Lenovo blows a billion on Voleware

MICROSOFT HAS just been given a $1.3 billion cheque from the Chinese outfit Lenovo to pre-install lots of copies of Office and Windows on its machines.

According to Reuters, the deal will buy Lenovo rights to install Office and Windows for a year. Last year Lenovo signed a deal for £1.2 billion for the same software. It is not clear if this is because the outfit is buying less, or the inscrutable Chinese have managed to get Vole to drop the price a bit.

Lenovo has not said which flavour of Windows it is buying either, if it is just XP this might provide the reason for the price drop. However, the Vole is not that keen on flogging the older operating system these days and desperately needs to prop up its Vista account.

Lenovo is following a Chinese government order that required all PCs made in China to have licensed operating software installed before leaving the factory. µ