The harsh truth is that most buyers expect to have Windows on a computer.
Remember that, however irritating Microsoft's business practices may be and have been, it was the Windows GUI that made computers usable by persons who were intimidated by the intricacies of
dir,
cd,
wp (word perfect), and so on, on the DOS command line. Without Windows (and, yeah, I know that something else would have come along, but it was Windows), computers would never have become almost as ubiquitous as televisions.
The great majority of consumers think that "computing = Windows." If they know of an alternative, it's likely Apple.
For a large volume manufacturer of anything, once an assembly line is set up to manufacture something a certain way, making an exception (installing a different OS that appeals to a smidgen of their market) costs more than doing it the routine way.
Then there is the "
bloatware bonus." You know all those junkie "trial" programs that come on that Windows computer? Vendors pay manufacturers to put there; that's a revenue stream (sewer?) that doesn't exist in Linux World.
I will be the last person to argue that Microsoft is a good corporate citizen, but I think it is possible to paint them as more Svengali-an than they are, or, indeed, than anyone can be.
