like including. This will help to limit the monopoly marketing power of the big players, who have an interest in reducing choice and flexibility."
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Rob Neil, head of ICT and customer service at Ashford Borough Council, agreed but warned computers without an OS can work out more expensive.
He said: "Remember that the staff cost of installing an OS on new equipment is significant."
Other IT chiefs also backed the argument for optional, not compulsory, naked PCs. Nicholas Bellenberg, IT director at publisher Hachette Filipacchi UK, said: "Currently we purchase some PCs that predominantly run Linux but Windows is kept as a boot option - but how much is it used? We also run a few Macs now that use Parallels to provide a Windows OS - and of course this means purchasing Windows XP as a stand-alone option, which seems disproportionately expensive. Clarifying the real cost of the parts of a PC purchase would be a good thing."
Graham Yellowley, director of technology services at investment bank Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International, added: "While Windows is the predominant operating system in use it is not the only one and there should be a choice made available for purchasers allowing for either no operating system, or an operating system capable of executing on the PC."
But not everyone is in favour of a Windows-less PC option. Stuart Aitken, CIO at the Medical Research Council, said: "Do we really want the burden of building every machine, getting all the drivers etc? In any event you can get a PC with a different OS if you want to."
Ben Booth, global CTO at research and polling company Ipsos, said: "Of course we should continue to push for better pricing from Microsoft but those of us old enough to have been around before the 'Windows monopoly' remember the high costs and lock-in caused by incompatible proprietary systems. Having a standard OS avoids this."
Today's CIO Jury was...
Stuart Aitken, CIO, Medical Research Council
Rob Neil, head of ICT and customer service, Ashford Borough Council
Bill Ashworth, IT director, Countrywide Surveyors
Nicholas Bellenberg, IT director, Hachette Filipacchi UK
Ben Booth, global CTO at research and polling company Ipsos
Chris Broad, head of IM&T, UK Atomic Energy Authority
Steve Gediking, head of IT and facilities, Independent Police Complaints Commission
Paul Haley, IT director, University of Aberdeen
Peter Ryder, head of ICT, Preston City Council
Richard Storey, head of IT, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Carl Whitehead, IT director, Betbrokers
Graham Yellowley, director of technology services, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International
Want to be part of silicon.com's CIO Jury and have your say on the hot issues for IT departments? If you are a CIO, CTO, IT director or equivalent at a large or small company in the private or public sector and you want to be part of silicon.com's CIO Jury pool, or you know an IT chief who should be, then drop us a line at editorial@silicon.com
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
The point is not to dictate, but to offer choice. Anyone buying a PC should be offered the choice of having a naked PC or one loaded with the OS of choice -as some manufacturers are now offering. But more importantly, the manufacturer/supplier should not worry about being threatended by MS or anyone else for offering that choice. The price of the OS offered to the supplier should be based on reasonable volume discounts - perfectly acceptable practice.
2. Iain Fothergill
I don't see the argument against manufacturers having to offer _another_ bundle which is exactly the same hardware just without Windows and its associated cost.
The way I read the article it seems to me people are calling for Windows to be OPTIONALLY preinstalled (if you're willing to pay for it).
Where's the problem?
3. anonymous
In my experience most large organisations do not use the installed OS on a purchased system “as installed” and instead use PC imaging software such as Norton Ghost to install the machine in a standard “corporate” way, so the argument that having a pre-installed OS saves effort does not hold in this instance. A clear pricing model where you can see exactly what proportion of the cost relates to hardware and software must surely be better for business. The current system where bundled Windows is in effect a fraction of the cost of the purchase cost of the unbundled version often pushes people into buying new hardware ahead of when they might otherwise need to do so, which is good the PC manufacturing business, but bad for the rest of us.
4. Paul Tansom
"Remember that the staff cost of installing an OS on new equipment is significant." - from my experience of working in large companies installing a new OS is standard practice to ensure that the machine conforms to the companies standard install to enable easier support, so the default install is generally wiped and replaced anyway.
"those of us old enough to have been around before the 'Windows monopoly' remember the high costs and lock-in caused by incompatible proprietary systems" - I don't have commercial experience of that, but as I see it we currently have 'the high costs and lock-in caused by a proprietary OS", and this lock-in is an order of magnitude larger. At least there were several major players all wanting to help you migrate from your old suppliers lock-in to their own one. Now you have one single major player locking you in. The one and only reason that Linux is making inroads against Microsoft is that there is no single financial entity to target, and therefore push to the brink financially. In this market environment technical merits are completely irrelevant when the competition has the market share and financial backing to bury you however good your offering is - be that by using legal red tape, bigger scale marketing budgets, short term discounts or playing the FUD game.
5. Karen Challinor
also a point for the Anonymous IT director in the East Midlands
Companies that install a standard "Corporate Build" on a PC tend to have volume licencing agreements with Microsoft, so not only do they not need the preinstalled software the do not need the license for it either
it is very rare for a company to attempt to recoup the cost of this license as as the required effort is generally more expensive than any revenue that can be recovered
it's only if you purchase 10 or 20 machines that it starts to become worthwhile chasing this money
so in these cases Microsoft get paid for two software licenses and only one gets used
if naked machines were available as an option these companies could save this money
6. anonymous
The Naked PC - Brint it on!
The Naked PC will bring benefits to large companies, because as others have commented they will have a 'Standard Images' which they will install anyway and also have 'site', or 'corporate licensing' to ensure they stay legal!
So Internal, or Outsourced IT Support time and costs will remain the same as
now. Potentially a relatively large cost saving on licenses they don't use.
For the SME Market a choice of going naked, or at least having the ability to
chose Operating System and optional choice of software may not always
produce a tangible cost saving, but at least there will be both:
Time saved by not having to delete the 'non-required' software some
manufacturers insist on supplying.
Plus knowing that what you ordered fits your requirement.
This leaves the much more problematical case of the Home Office/Consumer Market - Which is fragmented into:
Put a Plug in the Wall and go, through to those who want to literally profile what is installed down to the last byte.
Well supplying a Naked Option would not cause the Manufacturer any cost and as
the better suppliers ones offer a lot of (sensible) pre-delivery
software options (including in some cases the option between Vista and XP),
the cost of supplying a range of options of O/S should be minimal. The
benefit to the system buyer may not be tangible, but for the more
knowledgeable there will be a better 'buying experience' (I wish I hadn't written that :-)
7. Simon
The way I see it, machines would come 'naked' or with a "select on first boot" standard image. As it is, most machines have to have the system 'installed' when you first switch them on (even if 'install' only means accept the EULA and enter your name etc).
In the case of naked machines, the manufacturer would simply supply the recover disk (that they currently don't bother supplying to save a few pence) so that you can insert disk, boot, and the rest goes just as it does now.
It wouldn't mean users having to find all the drivers etc - just pop in the disk and boot. No harder than it is now in fact.
But it would end all these machine being sold with a Microsoft Tax that you can't get back because there's too many obstacles in the way - I've even had vendors claim that once you break the seal on the package you aren't entitled to a refund even though I believe it's well established that such an action is ILLEGAL unless you are explicitly given the EULA in a form you can read (and reject) before opening the package.
8. Austin Holdsworth
Avoiding vendor lock-in and incompatibilities is achieved by sourcing products that adhere to international standards. Document, communication and software development standards do exist.
That wasn't possible even 10 years ago, but is now a reality. Even Microsoft has come to realise this.
Heterogeneous computing environments can now enrich our businesses. We can draw strengths from a broader spectrum of innovation.
The ideal of a standard OS is a noble one, but we can also stifle competitiveness and inherent innovation if we don't support the ideals of open standards across platforms and from different vendors.