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I think there's a different force at play here:

When the software comes with the computer, you can turn around and complain to Dell about the software. There is someone you can call, and generally it's rolled into the phone support contract.

When the software is installed afterwards, you don't have the same ease of complaining. Dell can argue that Firefox somehow messed up your computer.

That is a convenience many people are willing to pay for. Whether they would pay the 16£ is a different question



EDIT: Ha. I forgot IE is part of Windows, damn.

Sure, but who's next on this service installation? I also want to make an analogy of asking Dell to upgrade 2GB to 4GB or to 8GB. I don't know how much an upgrade cost now, but a few years back it was about $20-$40? It was worth it to upgrade a hardware, not quite sure how it plays out asking Dell to install Firefox at ~$27 USD. Also consider Firefox upgrades every few months; things going to break, I don't know if Dell is ready to do GOOD support, or just one of those "have you tried power off and restart your computer?" This is also something Mozilla might need to look at as SUMO can get pretty overwhelming. The web is sometimes too technical to debug :(


.. or that IE comes with Windows and Google pays to include Chrome in Dell computers. For example, here's a 2009 note involving Sony: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/sony-defaults...


Opps. I forgot all about that. :) Thanks for pointing out. Been a Linux user for far too long.




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