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Lenovo Ordered To Refund 'Microsoft Tax'
angry tapir writes with an excerpt from an article over at TechWorld: "A French laptop buyer has won a refund from Lenovo after a four-year legal battle over the cost of a Windows license he didn't want. The judgment could open the way for PC buyers elsewhere in Europe to obtain refunds for bundled software they don't want, according to French campaign group No More Racketware."
Like it or not, the software bundled with your computer drives its cost down. Those companies (Norton, AOL, Roxio etc.) pay to have their software preloaded on your machine. If it becomes standard practice to offer a blank machine, hardware prices will just increase. Some manufacturers even offer a crapware free machine for a nominal fee.
Does anyone honestly think that retailers would charge you $50 less (or whatever the cost of the Windows License is, probably closer to $15) if Windows wasn't installed? Just look at Dell when they offered Linux boxes. The cost of the machine was often times more than the equivalent Windows machine.
Lesson learned here is offer an option for an unsubsidized blank hard drive that costs more than the Windows version. Problem solved, no "Microsoft Tax"
or smart phones with [choose any operating system] on them
But this is exactly like that. The PC can run any number of operating systems. The customer is being forced to purchase software with the hardware when he already has other options for an operating system. The EU has fairly strict rules about what you can and can't do in trade and a good part of them are actually about protecting the consumer.
If your any-operating-system-phone was real, then in the EU you couldn't force a customer to buy the phone with an operating system on it and charge them the extra for it. It is these strict consumer laws in the EU that made Microsoft offer Windows 7 N in the EU as well as the whole "Browser Picker" thingy.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
If a company wishes to not sell specific configurations of their products no one should force them.
Sorry, some corporations if left to their own devices are incapable of doing what is right, ethical and lawful.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Excellent question.
Personally I never buy desktop's pre-made speicifically because I don't want to be forced to pay for a windows license I don't want, and am not going to use. Sadly, however, I don't get that luxury when it comes to a laptop. When I buy a laptop I am forced to pay for a windows license, even though the very first thing I do with the laptop is install linux on it. It makes me sad to know that no matter how much I dislike Windows (and Microsoft), my hard earned money still ends up in their pockets everytime I by a laptop. Add to that what they've done to makers of android phones, it becomes very difficult to use technology without forking over money to Microsoft.
Really the only way to get on the internet or carry a smart phone without giving money to Microsoft is to use all Apple products, and frankly that is not high on my list of things to do either.
It has to do with their stated primary purpose: Increase shareholders' equity. Anything else is secondary. Hence you can't really expect a corporation to be "ethical". If for a corporation being "right, ethical and lawful" are the best options to increase shareholders' equity, then it will be forced to behave.
However if it can get away with, say, throwing toxic waste directly in a river regardless of the danger to population and irreversible destruction to the environment, it will readily do it, because it serves the primary purpose. Where there are strong public institutions to force them to behave, their best bet is to subvert these public institutions.
Examples are countless, but one I found particularly telling, in CBC's documentary "Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands," in which at one point a representative of a native nations who are suffering the oil sands exploitation addresses directly Statoil shareholders in Norway. They could not have been less bothered.
No, however you would at least be allowed to sell the tires on the used market.
Gimme your address and I'll send you the nothing you pay for a FreeDOS license.
It is illegal to conspire with someone else to assist him in a crime. And amuse of monopoly is a crime.
This means, yes, Lenovo can be forced to sell computers without Windows if Windows bundling is a part of monopoly abuse.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Exactly. You don't expect to buy a car and return the steering wheel do you?
No, I expect to buy a car and not find that every model from every brand comes with a dead body painstakingly sewn to the back seat as a mandatory option.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
The point is that like a lot of things in life you save money for the bundle and if you don't like it don't fucking buy it!
Impossible. There is no consumer choice. Windows is still on >85% of all PCs sold (the rest of which are Macs with their obnoxious requisite markup) and I'll be damned if less than 95% of those came without a single piece of crapware.
Consumers shouldn't have to be forced to support Microsoft if they want a computer - and in fact, most people need a computer. And many of them have specific hardware requirements which those smaller Linux vendors can't always provide. So what are they supposed to do?? Why should they be forced to support those monopolist shitbags just to make a living?
The French court did the right thing here and I wish the EU would drop the sanity hammer and force OEMs to offer all computers with an option for no operating system at a full OEM license discount for said OS. What reason is there not to? Can MS not compete on the technical merit of the software they write? Otherwise MS can just gouge away and continue to rely on sucking more money from OEMs/bundlers, basically getting by with nothing but all those shady backroom deals that they make...
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
as to do with their stated primary purpose: Increase shareholders' equity. Anything else is secondary.
Corporations are required to follow their charter. Where do you kids get this stuff?
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