Lenovo Requires NDA For Windows License Refund

tykev writes "A customer wanted to return the license for preinstalled Windows Vista Business that came with his Lenovo laptop. After some lengthy negotiations with representatives of Lenovo's technical support and management, he was offered financial compensation for returning the license in the amount of CZK 1950 (USD 130, EUR 78), pending his acceptance of a non-disclosure agreement that would cover the entire negotiations with the company and its results. He declined and published his experiences on a Czech Linux website. The website editors decided to reward the customer for publishing the article by paying him an author's royalty in the same amount as was the offered compensation for returning the license."

Comments

Right so now we know the minimum

[MosesJones]

So now we know the minimum we should accept. Time to start negotiating upwards to see what other numbers can be achieved.

That is probably the most effective way to start companies shipping hardware only or Linux pre-installed as the negotiation process will cost money. If 1,000 people went through this process with Lenovo (or Dell, or HP, etc) then we would probably see more progress than 5 years of bitching has managed to achieve.

Kudos to the guy

Re:Right so now we know the minimum

[MosesJones]

Or they'd publish a fixed price which means you could cost it out. Which after all is what we all want isn't it?

The only english story on the site

[krgallagher]

[disclaimer]I love the Czech. I have family there and have been to the Czech Republic a couple of time.[/disclaimer]

I wonder why on a Czech web portal, that one news article was in English. I did a little looking around trying to see if I could find any other pages in English but that was the only one. It was also the only one that had a /. submit script on it. Even the Czech version of the story did not have the script.

Re:Big deal

[Shadow of Eternity]

And then what? Microsoft just can't be stopped short of using actual force, military, police, or otherwise. They have too much money to give a damn about any fine short of forcing them to pay off the national debt and they're too big for the govt to just say "Nope, you can't see shit anymore".

The only real way to get at them I think would be to offer the equivalent of modern day letters of marque against microsoft and tell everyone "Pirate their shit".