No OS as a right--Lennart Sorenson's comment

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 09:16:02PM -0400, I. Khider wrote:
> Hello Lennart and thank you for your response. 
> 
> May I point out that instead of asking HP to ship no O/S machines, that
> a rebate could also be implemented after the fact. I want to make this
> proccess as easy on the manufacturer as possible. Microsoft offered this
> as a solution. That way we don't need to 'stop the presses', just have
> pesky Linux users like me get a rebate for the Windows O/S when I send
> back the installation disc. 

You can't make that machine not able to run whatever version of windows it
comes with.  The license info to control that is built into the machine
and does not go away just because you delete windows from the HD.
They would have to redesign part of the BIOS/system info to remove it,
which is counter productive to them building these as cheaply as possible.

So since you can't actually remove the license key from the machine,
why should they give you back any money?  How do they know you won't
just install windows from a friends disc for the same model?  Microsoft
would never be able to tell that the machine is no longer licensed.
This is how OEM windows loads work these days in order to make a single
image able to be loaded on a whole line of machines without having to
manage activation on a per machine case.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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