For anyone curious, the following link is how to custom configure (at purchase time) the HP laptop
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/ConfigureView?urlLangId=&catalogId=10051&langId=-1&storeId=10151&catEntryId=3074457345620032820&quantity=1 >From the options at start of page, using Ubuntu (which is free) as a guide - >one can determine the "cost" of Windows (Pro) to being about US$215. >Depending which (of many) links to configure HP zBook G8 you go to, the option >of FreeDOS 3.0 is not always available - however with the previous model >(about 1-2 years ago), the G7 version always had FreeDOS 2.0 or Ubuntu at no >charge (and roughly Windows Pro being at the same price). I think that I understand the reason of the "inflated Windows Pro price from HP" (when comparing if you purchased Windows 10 from an independent vendor). Note that my laptop (G2 manufactured about 8 years ago, and purchased second hand at a very nice price) - I have "outgrown" it (it only has 256G byte PCIe SSD, 3K display) and I have "maxed out" the RAM to 32 GByte. A very important wish was to increase the PCIe SSD and although easy to change (physically) the PCIe SSD to a much larger capacity (say buying from eBAY) - the problem of installing the Windows operating system on the larger PCIe SSD prevented this. To cut a long story short - when investigating how to install/migrate Windows to a larger PCIe SSD - after a few months of searching, reading maybe a thousand forum replies (it seems), trying my existing software (and free trials software),etc - on my G2 laptop (which only has ONE PCIe slot - where the C:\ drive is)) - it is not possible to reinstall Windows on a larger (or another for that matter) PCIe M.2 SSD. Various manufacturers/vendors of PCIe SSD would not be willing to state they would offer a refund for purchase of a new larger SSD M.2 if it turns out that the operating system could not be migrated to the new SSD. Similarly, the few software houses (with OS "clone" capabilities) completely side-stepped the issue of refund if their software failed to "migrate" the OS to a new larger PCIe SSD). The best I could do, was have a 99% clone success rate but the final 1% related to the actual Windows booting process, and so therefore useless for having a larger SSD. It turns out, after reading about the thousandth google search result on the matter, that the "formatting/installation process" to have an operating system on a PCIe M.2 SSD is "proprietory/custom" for each computer manufacturer (and possibly also model specific) - the computer manufacturers will not release details - AND Windows will not support what is needed to allow cloning of the operating system (BECAUSE the format of a PCIe SSD is custom). On the other hand, migration of OS to a SATA SSD is supported (SATA is not custom format dependent). As a spare part I could not buy from HP a larger capacity PCIe SSD (with windows) - in fact when was available, just to replace the existing 256 GByte drive was about US$950 (more than what I actually paid for the laptop). I gather that buying Windows already installing on a PCIe SSD has to be much more expensive than the separate purchase of Windows and PCIe SSD because of the "complexity" involved of installing an OS onto a PCIe SSD (whereas an OS on a SATA SSD is relatively easy). After using the laptop with Windows booting from the PCIe SSD - running Windows from a SATA SSD is so very slow (like about a minute compared to a few seconds). So I am "window shopping" for a "better laptop" than what I have at present and from my experience it is better for me to have the factory preconfigure "everything" rather than messing around with saving a few dollars and trying to do things myself (eg install OS on PCIe SSD, RAM memory upgrade that is truely compatible (speed, voltage) etc). As a side note, apparently the main market for HP computers with FreeDOS installed is CHINA. I hope to hear soon from Jim Hall regarding "what's up" with the HP FreeDOS 3.0. ________________________________ From: dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, 3 December 2021 3:53 AM To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS. <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Question about FreeDOS 3.0 On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 2:56 AM Ivan Ivanov <qmaster...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Laptops with FreeDOS / Linux instead of Windows - are really valuable! To whom? Dell offered systems through Walmart a while back that did not have Windows per-installed. They dropped the offer. The systems without Windows did not *sell*. (If you are Dell, selling through Walmart, "sales" will be measured in tens of thousands of systems. If you aren't selling that sort of volume, you stop trying to do it that way.) The market for such a system is too small for a major computer manufacturer to bother with. > At least because the price of the Win license is included in the > laptop price, and nobody in their right mind wants to pay an extra $30 > for this glitchy "air". I'd spend these $30 on a RAM upgrade, or > donate these $30 to some open source software - to make this world a > better place, instead of filling the greedy M$ pockets. The savings is not significant in terms of the total cost of the machine. I don't know offhand what MS charges PC makers for bundling Windows on new PCs. But let's go with $30. If you are looking at laptops, it's easy to spend $3K on a machine without pushing hard. That Windows license is *1%* of the cost of the machine Note that Windows in no longer a major component of MS's revenues. Yes, Windows and Office are still decent slices of their business, but the real money these days is in gaming and cloud services. Azure is *huge* for Microsoft. They are competing in that space against Amazon AWS services, Oracle, and Google. (And Office is shifting to the cloud. MS is pusing Office 365 hard, as subscription based cloud service Depending on who you are and what you do, you may not *need* a local installation of Office on your PC.0 And no, MS is not being "greedy". I'll spare everyone a lecture on the financial markets and why things work the way they do. I'll simply state that MS has reasons for its behavior that are driven *by* the financial markets.. ______ Dennis _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
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