Slashdot Mirror
HP's Windows Bundle Trouble
narramissic writes "A French consumer group has filed 3 lawsuits against HP, saying the company's practice of selling consumer PCs with Windows pre-installed violates a French law that 'prohibits linking the functionality of a product to another product' — not to mention that consumers wind up paying for an unwanted OS. For its part, HP contends that it is not in violation of the law because the OS is integral to the PC. 'The PC without an OS is not a product because it doesn't work,' said Alain Spitzmuller, legal affairs director for HP France. 'We believe the market is for products that work.'"
He's pretty much shot himself in the foot, 'cause now he's got to prove that Windows works.
Forcing software sales along with hardware ones?
then it works.
It may not have all the functionality that someone wants, but it does work.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, how are complicated things sold in France? Are cars sold without tires? Are lawnmowers sold without blades? Are shoes sold without laces? Are pizzas sold without toppings?
This sounds like a very confusing and difficult place to do business. Well, considering their unemployment rate, maybe it is.
During the riots and car burnings last year, Disneyland France cancelled the nightly fireworks displays because every night, French soldiers would surrender to Czech tourists.
That law won't let you make the buying of one product the condition for the buying of another. In this case, of course, you have to buy MS Windows (and assorted crap) in order to be able to buy the PC.
In addition to this while the EULA specifically mentions a refunding process, resellers won't honour it.
Both the ministry of commerce and the bureau in charge of the consumer protection have given advice on the matter to the effect that the OS and the PC are two distinct products and that the sale of one cannot be bound to the other. So normally any PC for sale should have its price listed as X + Y + Z where X is the machine, Y the OS and possibly Z the extra software. However since the resellers won't comply, the courts will have to sort it out.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
A car without gas doesn't work, yet I am free to buy a car without gas in it and bring my own gas to use in it. As far as computers go I order barebone machines all the time (Sun X2100's being a great example, they offer Solaris, SuSE, Red Hat, Windows or no OS). I can do the same from many vendors for desktop systems. Apparently selling machines without an OS is acceptable to a large number of consumers.
In other news, auto dealers are now obliged to sell cars with all the gasoline they'll ever need to run, CD players must come with the complete works of modern music prepackaged (RIAA fees included), and TV sets have to carry recordings of all future programmes to be aired.
Score: i, Imaginary
Honestly I don't see why HP's argument is flawed, without an OS the PC is useless for things that consumer's want to do. HP could install Linux on every PC they ship, but the problems inherent in that should be easy to see for anyone, even the most die-hard linux fanboy (I'll give you a hint, basic computer + linux + user who knows nothing about PCs = PROBLEM). Basically the computer they're selling is largely useless to the average consumer without an OS pre-installed, and so either HP would have to change what they sell from full working PCs to almost full working PCs or they just need to win this. Face facts, without an OS the computer is no where near as useful. It's like telling McDonalds to stop putting their food in bags, because it's unfairly forcing the consumer to pay for something (the bag) that they're probably going to throw away. Or telling TV people to not ships cables with the TV, because it unfairly links cable sales to TV sales when the user may want a different cable. Admittedly Windows is more expensive but the situation is largely the same...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
http://marc.merlins.org/linux/refundday/
When UFC files a lawsuit, they generally have studied all aspects of the case and they are almost 100% they'll win. And indeed, they do often win. That's a great news for French consumers. HP's reply is plain stupid, and won't last long at the tribunal.
So, you can do something with a computer with NO OS on it?
Interesting. I had no idea that staring at "O/S Not Found" was that interesting. Do tell me more.
You might not care for HP's choice of OS, but a PC needs an OS or it just doesn't work. You're free to buy your PC from someone OTHER than HP, and the law should not force HP to sell you what they don't want to.
ARTHUR:
Please Let us In! Please! I beg of you!
FRENCH GUARD:
Go Avay or I will fart in your general direction!
I assume this was a time when computers were marketed to the nerdiest of nerds?
I guess there's a good chance I'll get modded down for the heinous crime of coming out in favour of Microsoft here, but why should HP be sued for not selling a computer without an OS? It's like suing a company for selling a pen that comes with a cartridge. Sure, the pen could be sold without one and the buyer could get them separately, possibly even cheaper, but the fact is that the majority want to buy a pen and use it as-is. The same goes for computers.
I think HP should sell PCs that come with other OSes (or even no OS at all) - simply because I think there is a market worth taking there. However I don't think it's for any government or "consumer group" to try and force this on a company.
To look at it another way, there are plenty of PC manufacturers that solely sell PCs with DVD writers, monitors, keyboards and/or mice. Just like an OS, none of those things are *needed* in the strictest sense, yet nobody seems to be up in arms (or rather up in lawsuits) about that.
While I've greatly enjoyed watching the anti-trust decisions go against Microsoft in the EU in recent years, it seems that those legitimate victories for consumer rights are now being turned into a witch-hunt by various organisations in Europe who see the anti-MS sentiment as a means to get their hands into Microsoft's very deep pockets.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
A DVD player without a DVD is not a product, because it doesn't work...
A DVD player without a TV is not a product, because it doesn't work...
A toy without batteries is not a product, because it doesn't work...
While you need to go to a store to buy batteries and DVD for your non-products,
for an OS, you may not even need to go to the store. You could download one of many free Linux (or BSD or other) OS's many of which do not even need to be installed to function.
Perhaps batteries are not the best comparison.
Inserting into purchasing process
WHICH OPERATING SYSTEM DO YOU WANT PRE-INSTALLED
( ) Windows (add $99)
( ) Red Hat Linux (add $39)
( ) Suse (add $39)
( ) NONE
"A DVD player without a DVD is not a product, because it doesn't work..."
yes it does. You turn it on, you get a screen on the TV, and you even get an indcator that you don't have a disk.
"A DVD player without a TV is not a product, because it doesn't work..."
Again, I get little lights on mine, and if I put a dvd in it still sends a signal to it's output. it works fine.
"A toy without batteries is not a product, because it doesn't work..."
Of course it does, children can play with it just fine.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And which laymen consider "not working", or at best "working too hard".
Do you honestly think it should be mandated that computers must come OS-free? And I'm not talking about "should be" in terms of how it would reduce the inept-user population, I'm talking about "should be" in terms of freedom and government non-interference. You are free to go buy a computer without an OS, or buy the parts and assemble them yourself, etc. Should companies not be free to sell OSes pre-installed on computers? Should people not be free to buy them?
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
So he is just trying to imply that the only thing that fits the definition of a PC OS is Windows. I call Shenanigans.
For an OS, you may not even need to go to the store. You could download one of many free Linux (or BSD or other) OS's many of which do not even need to be installed to function.
Assuming HP shipped you a PC with absolutely no O.S. installed, how exactly would you go about downloading this wonderful free O.S.?
A great solution if you already have a PC. A pretty lousy one if you're picking up a phone, squeeling, "Bleep, bleep, blurrrrrrp, bleep" at it, then desperately noting down the bleeps and burps it sends back before trying to etch the ISO image on to a CD with a flashlight and a magnifying glass.
Batteries are a common consumer item. It can generally be assumed that even the least technically inclined can figure out where to buy them and how to install them. For the average non-Geek, finding out where to buy an O.S., understanding that the cool one Apple sells doesn't work on their PC and then going through a typical Linux install is way beyond them. Thus a product without batteries remains largely functional within the means of an average consumer whereas a PC without an O.S. does not.
No but it should be good consumerfriendly if computers are sold giving the consumer the option to select which OS they want to install and even give them the option to buy the OS from another seller.
Just saying it like it are.
I guess it is as long as one doesn't mind false dichotomies. A computer without an operating system may not be useful, but where is it written that the *only* useful operating system is Microsoft Windows? Where is it written that consumers should not have the option of installing some other operating system? Where is it written that consumers must buy a new Microsoft operating system in addition to the one they already own? I mean, aside from Microsoft OEM licensing agreements. A more appropriate analogy would be cars and gasoline. A car isn't useful without fuel, and fuel isn't useful without a machine to put it in, but nobody would try to insist that if I buy a Ford, I also have to buy a lifetime supply of Chevron gasoline with it as opposed to any of a dozen other brands of gasoline. There are even more potential choices in operating systems than there are choices of gassoline, but according to HP, you can buy your HP machine with any operating system you want - as long as it is Windows. That's total BS.
No, I think it should be mandated that computers can be purchased OS-free for a price that is less than the price of one with the OS by a difference of the retail price of the OS. I think people should have the choice.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
No. The difference is that an operating system runs on the computer. It isn't a necessary part. You could netboot the computer, or boot it off of a CD. Both are perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to be able to buy a computer OS-free.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Put another way, if my computer smokes and I already own a valid Windows license, it seems reasonable that I should be able to buy a replacement PC from the same manufacturer sans Windows and install my existing licensed copy. That said, I would hope that different rules apply if the same manufacturer creates both the hardware and software (e.g. Apple, Sun, IBM's server hardware). Otherwise, that could really turn into a mess.
You know... probably easier to just change the law.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Define "operate". Yes, a PC without an OS will technically power up, but I think you'd be hard pressed to do anything with it without an OS of some sort. Have fun staring at "Please insert boot media..." all day long. Oooo, the lights will probably blink some, too, and you could spend all day going through the BIOS options. But other than that, you've got a nice paperweight without the OS.
No, idiot, they sell the pc for x, and if you want to you can pay x+y to purchase one with windows installed.
Yes, it would definitely be very nice for there to be such a choice. But think about it: to whom does HP market their products? Are these people going to trouble themselves with installing an OS? or are they just going to move onto the next vendor? Excuse my ignorance of specific market statistics, but I'm willing to guess that the population of users finicky enough to want a pre-built from HP that has something other than Windows installed, and are gifted with enough time and experience to install it themselves, yet not enough to build one themselves, just isn't a very wide market. If the market isn't there, or just isn't significant enough to matter, then the resources required to add such a choice would be wasted, hence why the choice simply does not exist. If you really want that choice, then go find a vendor that builds OS-free boxes, because HP, or any large company for that matter, isn't going to turn a profit on only a few people. So I'll have to side with the big, nasty corporation on this one.
The irony of demanding a computer to include linux on the bios but not to include windows on the hard drive. Wow. This entire thread is terrible. HP sells prebuilt computers to people. There is no monopoly by HP, not even an oligopoly by HP and Dell. Where are the complaints about Mac's have OSX on them? If anyone is locking in hardware with software, it is Apple. But then again, if you don't want an operating system, go to a company that doesn't include one or build your own. It isn't really that hard. I really don't understand this arguement.
Maybe we can get more countries to file lawsuits like this - against as many companies as possible.
Cell phones that force us to use Symbian OS instead of letting us roll our own. Cars that are bundled with Renault engines instead of letting us install one from Abarth.
hell, why not just make it illegal to assemble anything from components and let us build it ourselves.
Then their system will be as tort happy as ours and we will regain some of the advantages we lost. Viva la France - Libertie, Egalitie, Unbundletie!!!
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
And young children will inevitably play with the box more than the toy.
That may explain why this French consumer group is suing HP instead of Newegg.
The problem with an OS-free PC is that it will actually cost you more. The large PC manufacturers get Windows for very cheap, and then load it up with "value added" software, links, demos and other such great stuff. It turns out that by having Windows on the PC they are actually turning a profit.
You might not like paying for Windows in some way, but in effect it lowers the cost of your PC, odd as it may sound.
Either pay more (or at worst get no reduction in cost), or just nuke windows off the drive when you get it.
So? His statement is still false.
Even if you make the assumption that the OS is a required part of the computer, there's still no reason they should only bundle Windows. They offer a variety of case designs to choose from. nVidia or ATI graphics cards to choose from. AMD or Intel processors to choose from. So why no choice on operating system?
Maybe not
I totally agree. This whole thread is like a car that has a bunch of bumper stickers containing inappropriate analogies slapped all over it.
He's probably also never bought an automobile without an engine.
...I really just came for the pre-requisite "bad car metaphor".
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
So... HP sells a product that apparently could cost less without the OS installed. So why doesn't someone else just sell a barebones PC? Why does the law have to be inovolved? Why do we have to use the government to force a company to sell their product in a way that some consumers want? If the company isn't meeting the consumer requirements then some other company can capitilize on that opportunity and create a product... why must HP sell HP products any way other then the way HP wants to. If customers don't like paying the price then don't pay it. It's simple... no need to give these silly beaurocrats any more power.
My point is that a majority percentage of the world is hooked on Windows, and most of that percentage would prefer their computer to not be expensive. If HP's cost per computer goes up because they decide they want to market Linux to the home user, and Dell decides not to, the majority of people looking for a cheaper computer will go to Dell, because Dell is cheaper. More money per Linux box might be made, but would the overall profit of Linux boxes outweight the amount of sales lost? Probably not because most home users don't give a flying fig about Linux. (That is in NO way a personal stance. It's merely a stereotypical response of the average non-savy computer user.)
"You might not care for HP's choice of OS, but a PC needs an OS or it just doesn't work. You're free to buy your PC from someone OTHER than HP, and the law should not force HP to sell you what they don't want "
See the interesting thing is they dont advertise the issues with a "XP image installation"
1. You cannot partition HDD to your desire, only 1 partition allowed anything above that they dont support.
2. They install bloatware (AOL,Music match, other junk) everytime you reinstall forcibly.
3. Cannot install a retail copy of WIn XP Pro on the laptop , which i believe is a illegal restriction.
I recently purchase a HP DV2000t laptop , I agree absolutely with the suit the french man has charged. If you have a retail copy
of WIn XP it still doesnt work wid the laptop(SATA Driver problems , even loading the SATA driver from floppy leads to a crash) unless its the XP image provided by HP itself. and when you restore image
all the bloat ware including comes back .
Spent 2 days arguiing with HP support to send me a regular XP OS install CD instead of disc images. They abosultely refused .
Finally i ended up bastardizing the image so much that i doubt if i'd be able to resintall .
Good news is SuSE 10.1 works including webcam and eveything . so will probably ditch win Xp on it alltogether
Then when you buy the machine OS-less, they should warn you that unless you know what you're doing, your new machine won't do the stuff that you want. But they should also provide the option to sell you the same machine without an OS and without all that crappy bundled software and discount the cost of that software from the purchase price of the machine, in case you would rather put Linux on it, for instance.
This lawsuit isn't just aimed at HP. Once HP is forced to sell their machines with a choice of Windows or not, all it will take is a whisper from my lawyer to get a similarly egalitarian treatment from Dell, Gateway and any of the other Tier 1 and Tier 2 computer manufacturers.
It's one thing to recommend MS-Windows as the OS of choice. It's something else, entirely, to mandate MS-Windows.
I just shouldn't be punished by HP for not wanting to use the OS that they want to hoist on me. That's what tying is, and it's illegal.Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Well, one thing I can do with a computer without an OS on it is to install and run an OS on it. The OS is no more integral to the computer than the computer is to the monitor. You could equally well have said "I had no idea that staring at a blank screen with the DVI cord unplugged was that interesting". By your logic, since the monitor is useless by itself, the computer and the monitor clearly can't be separate products.
Thousands of products are unusable unless combined with another product: a flash light delivered without batteries; a trailer without a car to drag it; a bucket of paint without a brush; a fridge without food in it. The list goes on forever.
No, I disagree. Every desktop oriented Linux distro in the world would be scrambling for a chance to be OEM installed on consumer PCs. And given the choice between an HP with Windows for $1000 and an identical HP with Linux for $600, I think most consumers would pick Linux every time. Assuming the in store Linux HP machines weren't purposely rigged to look bad, I think most non-gaming consumers would realize that OpenOffice, Firefox, Gaim, and Thunderbird meet all their requirements.
Maybe not
"No, I think it should be mandated that computers can be purchased OS-free for a price that is less than the price of one with the OS by a difference of the retail price of the OS. I think people should have the choice."
That is absolutely ridiculous! HP doesn't pay retail price for every copy of Windows they put on their computers so why should they dock that price?
Having Windows XP on a new computer probably only raises the price $10-$25 if even that much.
A large part of the reason why Windows is so popular, is that most companies that sell prebuilt, ready to use PCs come with Windows installed, and don't offer any other choices. This is the situation that the French law was created to attempt to change, as it distorts the OS market in favour of Microsoft. It could well be too late to change this, but if companies like HP continue to offer no other choice, then it will never change. You could argue that it is Microsoft who should be sued for forcing exclusivity with their discounts, but in my opinion, something needs to be done to end this market distortion, and this opinion has nothing to do with any pesonal opinion about Microsoft I might hold, the same thing holds true in other markets. This is exactly what the anti-monopoly laws are designed to prevent.
You can chuck a Knoppix dvd in the drive and be productive within minutes.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
x=hardware + labor + margin
y=oem windows license
z="ad revenue" for including 60-day trial versions of Norton Antivirus, weatherbug or whatever
T= price to customer, could be x+y-z if HP feels generous.
If z>y, z depends on the existence of y, and you feel no ideological pain when getting a PC which you have to nuke windows off the disk before using, then it is in your interest that y is present.
However, if this lawsuit does go through and HP loses (here's hoping) then every computer manufacturer that hopes to do business in France will have to care. This will mean either MS lessens its bulk licensing requirements, or everyone will face an increased PC cost. Either way its a win and a good precedent.
Also, if this winds up going before the whole EU, which I wouldn't be surprised, I can't see them ruling for HP and MS based on previous antitrust rulings.
Clones are people two.
Last I checked there weren't any free tires on the market...
Also, tires are all comparably priced, ranging, for the standard ones they put on the car, between $30 and $50 per tire when you are buying 4; which adds at most $200 to a purchase that will run you about $10,000, thus +2%. An OS however ranges from $0 to $150+ (not OEM price, not actually sure what that is exactly) for a $400-$1000 purchase; Windows only options add a little less than 40% to 15%. Big difference in analogy IMO.
Clones are people two.
A lot of the time, that's more expensive. E.g. WinModems were cheaper than hardware modems because the signal processing was done by Windows. But the specs were closed so it was hard to support them on Linux.
But if you're a PC manufacturer, it's not worth jeopardising your sales to people who want Windows by using a hardware modem rather than a software one, since that adds to the build cost. Microsoft being Microsoft, they will always try to create this sort of situation, where the PC manufacturers can save a few bucks at the cost of being able to run alternative OSs. And given that the vast majority of PCs run Windows, it will continue to work.
But it's always been possible to get a PC with no OS if you build it yourself. In fact, I've never bought a pre built desktop, since they tend to use cheaper chipsets and graphics cards than I want to use.
Laptops are harder of course, but there are whitebox laptops too, they're just harder to find, e.g.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/56/1/
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
better analogy:
it is not required that you buy a dvd of a movie when buying a new dvd player. Certainly
the new dvd player is useless and performs no function until such a time as you load a
dvd of some content. One can view the pc in a similar manner - it plays content, be
that the windows os, linux, bsd or your own home grown asm os.
BIOS is a tank of gas. Windows is a 3-year gas card to one brand of gas station.
Reboot and Select proper Boot Device (Réinitialisation et dispositif approprié choisi d'initialisation )
Don't you think he might call HP and say "My PC doesn't work!" ???
People don't call Sony when their PlayStation game console says "Please insert a game". Here's what the HP tier-1 phone tech support person would say:
Press the button on your computer's DVD drive to open the tray. Find the CD labeled "Linux Operating System", L-I-N-U-X, that came in your computer's resource pack, and place it in the tray. Press the button again to close the tray. Now press the power button to start the CD. Then just do what the screen says.
-
First is the presumption that a computer (shipped) without an OS is useless... I can pop in a Knoppix disk and do most of the things that people use their computers for without installing any OS -- banking, messaging, skype, word processing, photo editing, etc., etc.,
... His statement is false.
- second is that that that Windows is the only OS that anybody would ever want.
- third is the implicit claim of the (many) astro-turfers that this suit is meant to prevent HP from selling computers with MS-Windows.... From TFA:
Nothing wrong with consumers buying an HP computer with Windows, as long as that's what they want (which will be the case for many -- but not all -- consumers).
It's more like if every major hospital in the country forced children born there to be baptized as Roman Cathoic -- and required that the parents pay a tithe to the Roman Catholic Church for the 'privilege'.Now, yes, you can turn around and have the child declared Baptist, Lutheran, Jewish or Muslim, etc., but you still won't get back the $75 that went to the RC church.... and, for some people, just having the taint of the RC church on their children is almost as bad as being declared pagan. -- and, for some people, explaining to your parents back home why their grandchild's Birth Certificate says Roman Catholic is going to be, uhm, delicate.
Of course you also have the option of having your child born at home, but some people really like the convenience and safety of a large hospital.
[I'm RC, myself, so I can (I hope) get away with this analogy.]
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
OS of choice, or OS of coercion? Do the majority of the middle class even realize that they have a choice?
[A computer builder] only knows what people are buying and it sure as hell ain't OEM Linux.People are buying Windows only because nothing else is advertised.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2 didn't require an OS - it did all the hardware and memory management it needed internally. IBM's early disk diagnostics were the same way. If you write your code to the L4 kit, then you can even get Java to run without an OS. OS' came about decades after the first stored-program all-digital computer and if you're not wanting protected environments are largely a waste of resources. An OS is just a glorified wrapper over the electronics, if you're handling any threading and memory pools yourself.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Good lord. Even Walmart couldn't undercut OEM Windows on price. OEM Windows is priced for the mass market. Sales in the millions and tens of millions of units.
There is a twenty year backlist of MSDOS and Windows titles that should run just fine under 32 bit Vista. There are few genuine first-time buyers in the consumer market and many very real barriers to migration.
I think most non-gaming consumers would realize that OpenOffice, Firefox, Gaim, and Thunderbird meet all their requirements.
Anything of interest to home users in FOSS gets ported to Windows or begins as a native Windows app. FOSS is not a driver for the adoption of Linux. End of line.
If simply all computer vendors were legally obliged to itemise the computer and operating system in all advertising, *and* make the operating system optional, it would immediately level the playing field for all competitors.
Our government departments are, indeed, in Microsoft's pocket. Heck, our entire country is in America's pocket.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
I know many of the Linux zealots here will bash HP for not offering alternative OSs as an option, but remember that when your average consumer (ie: grandma) purchases a PC they expect a certain level of support and functionality.
.. it's quite likely she may want Option B. Then when she gets home to install it, and then has any number of problems (her ISP won't support her, her printer doesn't work, her nephew can't email her, her bank won't support Firefox, her old copy of MS Office won't load, etc etc etc) then she's going to call HP.
If grandma has a choice between:
A) Desktop + Windows for $800
B) Desktop + Linux for $600
At that point, HP's costs increase trying to support Grandma, or HP risks seriously upsetting a customer and possibly getting into further legal troubles. It's a lose-lose for HP and Grandma.
A business should never have be forced to give its customers a choice. If it makes business sense to only bundle Windows, then it should be free to do that. Let someone else sell a Linux box, take the risk, and see what happens.
-David
I mean, there's software in there. How dare they bundle that!
What if I don't want an optical drive? How dare they bundle a DVD burner (ie. another product) with the computer?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
"A) isn't an IT geek; or B) didn't have it setup for them BY an IT geek"
That seems like it covers pretty much every Windows owner too, eh?
Particularly if you consider preloading as having it set up for them by an it geek.
Heck, for my own anecdotal evidence I can say I dont know _anyone_ at _all_ who has actually bought Windows to install on a PC. I do, however, know quite a lot of people who have downloaded Linux to install. And I do know a whole lot of people who have paid for Windows they're not using, as part of a new computer.
"it makes no sense whatsoever for HP to sell them."
Oh, BS. Reconfiguring the imaging of a system has pretty much no cost. You could even do it with stores like Best Buy; simply use a DVD-preloading image which already ships with many machines in the form of recovery DVD's. Offering the image separately would slice a fair amount of the price in the lower segments, thus increasing sales. Which _would_ make sense for HP. It just wouldnt make sense for Microsoft who would lose all the aforementioned anecdotal sales. Which is why they insist on playing the tying game.
The argument that an OS must be installed to make the computer useful can be easily refuted. Most PC's (I assume HP's, but can't confirm) will search for a boot server if their is no OS installed. This is handy for business use, but could also be exploited by home users if the cable/DSL routers had an OS they could download to a new OS-less PC. A router engineer could easily add a small Linux install like Puppy or DSL to their home router and then people could buy a bare PC (no HD required) and plug it in, it could boot the minimal Linux image from the router and become an "internet appliance". It'd be really cool to store all the changes and new files to a USB key so you could take it to another "appliance" and run it there as well.
There wouldn't be any need for a government intervention if there wasn't so much arm-twisting from Microsoft, and from the OEMs. And it's not a question of creating a market for "very few people". Some people, very few if you want, don't need Windows on their computers, for example someone who already has a Windows licence for another computer that doesn't work anymore, a licence the EULA, mind you, allows them to transfer to another machine. How is it that it is impossible to buy another computer without Windows ? How is it that, when some guy succeeed in having a refund on a computer (something said to be possible, and the way to go) because he doesn't want Windows, it makes the titles everywhere on the planet ? If there are few people who wants a computer without OS, why not just sell them one, with a little rebate (just change the HD in a "normal" computer). The choice is between making all your clients happy by offering very few of them a rebate on a computer without OS, and making only most of your clients happy, and be sued by some of them (very few). Don't tell me they are afraid of losing too much money if they do it : if they lose too much money, then there is a market. And answering to other comments here, that French guy (who incidentally isn't France, a useful precision as some of you just jump from "one French guy" to "France") could easily win his case : all he has to prove is that the computer can work with another system, or just with another copy of Windows (that you may transfer from one computer to another).
Then we have to figure out why Joe Sixpack freezes in front of an empty PC but not in front of an empty game console. Perhaps it's because the BIOS of the PS1 and PS2 game consoles has some sort of user interface, as if it were a Built-In Operating System rather than just a Basic Input-Output System. Adding a friendlier BIOS UI to the commodity personal computer might make it easier for Joe Sixpack to realize that he can put in an OS CD.