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I wouldn't read too much into it. This has been going on for years (at least in the United States -- don't know about the UK).

About three years ago I got a $100USD discount on a Dell Inspiron 500m for my undesired Windows license. All I did was call the customer service line before I placed my order and explained that I will be buying a laptop but will not accept the terms of the Microsoft EULA. Microsoft's volume licensing terms say that OEMs can't sell volume licenses to customers who will not accept the EULA.

I asked to talk to the legal department, but they transferred me to a supervisor who offered the discount. He explained that Microsoft doesn't let them disclose the value of each volume license (of course), but he would say that they pay less than $100 per license, so the offer was generous. It looks like the guy in this article got about the same discount.

The rep I talked to was pretty cool. He said that a lot of people contact Dell asking for a no-OS option on their client systems, and that's a reasonable request. He also asked if I planned on running Linux and then asked what distro I would run.

Personally, I'm slightly dissatisfied with my Dell's Linux-friendliness (there are some annoying-to-serious video BIOS bugs that I haven't seen on other brands), but I think that Dell is generally a Linux-friendly company. They'll debut Linux offerings just as soon as the investment makes sense, and with all of the software giants jumping into the Linux support game, it's just a matter of time before the OEMs will start to feel left out.

No, it means that if you make yourself a REAL nuisance for long enough, companies will finally, reluctantly, meet their legal obligation to provide you with a refund for a bundled product you did not want, for fear of the publicity they might get if they don't.

That's all it means.

No, it means that if you make yourself a REAL nuisance for long enough, companies will finally, reluctantly, meet their legal obligation to provide you with a refund for a bundled product you did not want, for fear of the publicity they might get if they don't.

First of all, I don't know (not sure) if they have a legal obligation to provide to you a PC without an OS? If they do, then can I get a MacBook without OSX?

Second of all, as for being a real nuisance, why would you go through the trouble? Are there no quality vendors out there who will sell a PC without an OS, or Linux pre-installed? If not, perhaps this would be a good business opportunity for an aspiring entrepreneur. Hell, if I thought there was a big enough market for it, *I* would do it.

First of all, I don't know (not sure) if they have a legal obligation to provide to you a PC without an OS? If they do, then can I get a MacBook without OSX?

Now there's an interesting idea. I would definitely find that amusing, if someone bought a MacBook and shipped their copy of OS X back for a refund.

The situation is probably exactly the same for both Apple and Dell, at least in the EU, and its probably that either can sell only bundled if that's what they want to do. Dell and Apple retail are in exactly the same position on this one, and they are in the same position any other retailer is in.

Suppose you are a big supermarket chain. You decide to sell back to school goods in season. So you package up protractors, calculator, pencils....and call it a back-to-school pack. The customer does not have the right to insist on buying the bits separately. All kinds of things are sold bundled in Europe that could be bought separately through some other channel, but that does not mean this particular retailer has any legal obligation to unbundle this particular package.

The one who is in a different position is MS. MS, unlike Apple's software brand, has monopoly=25%+ market share. If MS were to insist that it only sold Windows with (say) an MS keyboard, that would violate the linked sales ban. If it levied a license fee on total computer sales, instead of total sales of Windows PCs, it would also be anti competitive, but in different ways.

You notice in the Eula, that it is MS that is offering you the refund, not Dell. MS probably would be prohibited from charging Dell for all Windows shipments, and would have to charge for shipments net of returns, if the volumes ever got significant.

If Apple ever gets to 25% market share, or even if it ever gets to this in a well defined market segment, then the linked sales stuff will apply to OSX and its hardware, and it will probably have to make hardware and software available separately. Not that it will have to support any use of its hardware with other OSs, not that it will have to support any use of OSX with other hardware, though it probably would be prohibited from anti competitive DRM restrictions on use. Its about sales, not warranty or support. But it will have to sell them.

Not holding my breath for it though.

Heh, the market for that has to be close to non-existant.

If someone's crazy enough to try and actually gets the refund, there's one thing they should know; they can never change their mind and legally install OS X on that MacBook because Apple doesn't sell full OS X licenses, they only sell upgrades.

I don't think that you could be successfull with asking a refund from Apple.
OSX is their product, they can say that they give it for free with their Macs.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough in my reply. I believe the legal issue is to do with the Windows EULA. It's not just that they have to provide a refund for any bundled software at all.

why wouldn´t it?
You are as much a first time buyer as the guy from that article ..
I mean .. you haven´t agreed on MS´s EULA yet, now have you?

It's cheaper to install windows on all machines and refund the non-used CD's, since installing blank hard drives would take more people to work on a pc. While you uninstall your windows copy by yourself. Bit nasty, but as long as I can get my money back, why not?

They could always say "Dell recommends Windows, PC's with blank hard drives available on request".

While I agree that it's preferable to have the option to install whatever OS you want, I think Terracotta has a good point. Unfortunately, it is cheaper for a large assembler like Dell to install Windows because they run a handful of diagnostic software on it before it ships. They would then have to uninstall it.

Well, at least some of the Dell Diagnostics (that they ship on CD and I used to have on a hidden partition on my old hard drive) run on their own without Windows (in DOS? I think?)

I saw an opinion a while back that Dell would very dearly prefer to not have to depend on Microsoft's whims for their business. They don't like being a big business completely dependent on the beck and call of another company (but don't want to give up the volume/exclusivity discounts either- this might be why it took so long for them to have AMD available)

I recall Dell asking Apple if they could be allowed to use OS X on their machines, that's probably also a manifestation of this. Obviously they wouldn't control either Apple OR Microsoft, but they wouldn't entirely be dependent on either of them any more.

I suspect this has more to do with them trying to throw their muscle around with Microsoft and assert some measure of independence.

So they could do what Lenovo did and say "We offer and support SuSE Linux".
Presumably all others would be on your own head, but you'd be guaranteed they tested the hardware as working in SuSE. And that way Lenovo has a base system with known software libraries they can work from.

Or, what Dell already did briefly in France- they offered Mandrake preinstalled.


As for the myriad combinations of software... when I call up Dell there's a phone menu option for "help with Dell-supported (or supplied, I forget the exact wording since it's been a while since I had to call them) software." They don't guarantee support for the million combinations of software that you might install on your computer after they give it to you. Unless it's reminding you that running BonziBuddy is not a good idea.

They only need to support what is installed by default and really only whats in the menus. When I install Ubuntu, I have exactly one text editor and one word processor installed, and one Office suite installed. When I install Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, which is what most machiens have on them, I have two: notepad, wordpad, and word. So by that theory, Linux is easier to support then Windows.

According to Synaptic, only 206 packages in Ubuntu's repositories (I have main, restricted, universe and multiverse enabled) respond somehow to 'text editor'. Many of those are optional packages to emacs, xemacs or textemacs; or libraries for help files. Yeah, that's still ridiculously many, but I guess someone felt like writing them?

I personally only have 4 in that list installed, and they all do different things (ed is like edlin, less just displays text (like type) should I need that, nano lets me edit on the command line (like edit), mousepad is graphical like Notepad). And I also have OpenOffice.org (Word) and Tetex/Latex (MikTex) installed for specific kinds of documents)

And Ubuntu only supports the 'main' and 'restricted' repositories. They're a small subset of the 20,000 packages available if you enable the unsupported 'universe' and 'multiverse' repositories (which is essentially the rest of Debian).
They make a fully functional system, and that's what Dell would hypothetically support.

Edited 2006-11-09 07:05

If they pre-sold Ubuntu with its 20,000 program (mostly text editors) repository, they would have to support that.

So by your logic they would have to support whole internet of freeware and shareware for Windows since Windows came with browser by default, which automatically means it is a way to access that software.

Check your facts, universe and multiverse are disabled by default in ubuntu.

Packard Bell was still alive then?!

Damn!

Man those things still give me the chills.

And I never even owned one...

Packard Bell is still popular in Europe. They're currently owned by NEC.

Yeah, but the name just turns you right off if you remember the trash they churned out in the 1990s. I can't think of a worse brand.

Edited 2006-11-09 01:34

First time I read that, I thought you said condemned. Oops.