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Dell Refunds Vista/Works With Two Emails
look@thealternative.ch writes "Although many people have asked for pre-installed Linux, and Dell seems to have listened, some still think that buying a naked PC won't be easy. But what about stripping it naked after you buy it? I managed to get Windows Vista (and a bit more) refunded from Dell Germany last week. The process was surprisingly simple: 1) After delivery, ask Dell Support for refund by email. 2) ??? 3) Refund!!! Read the full email conversation in the original German or my English translation. For the impatient reader: The refund is €77.54 for Windows Vista Home Basic plus Works 8.0 (that is 15% of the total amount I paid). The whole process took 2 emails, 2 more to say thank you, and less than 48 hours. The money is already in my account. Kudos to Dell Customer Care (esp. 'Veronika') for being efficient and customer-oriented!"
not quite, EUR 42.29 for Vista Home Basic, EUR 35.24 for Works 8.0. Google says, 77,53 Euros = 103,262207 U.S. dollars.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
No need to wipe the Vista install anyways. Vista is now perfectly legal to install on ANY machine without a license. It sets up an automatic trial installation and you can then purchase the license before the trial is over. So installing Vista on new hardware for burn in testing even if the customer isn't going to buy Vista is not a problem.
The background story. Back in 1999 some members from the SVLUG and also a Slashdot editor (Chris DiBona) organized Windows Refund Day, I found out about this while watching the documentary Revolution OS (there's footage of the event in there) so I thought I'd share it with you. From the Windows Refund day page:Turns out it's a whole lot easier nowadays to return your copy of Windows than it was back then and you can thank these guys for it.
Perfect is the enemy of done.
If you are running a burn in suite that runs on top of windows it is useless anyway. For instance, how could you test RAM with something like Vista loaded and preventing access to a couple gigs?
Good burn in suites are run from trimmed linux boots or DOS/DR-DOS/custom os/etc. As a rule they are loaded from a boot disk and never installed onto the hard drive.
The biggest assumption in your post is that Dell runs a burn-in diagnostic. This is probably not likely.
I'm not sure how Dell does things on their assembly line. But I imagine they image drives in bulk and then just plug in a preimaged drive into the system. Providing an option for drives without operating systems is as easy as giving the assembly line grunt two stacks of drives. They already have facilities for providing customization so they must be tracking options for given pcs.
Don't expect it to be so easy anywhere else, Dell gets a lot of subsidy from Microsoft for the 'Linux' games it plays. Bullshit. There is no such law here in Germany.
Everybody on the world has this right; just read the damn MS-EULA the next time you reinstall; it's in there.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
... but here in Austria you can order Dell Workstations with Linux (RedHat) preinstalled. Also, about a year ago, I ordered a Dell Precision 380 workstation without a preinstalled OS (It came with a FreeDos partition containing drivers and docs IIRC). YMMV
Kind of. Ireland is further divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. NI is part of the UK, the RoI isn't. It's in with all the Euro and all that funky stuff.
nope, that is already reserved for netherlands.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Great Britain is the island which contains three countries - England, Scotland and Wales. The full title of the UK is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Go back 100 years or so and you could chop out the word "Northern".
Incidentally, the "Great" in "Great Britain" has nothing to do with greatness - it merely serves to distinguish between Grande Bretagne and Petite Bretagne, which is on the other side of the English Channel.
That's not quite what the law says. Dell are allowed by law to only sell PCs with Windows if they so choose. What the law says is that the "OEM" version of the software may be sold without any accompanying hardware, and that Microsoft is explicitly forbidden from making versions of Windows which are tied to (only run on) specific machines. You can see this article (in German) for an overview; the judgement itself, from 6th July 2000, is typed up here (also German). This law is also the reason that people in Germany can legally sell their used OEM Windows software on ebay, even if the EULA says that the software may not be sold separately from the machine it came with.
It has also been hinted at that extra conditions of use (eg: in the EULA) on boxed software that were not visible on the outside of the box prior to purchase may be counted as null and void, but this has not yet been confirmed by a court of law - in Germany, or AFAIK anywhere else in the EU.
The situation in the States is, of course, an entirely different kettle of fish. As far as being a consumer goes, it's the land of the not-so-free.
-- Steve