My girlfriend has just bougt an Acer laptop through Dabs and is planning to run Debian on it, and is fairly peeved that she has had to pay for a useless copy of Windows XP.
I remember hearing a while ago about Linux users returning unused (i.e. never booted) copies of Windows (I think this was around the 95/98 time) that they had been forced to buy with computers, usually laptops. Does anyone know if this is still possible under the Windows XP EULA?
My girlfriend has just bought an Acer laptop through Dabs and is planning to run Debian on it, and is fairly peeved that she has had to pay for a useless copy of Windows XP.
I remember hearing a while ago about Linux users returning unused (i.e. never booted) copies of Windows (I think this was around the 95/98 time) that they had been forced to buy with computers, usually laptops. Does anyone know if this is still possible under the Windows XP EULA?
I heard that MS had a 'special offer' where they charged 'only $50' for you to return unused copies of Windows. -)
:oD
On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 11:20:09AM +0100, Keith Watson wrote:
I heard that MS had a 'special offer' where they charged 'only $50' for you to return unused copies of Windows. -)
If I'm on the hunt for a laptop and they saying they are offering Windows with it. I will try my best to get it without the license. I believe in customers right.
Now I wonder if I should try this in PC World in Norwich ;)
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Craig wrote:
Now I wonder if I should try this in PC World in Norwich ;)
It's a very good idea to. Make a fuss, make some noise, ideally make sure the duty manager is aware that you require a laptop without Windows. We'll only see them in the shops if we make the shops aware there's a demand for it.
Andrew.
I tried it about 2 years ago with Win98 and a Toshiba laptop.
As an OEM license you have to return it sealed in it's packet to the manufacturer/distributor (not MS) Toshiba point blank refused to budge, even offering a full refund and return for the whole laptop rather than refunding the license. Madness ?..not really no.
Since forming my own company a few months ago I have learnt a lot about MS OEM licensing.
With the bigger players (Dell, Toshiba etc) MS allow them MASSIVE discounts on OEM licenses but only if they are distrubuted with every PC sold. Dell recently found a clause whereby they could offer ANY (even a non MS) operating system with the machines and still be within the agreement. so they started offering a little known DOS type OS as a free alternative.
Don't know if they are still doing it (I'll try and find some linkage) or if MS bolted down that particular hatch.
Why didn't they offer Linux ?
Simple, they didn't want to support it for desktop users. The tiny one floppy operating system they offered would not be used by anyone, so no-one would be calling support with problems, users would install their own copy of whatever OS and Dell don't support anything other than the supplied OS. Additionally MS could never see this Micro OS as a serious competetor so (possibly) wouldn't be quite so annoyed.
Bouncing off some Manager at PC World will probably get you nowhere. The best you will get is the ticket price reduced by the cost of the OEM License, As far as I know they aren't allowed to split products and once the OEM license has been disconnected from the machine it's worthless (They are little stickers now)
It really bugs me that I have a paid for boxed copy of Win2000 here (sitting unused) , but if I bought a new machine from Dell I would have to buy Windows all over again.
*shameless plug*
If anyone is interested in buying new laptops WITHOUT OEM software, with full manufacturers warranty's etc then they should contact me directly. I cannot do anything with the bigger names but I can supply quality OEM (unbadged) laptops without OEM software.
Wayne
On Thursday 17 October 2002 11:30, Andrew Savory wrote:
On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Craig wrote:
Now I wonder if I should try this in PC World in Norwich ;)
It's a very good idea to. Make a fuss, make some noise, ideally make sure the duty manager is aware that you require a laptop without Windows. We'll only see them in the shops if we make the shops aware there's a demand for it.
Andrew.
On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 09:02:21PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
It really bugs me that I have a paid for boxed copy of Win2000 here (sitting unused) , but if I bought a new machine from Dell I would have to buy Windows all over again.
why? you have a full retail copy you can install it on any machine you like, if you don't want to pay windows tax buy your dell with the copy of FreeDOS. Anyhow dell did offer machines with Redhat pre-installed a couple of years back but they dropped it as the amount it cost them to support was not worth the small volume they were selling and they figured that people who wanted Linux would install the distro they wanted, IIRC.
Adam
On 17-Oct-2002 Wayne Stallwood wrote:
I tried it about 2 years ago with Win98 and a Toshiba laptop.
As an OEM license you have to return it sealed in it's packet to the manufacturer/distributor (not MS) Toshiba point blank refused to budge, even offering a full refund and return for the whole laptop rather than refunding the license. Madness ?..not really no.
You should take that sort of thing up with you local Trading Standrds Office. they wield a very big stick.
Yes but is it a trading standards issue, I'm not sure.
It's not as if the goods weren't as advertised, and they did offer to honour the escape clause in the license agreement (just only by returning the whole package)
They could probably argue that as the OS was pre-installed on delivery they had no way of verifying that I had actually removed it. or something like that.
On Sunday 20 October 2002 13:52, Raphael Mankin wrote:
On 17-Oct-2002 Wayne Stallwood wrote:
I tried it about 2 years ago with Win98 and a Toshiba laptop.
As an OEM license you have to return it sealed in it's packet to the manufacturer/distributor (not MS) Toshiba point blank refused to budge, even offering a full refund and return for the whole laptop rather than refunding the license. Madness ?..not really no.
You should take that sort of thing up with you local Trading Standards Office. they wield a very big stick.
Wayne Stallwood, Tuesday, October 22, 2002 1:23 AM
Yes but is it a trading standards issue, I'm not sure.
It's not as if the goods weren't as advertised, and they did offer to honour the escape clause in the license agreement (just only by returning the whole package)
They could probably argue that as the OS was pre-installed on delivery they had no way of verifying that I had actually removed it. or something like that.
On Sunday 20 October 2002 13:52, Raphael Mankin wrote:
On 17-Oct-2002 Wayne Stallwood wrote:
You should take that sort of thing up with you local Trading Standards Office. they wield a very big stick.
I think the best way to tackle this is to find an alternative source of supply for the hardware (and let's face it there's enough out there) and then make sure that you let people like Dell, Compaq (or should that be HP now?), Toshiba, IBM, etc know that you haven't bought their product becasue of the MS overhead (either directly if it's a big enough order or indirectly via mailing lists, etc.). Of course there are also issues of after sales support and warranties, etc. but, hardened old cynic that I am :o), I've never found these to amount to much in practice anyway.
Keith ____________ Whatever thou sayest of God is untrue. - Meister Eckhart
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Adam Bower -
Andrew Bayliss -
Andrew Savory -
Craig -
Keith Watson -
Raphael Mankin -
Wayne Stallwood