This week, there is much buzz surrounding Dell Computer going private in an expensive deal for which Microsoft has contributed $2 billion. Microsoft and Dell, of course, have been close partners since the birth of the personal computer industry, and much of the rise of the Windows operating system came from early hardware partners such as Dell bundling Windows on computers.
Today we have a new personal computing landscape, though, and some are asking if Dell’s move to go private was driven by fear of Linux. Was that Microsoft’s prompt for dropping $2 billion when the company rarely drops that kind of money?
“Microsoft’s $2 billion loan to Dell is a sign that the software maker wants to influence hardware designs in a post-PC world while protecting itself from the growing influence of Linux-based operating systems in mobile devices and servers, according to analysts.”
