10.295.2003 - Millions of Russians pay nothing for WinXP, Office

LARGE RUSSIAN system integrators that sell as many as a million PCs a year apiece are paying Microsoft nothing for the privilege, it has emerged. Here at the System Builder Summit, we have discovered that rather than paying Microsoft an average OEM price of $60 for the Windows XP operating system, some Russian integrators prefer to pay absolutely nothing but the cost of a Windows XP disk. That is likely to enrage the Vole, and has certainly enraged distributors and dealers we talked to here who pay about $60 a shot for Windows XP, but can Microsoft do anything about the situation? One source close to Gartner, which sponsors the SBS, told us Microsoft would give us good money to, in his words, grass up the system integrator in question, but the question is a whole lot more fundamental than sheer pecuniary advantage. - View Additional Information - Visit The Inquirer