On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 19:26 +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 10:29:31PM +0200, Laurent GUERBY wrote:
Just packaging with an easy way for the vendor to remove the Microsoft
How are vendors testing their hardware before shipping to customers ? I am afraid most of them don't do like SGI was doing in Cortaillod, that is using specific test programs they then released as GPL (memtest86 comes to mind).
If I remember correctly, Dell in order to avoid paying MS used a version of FreeDOS to test machines. Now they have a complete CD set that run an automated series of tests (on server platforms) where it is not clear what's the underlying OS (but it does not seem to be MS based).
They probably load a recent Microsoft Windows OS, the recommended driver, and run a few test programs.
Does it really matter?
This means that removing Microsoft Windows might cost them money!
I do not think they use the final OS that get installed anyway so if they use something from MS I think they have a separate agreement for that.
Simo.