For me, the esthetic thrill of blowing away Windows has always been a joy well worth paying that little bit of the full purchase price for. Feature!:-)
This is called "sour grapes". And it is a good fable that you should read. It explains why people who dont get what they want try to rationalise this as something they probably wanted in the first place.
It is a silly person who takes pride in paying someone for nothing.
If you don't like part of something you have bought, you don't have the right to return just that part for a partial refund. You may have the right to return the entire product as a whole for a full refund. If you don't like a particular capacitor in the power supply, can you return that component and expect a partial refund?
In general, you are correct. In this case, you are wrong.
In your example of a power supply. You would have the right to return the capacitor for a refund, if the manufacture wrote in the contract supplied with it that they would allow you to return just the capacitor of a refund. If you read the contract and saw that they do indeed allow for a refund of just the capacitor, then you call them and ask for the refund of just the capacitor and they said "no we will not honour the contract we wrote and instead want you to return the entire product"... well wouldnt you consider this breach of contract? The purchaser has got to wonder why the manufacture wrote in a legal contract that they would do something that they clearly do not intend to honour. And you would be left thinking that the implication is that they never intended to do what they wrote. The implied statement is "either except the power supply as is and "eat" the additional cost of the capacitor or we dont want you as a customer at all".
Your example of a capacitor is a cheap commodity. Perhaps you should have said that you had the option of returning the transformer. Because the operating system is definitely a significant portion of the total cost of the PC + software. Maybe you dont appreciate this because you find the software has value to you. But for those of us who have purchased computers multiple times with portions that they do not use, these costs add up. I have purchase 3 computers in the last 5 years with the added microsoft tax. I dont use microsoft products, I get no value from this... I dont like the idea that I am supporting a software corporation to make improvements on products that I will never use. Until you step outside the idea that microsoft is necessary... it may be difficult for you to appreciate what it means to repeatedly pay for something when the contract says you do not have to.
I've avoided massive delays on the highway because I heard about a fire on my radio.
Certainly not life saving, and I'm pretty sure I was hearing either paramedics or the fire department - but still.
Im speculating here, but: in the future, distribution of this sort of information will be handled by automated bots that monitor twiter and other online feeds in real time and distribute related and important information to you based on your GPS location and known habits.
Im just saying... so wat if we lose live feeds to the police conversations... other forms of communication and dissemination are coming and they will be better.
It's important for the police to have secure encrypted communication?
Ok, I'll beg that question.
In that case then if I encrypt my hard drive the police shouldn't come asking me to decrypt it.
No double standard here. I in fact do believe in complete encryption of your hard drive. And I do not believe that anyone should be "forced" to decrypt it in order to possibly incriminate themselves. I mean if the known evidence is not sufficient to prosecute a crime... I do not agree that the accuser should be able to force a defended to show additional evidence that will make something prosecutable.
I dont think anyone should have to answer to this: "We dont seem to have enough evidence to prove you committed a crime. Please show me more and more (of your private life) until I can prove you did something."
I do use full disk encryption and I do believe I have the right to privacy. If I go out and do something illegal then those actions should be enough to convict me (or anyone else). If not... then assumptions are being made or profiling is being used and a judge should just throw it out and reprimand the accusers.
Accepted there are two things that should never be seen being made in public—laws and sausages—the ACTA process could be a case study of how not to do it. Conducted in secret, with little information shared except a few leaked documents, the ACTA talks were even decried by those who were involved in them.
I dont get it. The author of the article provides little snippets of text that appear to contradict themselves. Above he says that laws should be made in private and ACTA didnt do it right. And then the next sentence it says that ACTA was developed in near perfect secrecy. So
If you say copying other people’s copyright is an OK thing to do, then you are saying that theft is OK.
No! I am not saying this. Yes, theft is wrong. Stop implying that just because I choose to see sharing and copying as having incredible value, that I want to start stealing from someone. Instead, the opposite is true... a limited set of corporate distributors would prefer to have no open sharing and copying at all unless it is provided through a limited set of channels under their control. Sharing and copying is not the same as distribution and broadcasting. Owners of IP content deserve control distribution and broadcasting of the content they own... I have no problem with this, and if ACTA really provided that without infringing on the rights of everyone else to share, distribute and broadcast alternate content, I would have no problems with it.
Everyone is very keen on sharing until it is their stuff that is being shared.
Incorrect. There is now masses of content that is entirely free to re-share, re-copy, re-distribute, re-broadcast outside the control of any corporate distributor and all WITH THE BLESSING of the artist (IP holder). Primarily this content uses the Creative Commons License and can be found at many sites (ex: youtube.com, jamendo.com, vimeo.com, etc). Some of it even used to exist on megaupload.com but these are the sad casualties of the apparent fight to retain the rights of some.
The sad reality for distribution and IP controllers is that their cost of doing business is quickly approaching $0. It used to cost money to print media, ship it to stores, hold it on shelves, sell it to customers, market it on TV, radio or print. But now all that costs about nothing. In fact, the consumer now pays the majority of distribution costs to their ISP. Combine that with the fact that new content is being generated at an incredible rate and they can no longer limit the supply of consumable entertainment. There is less and less reason for an artist to use their services or provide them with a large share of the profits. The distribution companies are about to die. They are like the newspapers and magazines. They are the phone book companies and the book publishers. They need to adapt or die. The simple solution is for them to look forward and begin reducing prices and increase access to their content. Instead they are choosing to do the opposite and they will suffer in the long term. These laws are important to them, because if they are achieved it means that the distribution companies will hinder advancement into the future and they will have little incentive to change. I dont believe in protecting the past at the detriment of progress.
I do not support piracy AND I do not support suppressing alternative options for distribution. Sharing is godly, in that it allows humans to express humanity.
I cant help but think that those who would oppose police privacy either naturally distrust most police officers or have personally invested in a police scanner and spend all their time living vicariously through it.
The public safety mission is harmed when you take away oversight and accountability. Radio signals in the clear is part of oversight and accountability. The public has every right to know response times, unit numbers, processes, practices, methodologies, etc. After all, they work for us.
Law enforcement will never be able to justify to me why their actions cannot be 100% transparent.
Save your battle for the right to take video of the police in public. Laws that prevent you from filming anyone in public is a real issue. This is work communication and rarely if ever do I hear of it being used to for oversight of the police. Videos of police abuse is the number 1 way to find the few bad apples in the force who cannot handle the authority they are entrusted with.
Perhaps there is an argument to have all police radio communication recorded and make it available to the courts and requests from the public for release later. I just dont think real time eavesdropping on the police will make a difference in watching over the police for abuse.
Realtime radio chatter is useful for getting data out to the media, for safety or media-assists. Examples: Amber Alert, Traffic accidents, police chases, armed robbery. The less people that get caught in the crossfire the better.
This sounds contrived. Can you provide one example of a situation where a life was saved because someone was listening to a police scanner and avoided a situation where they otherwise would have been caught in the crossfire? I doubt it. The reasoning the police give for having privacy is a lot more realistic: to deny criminals the ability to track police actions.
Non-realtime radio chatter is less useful, but allows for the media to scrape through it, but doesn't allow the media to alert the public to dangerous situations to stay clear of.
The police can and will alert the media and thus the public of dangerous situations. I expect it is standard practice for them to alert the media in a hostage situation or whenever the public is in danger. To assume that the media and public would get the message indirectly by monitoring all police chatter is irresponsible. And Im certain that isnt what they depend on. You think if there is a shooting at some school, that they just talk internally about it and hope the media gets the message implied?
Some compromise is needed.
I dont think any compromise is needed.
For example the 24 hour news networks like CNN, could obtain a realtime scanner, and the police can rotate through encryption cycles every few days so that the scanners don't work, requiring that the "media" radios be returned to the police, checked-in/checked-out. Anytime a radio isn't returned, the encryption code is switched. The media scanners are "relayed", so that the police don't have to cycle their own radios unless a radio has gone missing.
This solves most of the problem, and introduces only several seconds of latency for media radios. It also allows the media radios to be killed for security reasons. You abuse them, you lose them.
How come every time we improve upon the past someone says we need to break it in order to retain the deficiencies we became accustomed to? I think it is good that the police have secure and private communication channels. If they had this from the start, these sorts of "solutions" would be laughed out of here and this topic wouldnt even be discussed.
Maybe u natually distrust the police and want to know someone is looking over their shoulder all the time. Having unencrypted police communication is a clear deficiency, and now that this agency is fixing it... lets just let them do it and stop looking for ways to make it as deficient as it used to be.
The solution you suggest about rotating keys and limited access to radios is a lot of work for nothing. Further, I dont like the idea of selective eavesdropping as it introduces politics into the equation. Why not just let these police continue on with doing what they need to do: improve the police service.
Not really. It's an OEM version of Windows, so MS says, "Deal with Lenovo". If the user declines the license agreement, it says he can return Windows for a full refund.
Blame MS for pushing off onto the OEMs.
Here is the exact wording of an MS EULA provided to me:
This End-User
License Agreement ('EULA') is a legal
agreement between you (either an individual
or a single entity) and the manufacturer
("Manufacturer") of the computer system or
computer system component ('HARDWARE') with
which you acquired the Microsoft software
product(s) identified on the Certificate of
Authenticity ("COA") affixed to the HARDWARE
or on the associated product documentation
("SOFTWARE").
In other words... although it refers to Microsoft software, the contract is entirely written by, provided by and legally binding to the Vendor (LENOVO).
The Vendor does not "have too" offer this contract with their products. Maybe microsoft is strong arming the vendor into doing it... but regardless, Lenovo here is entirely responsible for wat they say and do. I mean nobody is putting a gun to the head of lenovo and saying you have to put this windows software onto ur pc's.
b) is the vendor obliged to pay the refund, just because Microsoft wrote it into the EULA?
If the suppler passes that EULA on to you then yes. By supplying the software to you they are agreeing to a contract with MS that almost certainly contains terms covering the matter. Unlike the end user license agreement, that will be a "proper" legally binding contract with a lot less leeway to call "no fair!" after signing.
The contract is written by the Vendor and it states so within it near the top. Read it. Or do you want me to provide the exact quotes here? I wrote out the entire EULA and yes it does say that the contract is between you (the consumer) and Hewlett Packard (the vendor). And then at the end it says it was written by Hewlett packard. Now I am sure that it goes through microsoft for approval or comes as a template from microsoft lawyers. But it is clearly between you and the vendor alone in a legal sense. It applies to the software owned by microsoft, but that doesnt change the fact that the contract is from the vendor.
Ive been playing with LUKS full disk encryption for a long time before it became a standard install option on the alternate Ubuntu. I must have about 20 encrypted operating system installs on SD cards. I know for a fact that I do not know the passwords for many of these systems sitting in a cabinet. There is some truth to the defence that one can forget passwords. One time I accidentally deleted the luks passphrase from an active operating system. That was bad because I had family pictures on that one I really wanted to keep. In all these cases, I could be just as liable as this defendant. I dont think the courts should be able to assume that memory is always a selective choice. People do forget and the courts just have to find a way to "trick" it out of her if they believe she is lying. Like installing hidden software to monitor keystrokes or otherwise just accept that there is some evidence that just may be to difficult to retrieve.
So wat u r saying is that vendors are charging 3rd party companies money to have their crapwear installed on machines that never have the crapwear installed? That has got to be illegal for vendors to charge 3rd parties for this service when they never follow through on the installation portions. I for one do not like being a party to this fraud. Regardless of whether it saves money or not, the companies should do what u say and offer the computers without no software for more money. Then maybe I could call up microsoft and install their operating system with crapwear on a partition if they paid me money. Hey if they paid me enough money, I would set up a some space to install their crappy software and never use that partition.
Why doesnt microsoft put this on their products page:
"Dear linux users, install our software on your PC with some additional crapwear and we will pay you money"
If the money was enough maybe they could get some linux users to do what you say they are already doing by offering PCs cheaper then they would otherwise be.
Good question. Does anyone know if there is a site for all the people who requested refunds as written in the EULA and were denied? I think if all these consumers came together, then there would be enough to possibly start a class action lawsuit. I requested a refund from 2 different companies. I requested over and over again from Hewlett Packard and explanation as to why they wouldnt follow the letter of the contract I purchased from them. In the end, i was forced to pay for the license and never used it. I want to do something about this, because I want to stop paying in the future. If anyone knows of a website that is collecting contact information from people who have been denied a refund... I would like to know it. Thanks.
This is not about monopoly abuse. I mean if Microsoft is demanding that vendors do not offer refunds to consumers as the Vendor has written into their contracts then maybe that is monopoly abuse. Or if microsoft is threatening sactions against those vendors that do honour the refunds... then yes it is monopoly abuse.
The case here is that a vendor said they would provide a refund for the separately included software products. In general the Vendors are not honouring this in part of the contract. So the contract as written is totally legal because it does not force the consumer to purchase the two products together, and offers a refund for those who request it. The illegal part is when the Vendor does not follow the contract as written and denies the consumer the rights they provided to them for refund. So in this case, microsoft has done no wrong... and the issue is entirely with the Vendor Lenovo who is forcing consumers to go to the courts just to get them to do what they say they would. This is a case of a big corporation denying rights to the consumer just because they are a small set of the larger market and because they do not expect the consumer to go through all the trouble to get wat they deserve. This person went all the way and won. What a great story.
No one is Forcing Lenovo to sell configurations they don't want to.
The court is just holding them to the conract they entered into with MS with regards to refund requests from customers who don't agree to the Windows license / EULA.
If OEMs really wanted to avoid the issue, they could have their order page / retail outlets present people with the license at checkout, and then ship the systems with that part of the OOBE skipped / pre-answered.
Many of you have not read the microsoft EULA. I cannot blame you. It took me a few hours to read it all. And then several days to cross reference to understand how it all relates. Worse is that the EULA cannot be printed and only 5 lines can be seen at one time. So I took hours to copy it all out so I could properly read while cross referencing its parts. The contract is about 1000 pages when you consider they only show you 5 lines at a time. This alone should make the agreement illegal. Whats next? they only show you one letter at a time?
Anyhow... the EULA is a contract between the consumer and the VENDOR. This is an agreement between Lenovo and this man. It is not microsoft.
In a strictly legal sense, this consumer does agree to the contract. Specifically, this consumer agrees to the part where the Vendor (lenovo) offered the consumer a refund for the operating system at their option. This option was accepted and exercised by the reciever of the contract (the consumer). It is the Vendor (Lenovo) who declined the agreement by refusing to tender the refund that they had offered.
Also, the consumer is not asking for a configuration that the Vendor did not offer. The Vendor offered a package that provided the option for a refund for the software. This consumer was simply requesting the configuration offer as provided by Lenovo.
Regardless of how much you like microsoft and the other included software, the consumer should not be forced to accept this as part of the package. Because the computer without the software is exactly what Lenovo offered to the consumer in the contract. The courts made the correct decision.
Then don't. No one holds a gun to your head and forces you to buy a system pre-loaded with MS Windows.
No one holds a gun to your head to force you to buy a 3 year extended warranty on the purchase of a new TV. But wouldnt it bother you if the same store declined selling a TV to you unless you also get the extended warranty? Wouldnt it be even worse if they provided you with a written document saying: you pay one price for the TV + extended warranty products, but can request a refund for the extended warranty if you request it. So you buy the TV with warranty expecting a refund on the product you didnt want. Later when you request the refund for the extended warranty, they totally decline to give it to you. This is exactly what is happening. The EULA says right in it that the vendor will refund the cost of the operating system if you decline the license. But I know for certain that they wont offer the refund that they promised. So its not about a gun being held to the head. It is about the fact that these companies are writing a contract saying one thing and then totally refusing to follow through. If you cannot relate to this at all in anything in your life... then u r not thinking hard enough. Just because this example doesnt apply to you, does mean you cannot relate in some way. Have some empathy. This is a story of one small consumer standing up against a large corporation and winning. This consumer is in the right. Some day you will be the little guy in the minority and I will share in your joy if you manage to stand up and get a corporation to do what they say they will do.
Nobody's being forced to buy anything they don't want. A guy voluntarily purchased a laptop with Windows installed on it, and wanted to return part of what he bought.
Its the other way around. Consumers are being forced to return products that they purchased. This is what happened to me when I purchased a PC with windows included at additional cost. I requested the refund as the company stated in the EULA and instead of honoring what they had written, they told me to return both products for a complete refund.
The product this consumer purchased had inside it an EULA. In the EULA, it is written that you can get a refund for the operating system if you dont use it or accept the license. So he purchased something that clearly says you can get a refund for the operating system. He was simply exercising the rights the vendor offered to him at the time of sale. He did not just purchase a PC with and operating system. He purchased a PC and he purchased an operating system and he purchased a contract with the option to get a refund on the operating system. He simply asked Lenovo to honour the rights they conferred to him in the contract they sold to him. He was totally in the right to do this. The surprising part is that he had to go to court in order to get his refund. And good for him! Most people would just continue using the PC without ever using the operating system and eat the cost. Or alternatively, others would refund both products for a total refund and not end up getting the computer they really wanted. Why does it even bug you at all to see someone getting wat a big company offered to him? So many people just end up getting shafted by these vendors because they are just a small subset of a larger market. This doesnt effect the average consumer who is willing to pay extra for windows. So why are u even talking about it. This consumer got a company to do what so many others cannot... do what they say they will do in writing.
This hasnt happened to you, so maybe u cannot relate. But this did happen to me... 3 times. That is: I paid microsoft 3 times for products that I never used. I would have little to complain about if the agreement that came with the products didnt offer me the option for a refund. But that is what the agreement says. I was very surprised that all 3 times when I requested my refund that no vendor would honour wat they wrote. I dont hate microsoft, but I really dont like paying for it 3 times when I never use it and it is writen clearly that I dont have to pay. Maybe if you think hard... you will find something in your life that you have been forced to pay for that you never used and were told u wouldnt have to pay for... but in the end you got stiffed and had to pay for it. Has this never happened to you? If not... then you will not understand understand until it does happen to you. It will.
Wrong. A car is useful and valuable without a steering wheel. If someone gave u a car without a steering wheel... would you refuse to accept it? Or would u just buy a steering wheel and put it together for use?
The PC and operating system are two separate products. THis is a fact because the two have separate contracts. Only allowing the consumer to buy one on the condition to buy the other is a known antitrust violation. This is why the vendors writes that they will allow the consumer to request a refund. The question here is why all vendors contiually deny the user the right to get a refund when they request it. After all, this is what the company wrote in the contract and said they would do.
Regardless of whether you want the steering wheel that came packaged with ur new car or not... wouldnt you find it strange when you request a refund and the company declines to give u a refund. Especially when they wrote and had you sign a contract that said they would give u the refund if you choose to buy a different one. Just because you love the steering wheel that came with ur car... how can u not support the single consumer that simply asks the company to do wat they said they would do? Or do u like it when companies ignore the little guy... and force them to go to court just to get a refund for a silly steering wheel? Do you like it when big companies bully small consumers?
The difference between a steering wheel and an OS is that you can still run the laptop without an OS and install your own.
You can't really operate a car without a steering wheel. Forcing the steering wheel to be in the purchase is legal, forcing the OS to be in the purchase with a laptop is called tying, and it's trumped by laws and generally illegal worldwide.
Wrong. You can sell a car without a steering wheel. But they dont have to. The reason is that the car is sold through one contract. That is the initial contract of sale. PC's and the operating system are sold through two different contracts. So they are two seperate products. If the sale of the PC and the operating system license was only one contract, then the vendor would have full rights to "force" the PC and operating system into a single package and offer no partial refunds.
The two licenses will never become one because no man on earth would ever purchase the PC hardware with license restrictions as limited as that requested by the microsoft EULA. And no Microsoft on earth would ever sell their operating system with all the rights associated with the leeway given to physical purchased products. Specifically, they would never allow u to resell the operating system on ebay for someone else to take and install on a new PC. They pretty much have a lock on the concept of making u pay over and over again for their operating system, even when the software would work perfectly fine on a new PC or allow u to get some money back by selling it when u no longer need it.
Exactly. You don't expect to buy a car and return the steering wheel do you?
Don't support hardware manufacturers that partner with software you oppose. Instead of crying for more legislation so you don't have to make any decisions do us all a favor and help the market open up to more competition. Vote with your dollar... not with your lawyer.
Please stop writing these things. It is not the same at all. And u would be here complaining loudly if it was.
Specifically, for ur example... how would you feel if you bought a new racing steering wheel for your car. Then u took ur old steering wheel and tried to sell it on ebay. And then the car company contacted you with a lawsuit because it was illegal to sell the steering wheel separately from the car. Or maybe u totalled the car... everything except the steering wheel... shouldnt you be able to sell the steering wheel to recoup a few dollars from ur loses? Of course you should. And you can legally sell the steering wheel separate from the car. If the car company wants to disallow the selling of your steering wheel separate from the car, then this would require a separate contract apart from the initial contract of sale of the rest of the car. If the two products require separate contract agreements, then it is well accepted that the two items are separate products. Meaning that it is illegal according to antitrust law to force someone to buy both at once. The company can offer the car and steering wheel as a bundle at a single price... but because the two are separate products, they must also allow the consumer to buy each individually. They can not say: if you want to buy this car... then you also have to purchase this separate steering wheel product as well. This would be like saying that in order to purchase a TV from the store you are also required to purchase a 3 year extended warranty on the TV with the store. And if the consumer declined the extended warranty the store says: sorry then we will not sell u this TV. It would be illegal according to antritrust law.
Regardless of how u feel about microsoft as a product. The complaint here is not so much about whether one wants it or not. It is about the fact that the vendor is clearly writing into a legal contract (EULA) that they will give you a refund if you request it. But when u request it they deny you the refund. If they dont want to offer a refund, then they should stop writing it into the contract.
I dont understand why you are bothered by this. It doesnt effect you. You love that you are paying for your PC and also paying extra for the software in the total price of the PC's you purchase. But for those who do not ever use this software... why does it bother you when they get a refund? Dont you think everyone should get a refund if they request it... after all that is exactly what the Vendor said they would do in the first place. This is about a big corporation abusing a small set of consumers who are clearly in the right. Why does it make u angry when someone finally gets a positive outcome when so many others are simply ignored by the big corporations. If you never request a refund for the additional bundled software, then this doesnt even effect you.
I think maybe somewhere inside, people like you know that you are getting shafted by having to pay for an operating system when some others arent paying anything at all for the benefit. And it bugs you when they get their money back because deep down inside, you also wish that your operating system was free of cost. And when you read this you think: how dare you pay less for your pc then me.
I dont know if u have ever sent away for a rebate and never received it in the mail. This happened to me a couple times and I ended up eating the cost. Not a huge cost... but it pissed me off that a company told me that they would do something and then never followed through. And I believe they do this because they know that the amount is to small to bother with the time and expensive of a lawsuit to r
Wrong. It is the Vendor (Lenovo in this case). The EULA agreement is between u (the consumer) and the vendor (Lenovo or other). Read the EULA it is in bold letters at the top. I believe this is done so that all risk for antitrust violation is passed off from microsoft to the vendors. Why the vendors take this risk in order to force consumers to buy a 3rd party product... I just dont know. I suspect it is due to the lucrative practice of charging 3rd party vendors to include their software on top of the operating system. In any case, the fight here is with Lenovo and not microsoft. The agreement is a legal document and it is between u and the vendor alone. If microsoft is unduly forcing the vendor to include this contract then that is a separate issue. THe problem is that the vendor offers a contract and writes that they will do something (offer a refund). But when the consumer requests that they follow the contract they wrote, they are declining to follow this legal document. To the point where a consumer is forced to go to court in order to get this small amount of cash they promised. This is not an occassion to bash microsoft. It is the vendors who are committing potential crimes of contract law.
Well then that is a clear anti-trust violation. The vendors are running high risk here of having huge fines for doing this. Because there is a separate license in the box that is completely separate from the initial contract of sale... then these are two separate products. To clearly state that they will not offer a refund for the operating system they are:
Conditioning the sale of one product on the condition to buy another. This is widely considered to be an illegal business practice.
Here is what HP says about selling a PC and software as separate products (separate licenses) and then selling them as one bundle:
Red flags: Potential violations of antitrust
and fair competition laws
"Agreements with customers, business partners, or
suppliers that establish the resale price of a product
or service, limit a customer’s right to sell a product,
or condition the sale of a product or service on an
agreement to buy other products or services."
So I highly doubt that for one, Hewlett Packard would dare to force a consumer to buy their PC with a separate operating system bundled as one without the option to return one of them. As this would violate what they write into their own business ethics document.
Perhaps what u r referring to is the "fake" windows 7 operating system I have seen bundled with some Netbook PC's. This operating system is highly limited in that for example: the user cannot even change the background image on the desktop. I looked into this and Microsoft wants you (the consumer) to pay extra just to get a real operating system on the box. In these cases, I suspect that Microsoft is not charging anything to the netbook vendors in order to put this software on the PC. In this case, there may be no refund available as no amount was charged by microsoft. I dont know... but I just think u r probably wrong and that refunds are being offered when the operating system is bundled with a PC.
I purchased several PC's and never installed Microsoft or accepted the agreement. Do u think the vendor still charged the 3rd parties for including their software on my PC? They probably did... because every time I requested a refund, I was declined no matter how much I tried.
I believe the primary reason that the vendor does not allow a consumer like me to get a refund as they clearly state they will do, is because they simply tally up all the units sold and then subtract the number of operating systems refunded and then multiply this by the per-unit cost to the 3rd party. If there are no refunds (because they denied those who requested it the option to do so) then they maximize the 3rd party vendor charges.
In a legal sense it would not be justified to discount the refund for the operating system by the amount that 3rd party vendors pay additionally to the vendor in order to have it included on top of windows. In fact, it is my theory that the 3rd party payments to the vendor is greater then the license cost the vendor pays to microsoft. If this is the case, then do u think it would be appropriate for the vendor to ask me to send them money when I request a refund? I dont think any court would see this as justified... that I would need to pay more in order to have a bundled product removed from the original product.
I can't buy a TV from Samsung and return the remote control for a partial refund. Its also ridiculous and Samsung should not be forced to accept it.
The answer is simple. The remote control doesnt come with a separate user license agreement... does it?
Its not like Samsung is saying: it is illegal to take this remote control and use it to operate on a different Samsung TV. And its not like Samsung is saying: it is illegal for u to sell the Samsung remote control on ebay separate from the TV. But this is wat windows EULA makes you do. The windows license is highly restrictive and no consumer would ever except the terms of the software agreement to apply to the hardware portion of the purchase. In fact, I think it would be illegal to sell hardware in a similarly restrictive way that they sell the software. The solution to bundling windows with a PC is to rewrite the EULA to be more agreeable such that you actually "own" the operating system.... as u own the PC. Or another option is to sell the computer as a leased product that u never really own. But to bring the two licenses into agreement would probably never happen. So as it is and will be: these are two separate products and they are not at all like a TV purchased with an included remote control.
The computer is owned. The windows OS is leased. This is not a single bundled product. Furthermore, the computer is a generic product, so it should be a consumer option to purchase it "stand alone"... ie: no software installed.
Microsoft is in the clear here. Because they do offer the option of purchasing the operating system alone. It is the vendor who is bundling the two separate products and conditioning the sale of one on the purchase of the other. They state they will allow u to just purchase the PC alone if you want by offering a refund. They state this because it is required to do this to avoid antitrust violations. The problem is that they are not following through when the consumer requests the refund that they offered.
Maybe Samsung doesnt offer a refund for the remote control. But dont u think it would be a crime if they stated in the documentation that they would offer you a refund for the remote control if you asked for it? And then when u go to get the refund, because u have a universal remote already... they decline to follow what they wrote. And wouldnt it be even more infuriating if they wrote this into a legal contract that they expect u to sign and to be bound to and yet they dont even feel bound to the portions of the contract that they state they will follow?
Remember, this is a legal contract they are offering. If they dont want to do something in the contract then they should never write within it that they will do that very thing. No matter whether u love microsoft or not... it should bother u that these vendors are clearly abusing the consumer... even if the abused is a small set of the total consumer market.
Oh yes, hairyfeet is back to shill for his Microsoft masters.
Abuse of monopoly is illegal. Antitrust laws exist in every country where Microsoft is "selling" their bundled OS, and times ant times again it was demonstrated that Microsoft breaks those laws when it forces OS bundling through OEM "discounts". Just becase Microsoft got nothing for its past crimes from "business-friendly" Bush administration, it does not mean that they are free to continue breaking the law again.
This isnt about microsoft. This is about the Vendors (Lenovo in this case). They are the ones providing the Microsoft EULA contract. And this contract is written legally. Meaning: the Vendor states that they will offer a refund. The illegal part is when they decline a refund to the consumer when requested. This happened to me with Hewlett Packard. At first they said to me: call microsoft for a refund... but the agreement is clear: the contract is with the vendor (HP) and they r responsible for providing the refund as they wrote in the contract. Declining to do this is the antitrust violation. It is the Vendor and not Mircrosoft that is the problem here.
I dislike Microsoft products as much as the next alternate operating system user. But reality is it is the Vendor that committing potential antitrust here. Whether the vendor is doing this because microsoft is forcing them or not is something for the vendors to sort out. I cant confirm whether this is happening... but I suspect the real reason they would rather force the consumer to use windows is because they are making more money off the installation of 3rd party software then they pay for licensing to Microsoft. They likely incorporate this assumed profit into the sticker price of the product... so in other words: the vendor may actually lose money when selling the same computer without having windows installed.
What I wonder is whether or not Hewlett Packard still charged the 3rd party vendors to have their software installed on my PC when I never even installed it. It stinks that I paid for software I didnt want or use, but I think it is a real crime if they went on to charge some other software company for installing software on my PC that was never installed. I suspect they probably did charge this money and some vendor paid Hewlett Packard for a successful installation on my PC even though this never occurred.
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For me, the esthetic thrill of blowing away Windows has always been a joy well worth paying that little bit of the full purchase price for. Feature! :-)
This is called "sour grapes". And it is a good fable that you should read. It explains why people who dont get what they want try to rationalise this as something they probably wanted in the first place.
It is a silly person who takes pride in paying someone for nothing.
If you don't like part of something you have bought, you don't have the right to return just that part for a partial refund. You may have the right to return the entire product as a whole for a full refund. If you don't like a particular capacitor in the power supply, can you return that component and expect a partial refund?
In general, you are correct. In this case, you are wrong.
In your example of a power supply. You would have the right to return the capacitor for a refund, if the manufacture wrote in the contract supplied with it that they would allow you to return just the capacitor of a refund. If you read the contract and saw that they do indeed allow for a refund of just the capacitor, then you call them and ask for the refund of just the capacitor and they said "no we will not honour the contract we wrote and instead want you to return the entire product"... well wouldnt you consider this breach of contract? The purchaser has got to wonder why the manufacture wrote in a legal contract that they would do something that they clearly do not intend to honour. And you would be left thinking that the implication is that they never intended to do what they wrote. The implied statement is "either except the power supply as is and "eat" the additional cost of the capacitor or we dont want you as a customer at all".
Your example of a capacitor is a cheap commodity. Perhaps you should have said that you had the option of returning the transformer. Because the operating system is definitely a significant portion of the total cost of the PC + software. Maybe you dont appreciate this because you find the software has value to you. But for those of us who have purchased computers multiple times with portions that they do not use, these costs add up. I have purchase 3 computers in the last 5 years with the added microsoft tax. I dont use microsoft products, I get no value from this... I dont like the idea that I am supporting a software corporation to make improvements on products that I will never use. Until you step outside the idea that microsoft is necessary... it may be difficult for you to appreciate what it means to repeatedly pay for something when the contract says you do not have to.
I've avoided massive delays on the highway because I heard about a fire on my radio.
Certainly not life saving, and I'm pretty sure I was hearing either paramedics or the fire department - but still.
Im speculating here, but: in the future, distribution of this sort of information will be handled by automated bots that monitor twiter and other online feeds in real time and distribute related and important information to you based on your GPS location and known habits.
Im just saying... so wat if we lose live feeds to the police conversations... other forms of communication and dissemination are coming and they will be better.
It's important for the police to have secure encrypted communication?
Ok, I'll beg that question.
In that case then if I encrypt my hard drive the police shouldn't come asking me to decrypt it.
No double standard here. I in fact do believe in complete encryption of your hard drive. And I do not believe that anyone should be "forced" to decrypt it in order to possibly incriminate themselves. I mean if the known evidence is not sufficient to prosecute a crime... I do not agree that the accuser should be able to force a defended to show additional evidence that will make something prosecutable.
I dont think anyone should have to answer to this: "We dont seem to have enough evidence to prove you committed a crime. Please show me more and more (of your private life) until I can prove you did something."
I do use full disk encryption and I do believe I have the right to privacy. If I go out and do something illegal then those actions should be enough to convict me (or anyone else). If not... then assumptions are being made or profiling is being used and a judge should just throw it out and reprimand the accusers.
Accepted there are two things that should never be seen being made in public—laws and sausages—the ACTA process could be a case study of how not to do it. Conducted in secret, with little information shared except a few leaked documents, the ACTA talks were even decried by those who were involved in them.
I dont get it. The author of the article provides little snippets of text that appear to contradict themselves. Above he says that laws should be made in private and ACTA didnt do it right. And then the next sentence it says that ACTA was developed in near perfect secrecy. So
If you say copying other people’s copyright is an OK thing to do, then you are saying that theft is OK.
No! I am not saying this. Yes, theft is wrong. Stop implying that just because I choose to see sharing and copying as having incredible value, that I want to start stealing from someone. Instead, the opposite is true... a limited set of corporate distributors would prefer to have no open sharing and copying at all unless it is provided through a limited set of channels under their control. Sharing and copying is not the same as distribution and broadcasting. Owners of IP content deserve control distribution and broadcasting of the content they own... I have no problem with this, and if ACTA really provided that without infringing on the rights of everyone else to share, distribute and broadcast alternate content, I would have no problems with it.
Everyone is very keen on sharing until it is their stuff that is being shared.
Incorrect. There is now masses of content that is entirely free to re-share, re-copy, re-distribute, re-broadcast outside the control of any corporate distributor and all WITH THE BLESSING of the artist (IP holder). Primarily this content uses the Creative Commons License and can be found at many sites (ex: youtube.com, jamendo.com, vimeo.com, etc). Some of it even used to exist on megaupload.com but these are the sad casualties of the apparent fight to retain the rights of some.
The sad reality for distribution and IP controllers is that their cost of doing business is quickly approaching $0. It used to cost money to print media, ship it to stores, hold it on shelves, sell it to customers, market it on TV, radio or print. But now all that costs about nothing. In fact, the consumer now pays the majority of distribution costs to their ISP. Combine that with the fact that new content is being generated at an incredible rate and they can no longer limit the supply of consumable entertainment. There is less and less reason for an artist to use their services or provide them with a large share of the profits. The distribution companies are about to die. They are like the newspapers and magazines. They are the phone book companies and the book publishers. They need to adapt or die. The simple solution is for them to look forward and begin reducing prices and increase access to their content. Instead they are choosing to do the opposite and they will suffer in the long term. These laws are important to them, because if they are achieved it means that the distribution companies will hinder advancement into the future and they will have little incentive to change. I dont believe in protecting the past at the detriment of progress.
I do not support piracy AND I do not support suppressing alternative options for distribution. Sharing is godly, in that it allows humans to express humanity.
I cant help but think that those who would oppose police privacy either naturally distrust most police officers or have personally invested in a police scanner and spend all their time living vicariously through it.
The public safety mission is harmed when you take away oversight and accountability. Radio signals in the clear is part of oversight and accountability. The public has every right to know response times, unit numbers, processes, practices, methodologies, etc. After all, they work for us.
Law enforcement will never be able to justify to me why their actions cannot be 100% transparent.
Save your battle for the right to take video of the police in public. Laws that prevent you from filming anyone in public is a real issue. This is work communication and rarely if ever do I hear of it being used to for oversight of the police. Videos of police abuse is the number 1 way to find the few bad apples in the force who cannot handle the authority they are entrusted with.
Perhaps there is an argument to have all police radio communication recorded and make it available to the courts and requests from the public for release later. I just dont think real time eavesdropping on the police will make a difference in watching over the police for abuse.
Realtime radio chatter is useful for getting data out to the media, for safety or media-assists. Examples: Amber Alert, Traffic accidents, police chases, armed robbery. The less people that get caught in the crossfire the better.
This sounds contrived. Can you provide one example of a situation where a life was saved because someone was listening to a police scanner and avoided a situation where they otherwise would have been caught in the crossfire? I doubt it. The reasoning the police give for having privacy is a lot more realistic: to deny criminals the ability to track police actions.
Non-realtime radio chatter is less useful, but allows for the media to scrape through it, but doesn't allow the media to alert the public to dangerous situations to stay clear of.
The police can and will alert the media and thus the public of dangerous situations. I expect it is standard practice for them to alert the media in a hostage situation or whenever the public is in danger. To assume that the media and public would get the message indirectly by monitoring all police chatter is irresponsible. And Im certain that isnt what they depend on. You think if there is a shooting at some school, that they just talk internally about it and hope the media gets the message implied?
Some compromise is needed.
I dont think any compromise is needed.
For example the 24 hour news networks like CNN, could obtain a realtime scanner, and the police can rotate through encryption cycles every few days so that the scanners don't work, requiring that the "media" radios be returned to the police, checked-in/checked-out. Anytime a radio isn't returned, the encryption code is switched. The media scanners are "relayed", so that the police don't have to cycle their own radios unless a radio has gone missing.
This solves most of the problem, and introduces only several seconds of latency for media radios. It also allows the media radios to be killed for security reasons. You abuse them, you lose them.
How come every time we improve upon the past someone says we need to break it in order to retain the deficiencies we became accustomed to? I think it is good that the police have secure and private communication channels. If they had this from the start, these sorts of "solutions" would be laughed out of here and this topic wouldnt even be discussed.
Maybe u natually distrust the police and want to know someone is looking over their shoulder all the time. Having unencrypted police communication is a clear deficiency, and now that this agency is fixing it... lets just let them do it and stop looking for ways to make it as deficient as it used to be.
The solution you suggest about rotating keys and limited access to radios is a lot of work for nothing. Further, I dont like the idea of selective eavesdropping as it introduces politics into the equation. Why not just let these police continue on with doing what they need to do: improve the police service.
Not really. It's an OEM version of Windows, so MS says, "Deal with Lenovo". If the user declines the license agreement, it says he can return Windows for a full refund.
Blame MS for pushing off onto the OEMs.
Here is the exact wording of an MS EULA provided to me:
This End-User License Agreement ('EULA') is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and the manufacturer ("Manufacturer") of the computer system or computer system component ('HARDWARE') with which you acquired the Microsoft software product(s) identified on the Certificate of Authenticity ("COA") affixed to the HARDWARE or on the associated product documentation ("SOFTWARE").
In other words... although it refers to Microsoft software, the contract is entirely written by, provided by and legally binding to the Vendor (LENOVO).
The Vendor does not "have too" offer this contract with their products. Maybe microsoft is strong arming the vendor into doing it... but regardless, Lenovo here is entirely responsible for wat they say and do. I mean nobody is putting a gun to the head of lenovo and saying you have to put this windows software onto ur pc's.
b) is the vendor obliged to pay the refund, just because Microsoft wrote it into the EULA?
If the suppler passes that EULA on to you then yes. By supplying the software to you they are agreeing to a contract with MS that almost certainly contains terms covering the matter. Unlike the end user license agreement, that will be a "proper" legally binding contract with a lot less leeway to call "no fair!" after signing.
The contract is written by the Vendor and it states so within it near the top. Read it. Or do you want me to provide the exact quotes here? I wrote out the entire EULA and yes it does say that the contract is between you (the consumer) and Hewlett Packard (the vendor). And then at the end it says it was written by Hewlett packard. Now I am sure that it goes through microsoft for approval or comes as a template from microsoft lawyers. But it is clearly between you and the vendor alone in a legal sense. It applies to the software owned by microsoft, but that doesnt change the fact that the contract is from the vendor.
Ive been playing with LUKS full disk encryption for a long time before it became a standard install option on the alternate Ubuntu. I must have about 20 encrypted operating system installs on SD cards. I know for a fact that I do not know the passwords for many of these systems sitting in a cabinet. There is some truth to the defence that one can forget passwords. One time I accidentally deleted the luks passphrase from an active operating system. That was bad because I had family pictures on that one I really wanted to keep. In all these cases, I could be just as liable as this defendant. I dont think the courts should be able to assume that memory is always a selective choice. People do forget and the courts just have to find a way to "trick" it out of her if they believe she is lying. Like installing hidden software to monitor keystrokes or otherwise just accept that there is some evidence that just may be to difficult to retrieve.
Why doesnt microsoft put this on their products page:
"Dear linux users, install our software on your PC with some additional crapwear and we will pay you money"
If the money was enough maybe they could get some linux users to do what you say they are already doing by offering PCs cheaper then they would otherwise be.
Good question. Does anyone know if there is a site for all the people who requested refunds as written in the EULA and were denied? I think if all these consumers came together, then there would be enough to possibly start a class action lawsuit. I requested a refund from 2 different companies. I requested over and over again from Hewlett Packard and explanation as to why they wouldnt follow the letter of the contract I purchased from them. In the end, i was forced to pay for the license and never used it. I want to do something about this, because I want to stop paying in the future. If anyone knows of a website that is collecting contact information from people who have been denied a refund... I would like to know it. Thanks.
This is not about monopoly abuse. I mean if Microsoft is demanding that vendors do not offer refunds to consumers as the Vendor has written into their contracts then maybe that is monopoly abuse. Or if microsoft is threatening sactions against those vendors that do honour the refunds... then yes it is monopoly abuse.
The case here is that a vendor said they would provide a refund for the separately included software products. In general the Vendors are not honouring this in part of the contract. So the contract as written is totally legal because it does not force the consumer to purchase the two products together, and offers a refund for those who request it. The illegal part is when the Vendor does not follow the contract as written and denies the consumer the rights they provided to them for refund. So in this case, microsoft has done no wrong... and the issue is entirely with the Vendor Lenovo who is forcing consumers to go to the courts just to get them to do what they say they would. This is a case of a big corporation denying rights to the consumer just because they are a small set of the larger market and because they do not expect the consumer to go through all the trouble to get wat they deserve. This person went all the way and won. What a great story.
No one is Forcing Lenovo to sell configurations they don't want to. The court is just holding them to the conract they entered into with MS with regards to refund requests from customers who don't agree to the Windows license / EULA.
If OEMs really wanted to avoid the issue, they could have their order page / retail outlets present people with the license at checkout, and then ship the systems with that part of the OOBE skipped / pre-answered.
Many of you have not read the microsoft EULA. I cannot blame you. It took me a few hours to read it all. And then several days to cross reference to understand how it all relates. Worse is that the EULA cannot be printed and only 5 lines can be seen at one time. So I took hours to copy it all out so I could properly read while cross referencing its parts. The contract is about 1000 pages when you consider they only show you 5 lines at a time. This alone should make the agreement illegal. Whats next? they only show you one letter at a time?
Anyhow... the EULA is a contract between the consumer and the VENDOR. This is an agreement between Lenovo and this man. It is not microsoft.
In a strictly legal sense, this consumer does agree to the contract. Specifically, this consumer agrees to the part where the Vendor (lenovo) offered the consumer a refund for the operating system at their option. This option was accepted and exercised by the reciever of the contract (the consumer). It is the Vendor (Lenovo) who declined the agreement by refusing to tender the refund that they had offered.
Also, the consumer is not asking for a configuration that the Vendor did not offer. The Vendor offered a package that provided the option for a refund for the software. This consumer was simply requesting the configuration offer as provided by Lenovo.
Regardless of how much you like microsoft and the other included software, the consumer should not be forced to accept this as part of the package. Because the computer without the software is exactly what Lenovo offered to the consumer in the contract. The courts made the correct decision.
Then don't. No one holds a gun to your head and forces you to buy a system pre-loaded with MS Windows.
No one holds a gun to your head to force you to buy a 3 year extended warranty on the purchase of a new TV. But wouldnt it bother you if the same store declined selling a TV to you unless you also get the extended warranty? Wouldnt it be even worse if they provided you with a written document saying: you pay one price for the TV + extended warranty products, but can request a refund for the extended warranty if you request it. So you buy the TV with warranty expecting a refund on the product you didnt want. Later when you request the refund for the extended warranty, they totally decline to give it to you. This is exactly what is happening. The EULA says right in it that the vendor will refund the cost of the operating system if you decline the license. But I know for certain that they wont offer the refund that they promised. So its not about a gun being held to the head. It is about the fact that these companies are writing a contract saying one thing and then totally refusing to follow through. If you cannot relate to this at all in anything in your life... then u r not thinking hard enough. Just because this example doesnt apply to you, does mean you cannot relate in some way. Have some empathy. This is a story of one small consumer standing up against a large corporation and winning. This consumer is in the right. Some day you will be the little guy in the minority and I will share in your joy if you manage to stand up and get a corporation to do what they say they will do.
Nobody's being forced to buy anything they don't want. A guy voluntarily purchased a laptop with Windows installed on it, and wanted to return part of what he bought.
Its the other way around. Consumers are being forced to return products that they purchased. This is what happened to me when I purchased a PC with windows included at additional cost. I requested the refund as the company stated in the EULA and instead of honoring what they had written, they told me to return both products for a complete refund.
The product this consumer purchased had inside it an EULA. In the EULA, it is written that you can get a refund for the operating system if you dont use it or accept the license. So he purchased something that clearly says you can get a refund for the operating system. He was simply exercising the rights the vendor offered to him at the time of sale. He did not just purchase a PC with and operating system. He purchased a PC and he purchased an operating system and he purchased a contract with the option to get a refund on the operating system. He simply asked Lenovo to honour the rights they conferred to him in the contract they sold to him. He was totally in the right to do this. The surprising part is that he had to go to court in order to get his refund. And good for him! Most people would just continue using the PC without ever using the operating system and eat the cost. Or alternatively, others would refund both products for a total refund and not end up getting the computer they really wanted. Why does it even bug you at all to see someone getting wat a big company offered to him? So many people just end up getting shafted by these vendors because they are just a small subset of a larger market. This doesnt effect the average consumer who is willing to pay extra for windows. So why are u even talking about it. This consumer got a company to do what so many others cannot... do what they say they will do in writing.
This hasnt happened to you, so maybe u cannot relate. But this did happen to me... 3 times. That is: I paid microsoft 3 times for products that I never used. I would have little to complain about if the agreement that came with the products didnt offer me the option for a refund. But that is what the agreement says. I was very surprised that all 3 times when I requested my refund that no vendor would honour wat they wrote. I dont hate microsoft, but I really dont like paying for it 3 times when I never use it and it is writen clearly that I dont have to pay. Maybe if you think hard... you will find something in your life that you have been forced to pay for that you never used and were told u wouldnt have to pay for... but in the end you got stiffed and had to pay for it. Has this never happened to you? If not... then you will not understand understand until it does happen to you. It will.
Wrong. A car is useful and valuable without a steering wheel. If someone gave u a car without a steering wheel... would you refuse to accept it? Or would u just buy a steering wheel and put it together for use?
The PC and operating system are two separate products. THis is a fact because the two have separate contracts. Only allowing the consumer to buy one on the condition to buy the other is a known antitrust violation. This is why the vendors writes that they will allow the consumer to request a refund. The question here is why all vendors contiually deny the user the right to get a refund when they request it. After all, this is what the company wrote in the contract and said they would do.
Regardless of whether you want the steering wheel that came packaged with ur new car or not... wouldnt you find it strange when you request a refund and the company declines to give u a refund. Especially when they wrote and had you sign a contract that said they would give u the refund if you choose to buy a different one. Just because you love the steering wheel that came with ur car... how can u not support the single consumer that simply asks the company to do wat they said they would do? Or do u like it when companies ignore the little guy... and force them to go to court just to get a refund for a silly steering wheel? Do you like it when big companies bully small consumers?
The difference between a steering wheel and an OS is that you can still run the laptop without an OS and install your own.
You can't really operate a car without a steering wheel. Forcing the steering wheel to be in the purchase is legal, forcing the OS to be in the purchase with a laptop is called tying, and it's trumped by laws and generally illegal worldwide.
Wrong. You can sell a car without a steering wheel. But they dont have to. The reason is that the car is sold through one contract. That is the initial contract of sale. PC's and the operating system are sold through two different contracts. So they are two seperate products. If the sale of the PC and the operating system license was only one contract, then the vendor would have full rights to "force" the PC and operating system into a single package and offer no partial refunds.
The two licenses will never become one because no man on earth would ever purchase the PC hardware with license restrictions as limited as that requested by the microsoft EULA. And no Microsoft on earth would ever sell their operating system with all the rights associated with the leeway given to physical purchased products. Specifically, they would never allow u to resell the operating system on ebay for someone else to take and install on a new PC. They pretty much have a lock on the concept of making u pay over and over again for their operating system, even when the software would work perfectly fine on a new PC or allow u to get some money back by selling it when u no longer need it.
Exactly. You don't expect to buy a car and return the steering wheel do you? Don't support hardware manufacturers that partner with software you oppose. Instead of crying for more legislation so you don't have to make any decisions do us all a favor and help the market open up to more competition. Vote with your dollar... not with your lawyer.
Please stop writing these things. It is not the same at all. And u would be here complaining loudly if it was.
Specifically, for ur example... how would you feel if you bought a new racing steering wheel for your car. Then u took ur old steering wheel and tried to sell it on ebay. And then the car company contacted you with a lawsuit because it was illegal to sell the steering wheel separately from the car. Or maybe u totalled the car... everything except the steering wheel... shouldnt you be able to sell the steering wheel to recoup a few dollars from ur loses? Of course you should. And you can legally sell the steering wheel separate from the car. If the car company wants to disallow the selling of your steering wheel separate from the car, then this would require a separate contract apart from the initial contract of sale of the rest of the car. If the two products require separate contract agreements, then it is well accepted that the two items are separate products. Meaning that it is illegal according to antitrust law to force someone to buy both at once. The company can offer the car and steering wheel as a bundle at a single price... but because the two are separate products, they must also allow the consumer to buy each individually. They can not say: if you want to buy this car... then you also have to purchase this separate steering wheel product as well. This would be like saying that in order to purchase a TV from the store you are also required to purchase a 3 year extended warranty on the TV with the store. And if the consumer declined the extended warranty the store says: sorry then we will not sell u this TV. It would be illegal according to antritrust law.
Regardless of how u feel about microsoft as a product. The complaint here is not so much about whether one wants it or not. It is about the fact that the vendor is clearly writing into a legal contract (EULA) that they will give you a refund if you request it. But when u request it they deny you the refund. If they dont want to offer a refund, then they should stop writing it into the contract.
I dont understand why you are bothered by this. It doesnt effect you. You love that you are paying for your PC and also paying extra for the software in the total price of the PC's you purchase. But for those who do not ever use this software... why does it bother you when they get a refund? Dont you think everyone should get a refund if they request it... after all that is exactly what the Vendor said they would do in the first place. This is about a big corporation abusing a small set of consumers who are clearly in the right. Why does it make u angry when someone finally gets a positive outcome when so many others are simply ignored by the big corporations. If you never request a refund for the additional bundled software, then this doesnt even effect you.
I think maybe somewhere inside, people like you know that you are getting shafted by having to pay for an operating system when some others arent paying anything at all for the benefit. And it bugs you when they get their money back because deep down inside, you also wish that your operating system was free of cost. And when you read this you think: how dare you pay less for your pc then me.
I dont know if u have ever sent away for a rebate and never received it in the mail. This happened to me a couple times and I ended up eating the cost. Not a huge cost... but it pissed me off that a company told me that they would do something and then never followed through. And I believe they do this because they know that the amount is to small to bother with the time and expensive of a lawsuit to r
Wrong. It is the Vendor (Lenovo in this case). The EULA agreement is between u (the consumer) and the vendor (Lenovo or other). Read the EULA it is in bold letters at the top. I believe this is done so that all risk for antitrust violation is passed off from microsoft to the vendors. Why the vendors take this risk in order to force consumers to buy a 3rd party product... I just dont know. I suspect it is due to the lucrative practice of charging 3rd party vendors to include their software on top of the operating system. In any case, the fight here is with Lenovo and not microsoft. The agreement is a legal document and it is between u and the vendor alone. If microsoft is unduly forcing the vendor to include this contract then that is a separate issue. THe problem is that the vendor offers a contract and writes that they will do something (offer a refund). But when the consumer requests that they follow the contract they wrote, they are declining to follow this legal document. To the point where a consumer is forced to go to court in order to get this small amount of cash they promised. This is not an occassion to bash microsoft. It is the vendors who are committing potential crimes of contract law.
Well then that is a clear anti-trust violation. The vendors are running high risk here of having huge fines for doing this. Because there is a separate license in the box that is completely separate from the initial contract of sale... then these are two separate products. To clearly state that they will not offer a refund for the operating system they are:
Conditioning the sale of one product on the condition to buy another. This is widely considered to be an illegal business practice.
Here is what HP says about selling a PC and software as separate products (separate licenses) and then selling them as one bundle:
Red flags: Potential violations of antitrust and fair competition laws
"Agreements with customers, business partners, or suppliers that establish the resale price of a product or service, limit a customer’s right to sell a product, or condition the sale of a product or service on an agreement to buy other products or services."
source: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/csr/sbcbrochure.pdf
So I highly doubt that for one, Hewlett Packard would dare to force a consumer to buy their PC with a separate operating system bundled as one without the option to return one of them. As this would violate what they write into their own business ethics document.
Perhaps what u r referring to is the "fake" windows 7 operating system I have seen bundled with some Netbook PC's. This operating system is highly limited in that for example: the user cannot even change the background image on the desktop. I looked into this and Microsoft wants you (the consumer) to pay extra just to get a real operating system on the box. In these cases, I suspect that Microsoft is not charging anything to the netbook vendors in order to put this software on the PC. In this case, there may be no refund available as no amount was charged by microsoft. I dont know... but I just think u r probably wrong and that refunds are being offered when the operating system is bundled with a PC.
I purchased several PC's and never installed Microsoft or accepted the agreement. Do u think the vendor still charged the 3rd parties for including their software on my PC? They probably did... because every time I requested a refund, I was declined no matter how much I tried.
I believe the primary reason that the vendor does not allow a consumer like me to get a refund as they clearly state they will do, is because they simply tally up all the units sold and then subtract the number of operating systems refunded and then multiply this by the per-unit cost to the 3rd party. If there are no refunds (because they denied those who requested it the option to do so) then they maximize the 3rd party vendor charges.
In a legal sense it would not be justified to discount the refund for the operating system by the amount that 3rd party vendors pay additionally to the vendor in order to have it included on top of windows. In fact, it is my theory that the 3rd party payments to the vendor is greater then the license cost the vendor pays to microsoft. If this is the case, then do u think it would be appropriate for the vendor to ask me to send them money when I request a refund? I dont think any court would see this as justified... that I would need to pay more in order to have a bundled product removed from the original product.
I can't buy a TV from Samsung and return the remote control for a partial refund. Its also ridiculous and Samsung should not be forced to accept it.
The answer is simple. The remote control doesnt come with a separate user license agreement... does it?
Its not like Samsung is saying: it is illegal to take this remote control and use it to operate on a different Samsung TV. And its not like Samsung is saying: it is illegal for u to sell the Samsung remote control on ebay separate from the TV. But this is wat windows EULA makes you do. The windows license is highly restrictive and no consumer would ever except the terms of the software agreement to apply to the hardware portion of the purchase. In fact, I think it would be illegal to sell hardware in a similarly restrictive way that they sell the software. The solution to bundling windows with a PC is to rewrite the EULA to be more agreeable such that you actually "own" the operating system.... as u own the PC. Or another option is to sell the computer as a leased product that u never really own. But to bring the two licenses into agreement would probably never happen. So as it is and will be: these are two separate products and they are not at all like a TV purchased with an included remote control.
The computer is owned. The windows OS is leased. This is not a single bundled product. Furthermore, the computer is a generic product, so it should be a consumer option to purchase it "stand alone"... ie: no software installed.
Microsoft is in the clear here. Because they do offer the option of purchasing the operating system alone. It is the vendor who is bundling the two separate products and conditioning the sale of one on the purchase of the other. They state they will allow u to just purchase the PC alone if you want by offering a refund. They state this because it is required to do this to avoid antitrust violations. The problem is that they are not following through when the consumer requests the refund that they offered.
Maybe Samsung doesnt offer a refund for the remote control. But dont u think it would be a crime if they stated in the documentation that they would offer you a refund for the remote control if you asked for it? And then when u go to get the refund, because u have a universal remote already... they decline to follow what they wrote. And wouldnt it be even more infuriating if they wrote this into a legal contract that they expect u to sign and to be bound to and yet they dont even feel bound to the portions of the contract that they state they will follow?
Remember, this is a legal contract they are offering. If they dont want to do something in the contract then they should never write within it that they will do that very thing. No matter whether u love microsoft or not... it should bother u that these vendors are clearly abusing the consumer... even if the abused is a small set of the total consumer market.
Oh yes, hairyfeet is back to shill for his Microsoft masters.
Abuse of monopoly is illegal. Antitrust laws exist in every country where Microsoft is "selling" their bundled OS, and times ant times again it was demonstrated that Microsoft breaks those laws when it forces OS bundling through OEM "discounts". Just becase Microsoft got nothing for its past crimes from "business-friendly" Bush administration, it does not mean that they are free to continue breaking the law again.
This isnt about microsoft. This is about the Vendors (Lenovo in this case). They are the ones providing the Microsoft EULA contract. And this contract is written legally. Meaning: the Vendor states that they will offer a refund. The illegal part is when they decline a refund to the consumer when requested. This happened to me with Hewlett Packard. At first they said to me: call microsoft for a refund... but the agreement is clear: the contract is with the vendor (HP) and they r responsible for providing the refund as they wrote in the contract. Declining to do this is the antitrust violation. It is the Vendor and not Mircrosoft that is the problem here.
I dislike Microsoft products as much as the next alternate operating system user. But reality is it is the Vendor that committing potential antitrust here. Whether the vendor is doing this because microsoft is forcing them or not is something for the vendors to sort out. I cant confirm whether this is happening... but I suspect the real reason they would rather force the consumer to use windows is because they are making more money off the installation of 3rd party software then they pay for licensing to Microsoft. They likely incorporate this assumed profit into the sticker price of the product... so in other words: the vendor may actually lose money when selling the same computer without having windows installed.
What I wonder is whether or not Hewlett Packard still charged the 3rd party vendors to have their software installed on my PC when I never even installed it. It stinks that I paid for software I didnt want or use, but I think it is a real crime if they went on to charge some other software company for installing software on my PC that was never installed. I suspect they probably did charge this money and some vendor paid Hewlett Packard for a successful installation on my PC even though this never occurred.