No O/S as a right more than ever

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:42:20PM -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> Having windows pre-installed on a machine sucks. That noted, the
> question is where to go from here? The best real world option in my
> books would be to:
> 
> - Buy the hardware you want.
> - Refuse to accept the included MS Windows licence
> - Go after the hardware vendor, take them to small claims court if required.
> 
> Henry Ford once noted of the Model T automobile "Any customer can have
> a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.". Point
> was, that for the first year of production the Model T was offered in
> 6 colours, but then to cut down on costs Ford reduced the colour
> options down to just black. Various PC vendors selling with just one
> OS is a pain, but unlike the days of Henry Ford, there is the licence
> refusal option and legal means that you can use to recover $ from the
> vendor...

So say it is vista home basic.  I can buy the OEM version at "local
computer store" (with appropriate hardware purchase) for probably $95.
That includes media and such, markup by the store, transportation, etc.
Looking at the prices lenovo charges to go between different windows
versions, I would say they are paying less than half that amount when
they buy it, so lets say $49 in their case.  I have heard windows xp
home for netbooks apparently going as low as $15 these days for OEMs.
Lenovo happens to preload some mcafee software as well (so says the
fine print at least), and quite likely they get some kickback for that,
so maybe $10 for that.  There might be a few others things too.  If they
didn't load windows, then they couldn't load the other software either,
so you loose that subsidy.  Add in some cost for processing your refund
request, them having to go through the effort of cancleing the license
with microsoft, etc, and well quite honestly, if you get $20 I would
be impressed.  I happen to value my time, and would actually rather have
a copy of vista than bother trying to get the refund.  And that's assuming
the refund was a common streamlined process, which it seems it certainly
isn't so far.  It probably ought to be.

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
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