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Is Obtaining a Windows Refund Still Difficult?
Bubblehead asks: "A few years ago, everybody was talking about returning their copy of Windows to receive a refund. I plan on buying a Laptop shortly, and most manufacturers still insist on shipping it with some version of Windows. I was wondering what the state of the affairs is - there isn't that much information on the net. The most prominent piece of information is this 2003 Linux Journal Report outlining how the author had to go to small claims court to receive a refund. Any experiences - especially with vendors that do not offer an alternative?"
Just got my Windows XP Pro refund from MS last week. Package contained several foreign coins, a coupon booklet, and one human soul.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Is Obtaining a Windows Refund Still Difficult?
No. It is practically impossible. Next question, please.
I hear they're more difficult about OS X refunds, though.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
IIRC, the Escort was one of the only somewhat-good cars Ford ever made, so perhaps Microsoft wanted it to study how people engineer things? Windows is currently at the 1985 Chevy stage of engineering quality, so a 2002 model would be a big help to them.
He seems to have made "stirring up trouble" his goal. I wouldn't be surprised to find out he uses a Mac or something else and couldn't have even used the copy of office anyway.
For context, click Parent.
From the link:
"Then how did you come up with the $10 price figure?"
"I just know it's the right amount."
"So what you are really doing is guessing. Well, my guess is the software is worth $1,000,000. Tell you what, let's split the difference. Send me a check for $500,005."
I think by his reasoning he was owed $499,985.00.
My
> Then I wind up giving them away
Yeah, I'll take one.
real life got you down? no need to pick on your friends, here's a hanky, tell big momma all about it, let it all out baby
> I can see how homeless people would find this an effective use of their time, but other than that....
:)
I dunno, sounds like a better/more entertaining use of my time than, say, watching the latest incarnation of Survivor. Or standing in line to see Star Wars episode 3. Or filling in little boxes in my web browser with text in order to debate the effective uses of my time with anonymous cowards on slashdot.
But instead of writing it off as software expense, make a token effort to collect the money from MS, and then if it fails, write it off as fraud loss.
Then, just to be a pain in the ass, ask the IRS if MS reported their fraud income.
Oh, yeah, the Escort is a great car alright.
I got pulled over in some rural Georgia county on my way to Florida and the officer tried to say I was doing 98 in a 70. I looked at him and said "98? you do realize this is an Escort, right?" He laughed, started to walk off, and said he'd get his radar gun checked.
Game... blouses.
Honestly, until it can beat masturbating and napping it's not getting on to the to do list.
I can multitask so the text boxing is essentially free....
Is the Pope Catholic?
No, he's dead.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
And he never has the same problem twice.
Dude, I totally hear what you're saying. I know it's futile, but I still believe that if enough people stop putting up with this bullshit, companies will start to pay attention. Start giving people Linux preinstalled on +10% of computers and everything would be fantastically different. If they started doing that, there would be better support for graphics, ACPI, no more stupid winmodems, and so forth. They'd have to try and help better the code and their hardware to meet the plug and play demand that people are used to on Windows. I've found that I've had to wrestle with crap in Windows a lot less than with Linux, especially on laptops (fuck you, Vaio). I've had probably twenty different laptops in the past decade and as they get more complicated, the harder they are to get fully working in either environment. I haven't put Windows on a laptop in ages. The last time I used it on a portable was on my dad's Dell running win2k. Did I have a point here? Oh, yeah. Everyone's always talking about the chicken and the egg critical mass bullshit whenever they bring up adopting open source stuff. It falls on the manufacturers to start offering Linux (or whatever) as a standard reduced price option on all their computers. And fuck all that shit about playing nice with windows. How many regular home users use all that workgroup crap? Unless there's one of us nerds around, there aren't any fileservers, terminals, printservers, subnets, nodes, backups, etc. There are usually a couple of PCs sharing a broadband connection via a simple NAT device. So, everyone wins because my rant declares it so. Now I'm afraid I need to sleep as Ganon's minions have kicked my ass yet again. Fuck you, Ganon.
I also reply below your current threshold.
Have you actually successfully done this?
Well, as a scam, no. Legitimately buying a single unit to evaluate, yes.
Of course, they actually did image the drive (I suspect it would cost take most major OEMs more than the price of a single copy of XP to change their standard McDonald's-like assembly line of PC creation for one machine), but waved a whopping $100 off the $3500 price tag.
And no, I don't refer to Dell specifically... Though from my experience with them, I strongly suspect they'd throw in a free blow-job from Michael Dell's own mother if I made a large enough sale conditional on it.
You missed the biggest one
http://www.apple.com
Man, I so hope you are typing in your sleep.