walmarts idiotic policies

[ChadTower]

The average home user has no concept of paying for Windows.  It either came with their computer or they have a CDR copy or they borrowed someone else's CD or they have one they took home from work.  MS makes money from corporations that are at risk of lawsuit because they have thousands of computers, and that also need close OS support.  They make more money from their development technologies, probably, than they do from Windows, since those technologies have to be legally licensed in order to be used in product development.  A simple developer's workstation has one installation of Windows at a cost of like $75 but will have thousands of dollars in development platform and tool licenses.

[shmokes]

It doesn't matter whether they have a concept of it or not.  They're still paying for it.  The average user pays for an OEM copy of windows.  By far the majority of computer users buy a premade computer with a copy of Windows pre-installed.  How many millions of personal computers do you suppose Gateway and Dell and HP and Toshiba and Acer and IBM and Sony, and all the generic computer stores, etc. sell?  MS gets a cut of each of those.  If MS makes $75 for every one of those computers sold that's 3/4 of a billion dollars for every 10 milllion computers sold.  Worldwide. 

And, of course, if everyone is using MS at their desktop then every developer is developing for the MS platform.  There is a direct correlation between how many desktops are running MS and how many development technologies MS sells.  The more people that use Mac OS, the more developers start developing for it instead.

And Windows is, of course, the tool MS uses to Monopoly their way into any market and crush out the competition (e.g., Netscape, WordPerfect, etc.)

Windows is MS's bread and butter. 

[ChadTower]

And, of course, if everyone is using MS at their desktop then every developer is developing for the MS platform.