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Sony Wins Battle Over Preinstalled Windows in Europe's Top Court (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: The sale of a computer equipped with pre-installed software isn't an unfair commercial practice because most customers prefer to buy a laptop they can use straight away, Europe's top court has ruled in a victory for Sony. "Failure to indicate the price of each item of pre-installed software" isn't misleading, the Court of Justice of the European Union added in its ruling on Wednesday. The CJEU was asked to intervene after French citizen Vincent Deroo-Blanquart took Sony to court for failing to reimburse the cost of pre-installed software -- Windows Vista Home Premium operating system -- that he did not wish to use on a laptop. Sony refused and instead offered to cancel the sale altogether.
I think this was probably the correct legal conclusion. Clearly, the computer and operating system were meant to purchase as a bundle. If I buy any other product bundled up with something else, returns or exchanges are "all or nothing" (speaking as a U.S. citizen, anyway).
You can't just buy the package deal of a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, and say "I want to know what the included toothbrush is worth, and get refunded for just that part of the package, because I still want to use the toothpaste."
That being said? This probably helps clarify that bundled OEM software or operating systems should be treated as free "throw ins" when making computer purchases. They're generally restricted in their licensing provisions anyway, so they're useless for anything except that specific computer they were bundled with. About the only significance I see with the pre-loaded OS is that hardware manufacturers may have designed the whole machine not to run many other options.
Hopefully, more people will put pressure on the vendors to ensure their computers can run alternate OS's, instead of just buying them first and making assumptions it "should be able to work". My workplace was recently bitten by this when we bought one of those Intel NUC PC's to replace a dead Dell PC running our Finance's scanning software and flatbed scanner. The old system was all configured in Windows 7 Pro so we hoped to just image the drive and blast it back onto the NUC, to get things back up and running. Nope! The NUC seems to not be able to run anything older than Windows 8.
The EULA that comes with Windows specifically allows customers to return it for a refund. The agreement is the first thing that pops up on a new computer.
Based on the ruling and your logic, the MS EULA is invalid. Sony is not bound by the terms of the written agreement. Keep in mind that the customer does not see the agreement until the computer is purchased and in their possession.