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?"

Comments

Re:What??

[RealAlaskan]

If I buy a car and don't like the rims ...

When this was on slashdot almost two years back, I seem to recall that there were too many dozens of posts making bad analogies to cars and car dealers.

Folks, computers are fundamentally different from cars, and most other goods[1]. Argument by analogy is a bad plan in general, but argument by bad analogy is a sure-fire disaster. Let's try arguing by logic, or inspecting the entrails of goats, instead.

I suppose that I've just unleashed a thousand bad analogies which will prove my point while trying to disprove it. Sigh.

[1]So, why are they fundamentally different? Microsoft's monopoly, the unique dependence on software to make them useful, (and the unique characteristics of that software, relative to any physical good, including computers), the fact that they are general purpose machines to an extent that nothing else is, and on and on. You might find one of these exceptional circumstances in any field, but you're unlikely to find all of them anywhere else. Unless your analogy accounts for all of these and more, it's probably wrong.