[baghira]

That may be true, but there is clearly an argument against that premium manifacturer being the already giant corporation that licenses the os run on 95% of those machines. If it were startup I'd say 'more power to them', even if they only shipped machines with windows preinstalled.

[melted]

You've got a point there, but I don't see this as a huge deal if they don't begin to abuse their position. Which they might, but I'll reserve my judgement until there's something to judge.

[baghira]

Fair enough, I don't judge the Surface machines as something bad per se, I simply don't pine for a world were the only decent hardware to run Windows is made by MS (which the too often abysmal quality of other OEMs may lead us to). Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, I guess.

FWIW, I would argue something similar wrt the Apple tv: abusive practices or not, I would not be happy to see one of the world's wealthiest corporation become a key player in yet another market (if anything because of Apple's sketchy history wrt to open formats).