bloody title

"if the stupid man didn;t want that OS he should have gone elsewhere"

How thick these comment(er)s are, by Odin... That is EXACTLY the point! There is not much where to go now, is there it? How easy is it to find a laptop without OS, in a store, *right now*? You might find some small company on line selling generic stuff (that will arrive in a bunch of days). Trust them at your own risk. And they will be selling a small selection of things anyway -- which probably means you won't find the hardware you want. Or maybe you will, lucky. And I wouldn't be building my own laptop if I were you...

And someone mentioned that forcing the bundle is illegal, so there...

Good for him.

Bundling windows and all the other crud is a con.

Mr X has a laptop and wants to upgrade to Vista. He buys the OS. Soon after his laptop breaks. He wants to buy a new laptop and now has to shell out for Vista, which he doesn't want because he already owns it. Forcing people to have bundled OS is even worse than Apple not having replaceable batteries in iPods.

Other than the award amount, this isnt stupidity.

This is actualy perfect sense, and the later car anologies are right, the OS is akin to the fuel, I should be able to choose any fuel my car can use without damage, so whilst obviously ethanol is out, super premium shell unleaded and el cheapo tesco fuel are ok, I shouldnt be forced to pay for the el cheapo, or shell stuff if I wanted to say use BP regular. A wintel machine can concevably run linux without damage, so its only stupidity that should force me to use another.

What stupdity however, are those posts saying that its stupid because it will mean that all PCs will be sold blank, and confuse people of little knowledge. Well, no it doesnt, you still would concevably have the choice at purchase to buy it preconfigured with a manufactuerer supported OS, some may choose only the Doze, some may go for Doze and the Pengiun, and real enthusiast places could go Doze, pengiun, the Daemon, Darwin, etc. Or you can get it blank if you know what you're doing.

The award is stupid though. The software should have been only a preportion of the total sales price, so only a preportion, plus costs should have been awarded.

re: Pathetic

Wrong John.

Yes Mrs Bloggs, we will install all the software you need and make sure it all works properly before we send it to you. That will be an extra $50. ( cost us $30 :-)

We will deliver it to your home , connect it up and train you how to use it for an extra $30.

Sure, on Monday OK?

have a Nice Day.

What's next?

Suing car manufacturers for forcing you to buy a car with a pre-installed engine? FFS...

To b166er and anyone else who can't find a "bare" computer..

Bare PCs I could go and buy from one of a dozen shops in Edinburgh, however laptops I wasn't sure but...

I went to Google and tried "Linux laptops"... Dell sell them.. so theres an option... then I tried "Bare laptops", found a reference to Asus so checked out their website and indeed the C90 Asus, top spec bare laptop.

On sale in US of A....

http://www.prestomart.com/cgi-bin/store_mart_product.pl?ref=cindykirk&pd=876051

i know, i know, spamming!

This post is just making me laugh, i'm almost in tears

Phill, just omit 'They have an unfair monopoly. Every time I buy a packed of' and 'they come preformatted with FAT' and you're staring to make sense. roflcopters

Title

Most of the disagreement here seems to be between those taking the long view, that if one can not buy a bare bones PC, then the law should be able to force retailers to change their altitude and force then to offer them as an alternative. And those taking the specific view that if you agree to buy something then you should not be able to get the deal changed afterwards. Both viewpoints have merit but clearly the courts are taking the longer view and indicating that companies are not to present a "take it or leave it, you can't get what you want elsewhere anyway" attitude. And bully for them.

As a matter of interest, do motherboards, CPUs, memory, and hard disks all come with an MS "tax" ? Might have an alternative there in the meantime.

@Daniel van Niekerk

Europe is full or morons? Your analogy is idiotic, hardware can be bundled with hardware to create a product; but to exclusively bundle Windows+Apps is detrimental to the very idea of open market.

Microsoft will claim that not preinstalling windows will only result in piracy galore, and I'm not sure if they'd be wrong, but I belive that a) We should be able to buy "empty" computers, w/o windows licenses and the attached extra cost, and b) At the very least, as someone already mentioned above, it wouldn't be that bad if they put windows XP on it, but left all that cpu hogging nick-nack out of my box please. But then again, the average joe probably does want the bundled and pre-installed operating system, and would love the little alerter apps and AVs and whathave you... So it's a mute point. Obviously this is a laptop specific problem, as enthusiasts can easily build their own desktop systems with any os flavor they like... And in my experience, you often get laptops from the IT dept who clean them (? I assume), and then put corporate apps in instead....

In fact, I think that mots affected users have already commented this article, in a wierd twist of cosmic humor.

uhhh

http://www.powernotebooks.com/OS.php3 I'm not uber leet or anything, but it's not hard to find laptops w/o OS. You can buy dell 1420N with linux on it. So basically if Acer wants to sell something with windows on it, they should be able to. If you want to buy something w/o windows on it you have the choice. Most people want windows, so most computers should come with it bundled. If you want open source, you're special, and you should have to do special things like type "buy laptop without operating system" or similar into a web browser.

Want to sell more open source laptops, make them better, cheaper, faster, stronger, harder and longer? You get the point. I think it's called capitalism. I love Mandriva and Pizza, but this is a lame court decision.

Car Analogy

Keeping with the car analogy - Id say its more like you buy a car from a manufacturer and it has a square petrol filler hole. So from then on you have to use specific garages to fill up at whatever prices they decide to charge.

If the PC manufacturers were forced to offer PCs with no OS installed then they would likely have to put more effort into making sure the machines were also linux compatible which in turn would force hardware manufacturers to make sure their hardware was linux compatible - which would mean real choice at last.

not hard to avoid bloatware..

Last Laptop I bought for home I bought an HP machine running XP Pro and deliberately avoided sony as it comes pre-filled with bloatware.

It's really not that hard to buy a machine without the norton/mcafee bloat (and others) and just then pick and choose your apps...

Any before I get flamed by the linux fanboys..I've installed ubuntu on about 10 machines before setting them loose on ebay - I just wanted a laptop that I knew would work and I didn't have the time fiddling to get it up and running..

can you buy a car w/o gas in it?

I've never purchased a car w/o gas in it. How do you get it home? I'm assuming the "open source" car wouldn't have oil either. Or for that matter spark plugs, oil filter or air filter? I mean, who wants to be forced to have Ford brake fluid.

What is the cost?

Does anyone here actually know what it does cost the manufacturer to pre-load the software on a new PC/Laptop?

With all the kickbacks and such, what if it costs more to buy a "bare" PC? Would anyone still buy one other than to obsessively stick to principle? Perhaps that fellow in France really ought to be getting a bill from Acer, instead of a rebate, for "lost revenue".

Just shows that the french are well crap

Ok you buy a laptop bundeled with some software, and you want a refund for the full market vaule of the items bundled with the pc. well that is just nuts, if this is the case I am going to claim monies back from all the mag companies for the dvd's and other crap that comes with mags i buy

Total shiite...

....sad to see somebody else learning the Art of American Lawsuits... bastards (lawyers - not you)

Anyway, the CORRECT analogy between a car and a computer would be buying a vehicle without it's ECU programmed (timing advance, injector tuning, fuel/air ratio, etc) - sure it will run without it but not very far or well.

Europe talks a lot of trash about the US, yet it's possible for the average American to start a business whereas in Europe, regulations, taxes, the fact you DO NOT want to hire somebody without supporting their family, relatives, the EU's Navy gunrowboats, Belgium, immigrants (legal and not), etc... don't even want to talk about VAT or your regular taxes.

Europe punishes success - which is why they can't defend themselves - from anybody.

Should sue the EU because I like my maps clean - not cluttered up with country borders, or because France comes bundled with non-english speakers - I want to supply my own language and not have to pay the French Language Tax (oh rudeness, not understanding how they are trying to screw me, getting a tutor or being forced to buy software to learn a dying langauge).

--------------------

LMFAO at the universal stupidity...

:)

Where....

Where can I buy a new iBook with no OS on it?

As long as we're calling people out to line up against the wall, let's be fair and get them all.

Bloatware...

Not going to get into the rather blinkered slanging matches thare are going on in these comments, as amusing as some of them are...

But to remove the bloatware:

There's a handy application that you can remove quite a lot of the crap that comes on a system, it's called the "Decrapifier". Download it from this site: www.pcdecrapifier.com

Norton AV and other supposed "security" products are pretty much worse than Viruses, which are usually easier to remove and cheaper as well. I'd love to see an end to the "free" Anti-Virus pre-installs that clearly neglect to state that they're time limited (often just 3 months), "accidently" don't come with any way to remove them and/or if you do remove them they don't actually bother to uninstall fully and just continue to silently bloat and crash your system. HOWEVER, it's not all bad - these nefarious manufacturers do actually provide complete removal tools... Google for "Norton Removal Tool" and you'll find the link (it changes regularly, is hard to find in the Norton site search, so it's easiest to find this way) - just click whatever "product" you've been lumbered with (or just click anything, it doesn't really matter) and you'll get to the download page. Download and run the application and it'll remove all the cretinous junk that they lumbered your system with. After a restart, look forward to a glorious 50% quicker startup time, less crashes and a few GB of recovered hard disk space! Similar tools are available for McAfee however they're much, much clunkier to use.

Choice

Doesn't all this boil down to the ability to buy a bare machine OR one with <OS of the manufacturer's choice> installed.

Nobody has ever floated the idea that manufacturers must install and support all OSes. However it makes perfect sense that they should offer a bare machine.

The price of the machine is something else entirely.

To all our US friends: In Europe we tend not to like the "all customers are potential pirates" argument that seems to be an acceptable standard in the US

People migrating from Windows to Linux - and raising the average IQ of both camps!

It took about 3 minutes on www.hp.com to find a high-spec laptop that had the option of FreeDOS rather than Windows (for a saving of $75). Shop under "Small & Medium Business" rather than "Home & Home Office".

If Acer thought that there was a market for laptops without Windows installed, they'd sell laptops without Windows installed.

As for the anonymous post that says "The OEM license that the vendors have with Redmond mean that they have to pay a fee for every machine they sell no matter whether it has Windows on/with it or not, if they want to sell Windows at all."

Can you point us all at a copy of this OEM License? Or is it just another one of those "facts" that became a "fact" because it's been repeated ad nauseam, rather than because it's actually true?

Re: The "me too" people

"Why is it that almost every person that's commented on this story has gone on about Microsoft and so on? Surely if the man was told that he'd get loads of rubbish when he bought the product then that's his problem?"

He bought a laptop, not the software on it, still he had to pay for the latter.

As someone else here pointed out: When you install Windows, it asks you to accept the terms and conditions, you decline and are told to bring the software back to the dealer.

And to those saying that the clueless would have tough luck if their PC didn't come with an OS preinstalled: How about explaining to your elderly customer - that in this discussion have turned so dear to some, as they help bashing an EU decision - what the OS is and what choices are there? In the good old times this was called "customer service".

But I'm sure you, Mr. van Niekeerk, are one of the people who found it quite right that Microsoft stifled and stifles competition by including Internet Explorer and Media Player with their OS, because they are "essential" for its functioning.

It's about CHOICE!

Yes, most people won't think twice about buying a machine with an OS pre-installed. That doesn't mean we don't have the right to ask for a bare machine. Does it? Why? This is just another slant on, for example, Dell shipping machines with Linux instead of Windows.

CHOICE is what it is all about, and giving the customer the CHOICE is always good for business. I rest my case.

M$ Tax in full effect.

I recently ordered a load of desktops/laptops. Half with XP, half without....

The half WITH XP were only on the order of $20 more expensive than the ones with out.

Is it just me imagining things,

Or are the comments full of Microsoft fanbois? (blogwashers?)

@ kfkhotdog

"Customer choice is good, but only to those who are capible of making those choices"

And who gets to decide who is capable of making those choices? You? I think not. You can't even spell simple English words? Me? Most people wouldn't care for my choices. The government? Those bloody fools can't even manage to maintain a Web page free of malicious software.

In a perfect world, one could go into a shop and choose from the bare PC/laptop, one with an OS bundled (and not *just* a Microsoft OS - there are others, you know), and one with an OS and applications bundled. And in a perfect world, Norton/Symantec would be in receivership, and their crapware would be bundled only on Sony computers, which would be priced at 10x the highest competitor's similar product to discourage the idiots who currently buy them.

But the world's not perfect (nor is it a Pervect), and thus we should still be permitted to choose between an unbundled bare machine and a bundled one - WITHOUT PC World claiming that software somehow invalidates the hardware warranty.

And that *should* be the law. I find myself in the uncomfortable position of supporting the French court's decision.

@davcefai

"To all our US friends: In Europe we tend not to like the "all customers are potential pirates" argument that seems to be an acceptable standard in the US"

Yet the acceptable standard in Europe seems to be "All Americans are stupid, fat, and lazy" or just "warmongers". Or all four.

These fat, lazy, and stupid warmongers have saved you in the last century from speaking German, German, and Russian.

Go figure.

If <insert OS here> is so godlike, wouldn't it be desireable and beat <insert OS here> on it's own merits? a la iphone vs. <insert phone manufacturer here>? (lmao)

And I thought El Reg was for tech savy people

This has got to be one of the more amusing comments read ever, for a bunch of tech savy readers I find a lot of the comments quite laughable.

in my not so humble opinion

A) The french courts are looking to jump on the current Hate M$ Bandwagon & get a slice of me too.

B) Unless you live under a rock - buying a bare bones PC or Lappy is not exactly akin to finding the holy grail - local PC store "dear person selling boxes to the public - I would like my pc to contain these items and no OS" - I can think of 3 stores in my home town (one of which I would & do actually use) and maybe 4 (off the top of my head) interweb stores I have used, all of which are happy to offer 2+ years RTB warrenty.

C) The great unwashed public at large are (mostly) incapable of correctly configuring a new pc - so god help 'em when it comes to installing an OS Windoze or *nix - the ones that can - normally do.

D) IF (and I cant see it anytime soon) the norm becomes selling PC's without OS's - I will be the first in line to go back into servicing the general public - with a per min 0870 support number & a team of experience @home techs - be like the late 80's/90's again when there was money to be made in selling/supporting home users.

E) As for Apples without preinstalled OS's - christ think of the floods from all the fanboys crying "My Apple just works - when someome who's not as hip and trendy looking as me charges me a fortune per hour to install my OS"

Surely the whole point is that "included" software is not free

MS is primarily a marketing company, not a software company anymore.

Personally, I think that monopolies are bad for everyone.

A monopoly is guaranteed to abuse it's position- it can't help itself.

A monopoly can charge what it likes- see Vista pricing.

Most people want a PC that allows you to surf, email, message, watch DVDs, play music, write letters etc, .

A PC with Linux can do that, so can one with Windows, or a Mac.

The price of Windows is concealed, many people don't even realise that they have paid for it.

The main reason that I dislike MS is because of it's history of bad practice, stifling innovation and underhanded dealing. I support Windows as a job, but that doesn't mean that I like it.

My company uses Linux internally because it saves us time and money, in support costs as well as OS cost..

I use Linux at home because it does everything that I want, all of the time, and I like it.

We still use Windows, but it's share of our network is shrinking by natural wastage.

Silly

This lawsuit is just silly. Though I sympathize with those people that want a different OS, or want Windows with no other fluff added on, the fact that this wasn't thrown out of court is a disgrace. The machine was almost certainly clearly advertised/labelled as coming with Windows on it. If you don't want Windows, don't buy it.

What's more is that unbundling the machine from the OS will actually INCREASE the overall cost to the average consumer. PC manufacturers buy their OSes in bulk at a severely discounted rate. So they take the per unit cost of the OS off their retail price of the machine, then the consumer goes and spends several times the discount to buy the OS at retail. Yes there are other options apart from Windows, but when windows is what the vast majority of people know and are comfortable with, it's silly to penalize everyone for the sake of a very small minority.

Now alternatively, manufacturers could offer more OSes that they would preload, but then production costs increase, not to mention the second you open the linux box, you're going to have people whining about which distribution is better, and why don't they offer all seventy-billion flavors of BSD.

The majority want windows. So give the majority windows. It's that simple, it makes good business sense, and it's flatly idiotic that you can lose a lawsuit for giving someone exactly what you told them they were buying, merely because they didn't want it all.

Re: Andrew Bush

"The whole point in not bundling the OS is the imbalance between the OEM cost and retail boxed price. There should be no difference in price between these two other than the packaging/distribution."

You are incorrect here. The reason why the OEM version of the OS is cheaper is because when you buy the retail version the extra cost gets you a certain number of support calls with Microsoft. With the OEM version the system builder will be the one providing the support and so they add that cost on to the PC/laptop as they see fit.

(Un)Installing a new PC...

It seems that for every new PC I set up, I spend more time uninstalling (bundled) software than installing relevant stuff... Of course it needs Windows and some other essentials - but there's normally 2 or 3 pre-installed Internet providers, various trial programs, bundled 30-day Internet Security, Google/Yahoo toolbars and search features, Loads of Icons for Games and Music services, Registration nagware and more... some of which don't have a clear removal procedure (and even no entry in Add/Remove?). How about a simple Yes/No option, instead of uninstall if not required, for all this fluff?

People trying to draw analogies between...

a computer and a car don't seem to know much about either.

PS

@Dennis Price

Hmm can't speak French? It's used a lot around the world. Personally I can't wait for Spanish to become the offical 2nd language of the USA. Still, never mind, you seem to be fluent in "Moron". I hear there are a lot of those in the world. ;-)

RE: Is it just me imagining things,

Andrew,

I do not see where you are getting this impression. Did I miss the post that states "your lucky you get to Windows and don't have to use some other (P)OS"?

Nice comments

Just goes to prove that any ignorant nutter can type a comment in here.

Acer broke French law by bundling something with a machine that is not *required* for the functioning of that machine. France has some of the more comprehensive consumer protection laws in the world. Brits and others would be damn lucky as consumers to be so well protected, rather than putting up with the kind of cowboy fly-by-night outfits they are so famous for.

Bundling Microsoft with a PC is like telling me that I *have* to purchase the gold plated toilet with my car. It's not required to make the car work, but we're going to force you to buy it anyway. Car manufacturers actually tried shit like this with their radios and other items. They were soundly told off in multiple courts and forced to change their ways. Microsoft is just one more company in a long line of companies to try their luck at pushing the system. They've finally lost, and their puppet resellers like Acer are going to feel the brunt if they don't change their ways.

Uninventing the wheels ...

"I think I might just go into a car dealership and ask to buy a car without the wheels because I might want to buy different ones,"

At least with the car, if you don't like the wheels you can SELL them.

If the buyer of the laptop ALSO had the right to unbundle any of the unwanted bundle bits and sell them legally to anybody who would pay for them, it wouldn't be quite so unreasonable.

But the whole problem is the way that microsoft have defrauded the public with bogus "retail" prices that are many times larger than they are charging their favourite manufacturers.

Yes, if a manufacturer buys in bulk its expected that they should pay less than somebody who buys only a small number. But if a manufacturer is allowed to buy 100,000 copies of a program at $10 apiece, then anybody else who is prepared to pay $10 apiece for 100,000 copies should be entitled to do so -- no matter whether their intention is to bundle them with a product or to sell them on their own.

OEM pricing has to be stamped out -- replace it by strict bulk pricing where everybody buying the same quantity must pay the same price no matter what country they're in and no matter what purpose they will use it for.

and THAT is where the EU is falling down -- wasting time talking about freebies when it really ought to be talking about the predatory pricing of the core OEM product.

@Daniel van Niekerk

> But he went out and bought something that he didn't want and then asked for money back for stuff he didn't want but then knowingly purchased. How is this right?

It's perfectly right, although it's a crying shame someone needs to go to these lengths before being able to buy what he wants. Including an OS will suit many people - but not all, and an OS is only an integral part of a PC once it's been installed. It's not like the hardware will rot away because there's no OS pre-installed.

You should change "But he went out and bought something that he didn't want" to "But he went out and *was forced to buy* something that he didn't want". That's the point: he didn't want Windows+crud but couldn't buy a machine without it.

And to all the other nay-sayers: absolutely no-one is saying that henceforth, all PCs must be sold with no OS. It should be a CHOICE.

@ Daniel van Niekerk way up top...

Do you really mean that? Are Europeans really so stoopid for not wanting to furnish someone elses pockets for something they don't want or need??

I am a Linux user for a simple reason.. I don't need Windoze in my life.. I work with SAP and Sun servers, so using a windoze machine is not only painful, it's confusing too.. So why must I be forced to buy a laptop with an operating system that I will never use, just because Bill Gates tells me I should.. who is he anyhow?? Noone to me.

Then there's my friend who is an MSDN subscriber, he has OS's coming out of his ears.. Why should he pay for one more??

Well done the French!

WHAT are you's on about

Wise up...he didn't have to buy Acer. He didn't have to pick the model he did...try another brand! consumer laws...thats the problem these days...too many stupid laws. hold on i bought a car a year ago and i bought new 18" wheels for it...but i can sue the car dealer because as mentioned by others in these comments...i didn't want the wheels on the car but was forced to buy the new ones!

WISE up people!! If he didn't like the Acer computer then go get another one from a different maufacture. stupid laws and idiots like this is what has the global economy in a disaster!!!

What ???

WHAT ! quote " I think I might just go into a car dealership and ask to buy a car without the wheels because I might want to buy different ones, screw the engine (the bundled one isn't up to my liking) and I'll take it without paint please because I don't like the standard colours. Oh I also expect Peugeot to cover it under warranty if it starts to rust early or the engine doesn't work as well as I'd hoped"

This has nothing to do with essentials such as the car and its wheels. Windows OS is NOT vital to the running of the computer. Having wheels on a car is. Many (??most) car retailers offer different wheels and tyres when you buy. I would hazard a guess that if you really wanted to, you could take your favourite mag wheels to the dealer and tell them you'll have the car if they fit the wheels (especially if you have the cash).

Besides which, if you dont like the colour/wheels/engine/exhaust/seats don't buy the car ..... or is that a bit obvious for you. This is about being forced to buy crap softare with you computer, rather than having the choice about what is or is not installed.

Quote "Europe really is full of morons. Why cases like this even go to court and even worse get resolved in favour of the plaintiff I will never know."

I can only assume that you are from the US. If ever there was a F***** legal system they have it.

We would still end up paying though

Chances are, if the big boys sold PC's without an OS or the add-on s/w, the price would remain exactly the same and they'd add on some sort of clause along the lines of

"Special offer, get Windows Vista, Norton, Works for free"

I remember about 12 years ago I had £1500 to spend on a PC. Phoned Simply Computers, told them what I wanted, they gave me a price for them to build it, but it would take around 2 - 4 weeks (cant remember how long they said).

Me wanting it that day said I'd assemble it myself. I was then given a revised price of around £200 more for them not building it, as buying the individual parts didn't qualify for various discount codes.

Ended up taking my business elsewhere. Can see a very similar thing happening with the preloaded OS and cant really see a way out of it unless all special offers and discounts are made illegal?

FFS

Unbelievable - this place is getting like /.

The case is not about Microsoft, Cars, Competition or the French.

It's simple ..

Man buys computer and instead of clicking "yes..I agree" throughout the startup said "no".

Man is told (in the last window that pops up) "well go get your refund then".

Man goes for his refund.

Company fuck him around for a year because they have no policy in place for those who click "no".

Court agrees that man was due a refund and taking the company's (year long) actions into account make it a big refund.

The court has no intention of sitting around for the next six months being sidetracked by OEM licenses, tiered discount schemes and other Acer related shite to arrive at a value for the software in question so they use the price he

might pay in the high street. (the most expensive high street they can find)

To make sure Acer get the message that they had better get their customer relations shit together fast the court makes the end refund as large as they can in the circumstances.

The worst thing that can happen to Acer (and the others) is that in future they have to specify exactly what discount a customer is entitled to if they choose not to install the bundle. My guess - zero.

Discount zero, admin of discount zero, court dates zero. The vast majority of customers just want a working machine and will click "yes". For the tiny minority that want something else there's zero.

Thanks, France.

Never thought I'd be saying "Thank God for the French," but there you go. I agree, why do we have to put up with having all this crap pre-loaded on our machines? An OS, fine. Anything else--screw that.

Who buys a PC with an OS installed?

Ive had a few new PCs now.

None of them came pre-installed with any OS.

There are loads of IBM clones to be had, who needs the big manufacturers?

Never buy pre-installed !!

Er, b166er

"If you've never seen a pc/laptop/palm that does not include the OS, where exactly should the 'stupid' man have gone?"

if you'd taken half a moment to read the rest of my post, you'd have some clue, instead you decide to post an inane comment that has no relevance.

the simple fact is that, and i do hate repeating myself, the court case should have been thrown out and the man laughed at.

unless you're building machines yourself, you will find that it is an absolute rarity to find any retailer, or distributor for that matter, selling machines without an OS.

this kind of lawsuit makes a mockery of retail, maybe i should go to DFS and sue them because the sofa they sold me had cushions i didn't want.......jeez

one simple fact that is missed

"Antoine Gutzwiller disputed the fact that he had no choice but to buy the €599 Acer notebook with the ubiquitous operating system and software products including Microsoft Works, PowerDVD, and Norton AV."

the whole argument is one of choice, he could have chosen to buy it from somewhere else, he could have chosen a different model, he could have chosen a different brand, he could have chosen a different retailer.......can any of you seriously see how he was forced to buy this machine....did he have a gun to his head, were his family threatened if he did not buy it

bumpkum, freedom of choice, he chose to buy that model, he would have been fully aware of what was bundled with it when he handed over his cash or signed the credit agreement.

To each his own

"Why is it that almost every person that's commented on this story has gone on about Microsoft and so on?"

Erm... Because this is an article about the compulsory bundling of MS software on retail computers.

"Surely if the man was told that he'd get loads of rubbish when he bought the product then that's his problem?"

Daniel, do you really not get it or have you got into an argument and don't want to back down? Let's go back to the car analogy... Let's say Ford do a deal with a baby seat manufacturer and the deal requires Ford pay for a seat for every car they produce whether or not the customer takes the seat. Ford raise the price of all their cars by $50, include a baby seat and the brochure gets changed to read "includes a baby seat." The conditions of sale also prevent me from selling or giving the baby seat to someone who actually does want it or from using it in my other car. I do not have a baby and have no intent of having one within the time I will own this new car. Why should I be forced to give $50 (less Ford's and the retailer's cuts) to the baby seat company when I'm never going to use their product? That's the first point.

I get my new car and unwanted baby seat. I see a sticker on the box the baby seat comes in (stuck there by the manufacturer) that includes a promise (amongst all the other instructions and warnings) that says that if I don't agree with the warnings or don't want the seat I can return it unopened to the retailer for a refund of my $50. I go back to the dealer, box in hand, and try to return it and get my money. Neither the dealer nor Ford get their share of the $50 back from the baby seat company so they do everything they can to avoid paying me. That was the second problem in this case. The terms of the deal between Ford and the baby seat company should be irrelevant to me (why should I care if they were stupid enough to sign a crappy deal?) but clearly have a huge bearing on Ford's and the dealer's behaviour after the fact. IMHO this deal that obliges vendor refunds without compensation from MS are unfair and this needs to be addressed for the good of the consumer.

Thinking about it differently the PC retailers are actually getting ripped off here too. MS are prepared to sell HP copies of Windows for $30 (or whatever it costs) but won't sell it to the retailers for anything near that price.

These problems could be addressed quite simply. Take the $30 off the price of the machines and sell them bare. Give the retailer nice slim packs of bootable Ghost discs with COA stickers inside. When I hand over my credit card I get asked "Would you like Windows with that, Sir?" If I say "yes" I get charged the $30 for these discs and am given them. Since they are image discs the customer doesn't need to install Windows and make any more difficult choices than they do now. They just put the first disc in and turn the machine on. It boots from the disc and splats the hard drive with the same pre-installed stuff it would have had if it had been imaged in the factory. This disc could be BIOS locked to a particular manufacturer's hardware to reduce piracy (just like the Ghost discs that came in the box with my current machine.) The manufacturer supports it, the same as they do now. No problem, you get what you want, I get what I want. The retailer could even have a second set of Windows image discs with Office preloaded and charge more for them if that's what the customer wants.

Windows is a negative value to my business. Having it obliges me to spend further cash on antivirus subscriptions and plough man hours into supporting it to keep it working. Vista would make me prematurely replace otherwise perfectly good hardware at my cost. XP and Vista are simply not the right choices for us.

"Any before I get flamed by the linux fanboys..I've installed ubuntu on about 10 machines before setting them loose on ebay - I just wanted a laptop that I knew would work and I didn't have the time fiddling to get it up and running.."

You seem to have a preconception that Linux is an inferior product. Good enough for a machine you're selling but not good enough for you. These days I install Ubuntu because I want a machine that works and I don't have to wipe its ass continuously. I can't remember the last time I had to go into serious surgery on a Linux box because the OS broke and I've never had a spyware or virus infecton on one. I can install my Laptop with Kubuntu from fresh, update it and get it just how I want it in under 2 hours. To get a machine from a vanilla XP SP2 install to the same state takes me most of a day and yes, I am an experienced Windows admin too. Our experiences clearly differ.

PCs are a tool for my business and not the reason for its existence. I want PCs to enhance its productivity and not be a drain on its resources. Put simply, I just want to get the job done. There is no reason correctly configured images can't be made of any OS for easy customer deployment.

I do have XP on dual boot on one machine for a couple of customer applications that won't run under WINE. I use it less than once a month now. On my hardware it's slower and less productive as well as being more expensive and harder to maintain.

Bare PC vs Loaded PC

People don't seem to get the point do they?

Sure you can ask for a bare PC (and be told to get stuffed most of the time), but you're going to end up _paying_ more for it.

So a Windows PC comes at $500 and an OS free one at $550 ?

Why is that, the hardware for an OS-free PC is more expensive ?

I think not.

Just because it costs the manufacturer more to deliver a bare PC isn't _my_ problem, I'm paying for the hardware, not for their deals and arrangements with software suppliers.

The hardware and software should be billed separately.

Perhaps you guys in US don't have a choice, but in the EU laws tend to protect the customer and indicate that they should not be forced to buy bundles.

You see a pack of 6 batteries?

Well, if you only want to buy 2, you can.

And not pay the price of the 6.

Analogies

If we must use the car analogy my version is that it's like buying a limo and buying forced to shell out for a driver that's a drunken hooligan who won't take you where you tell him.

@ 3X2

I can't believe I had to scroll down so far in the comments section to actually find somebody commenting on what actually happened in this case!?!?! Good Post!

Well.......

I would never buy another Acer after the Debacle over my "Free" upgrade to Windows Vista that cost 20 quid and never arrived. I'm no great fan of Acer, but in this specific case, how can someone take a company to court for selling them something that THEY chose?

If the PC had this crud on the user hadn't know this he might have a case for a refund. But this is insanity. If you don't like the features the PC comes with - DON'T BUY IT! Why are the manufacturers suddenly under obligation to custom-build a PC just for you with the exact software you want on it??

That having been said. The situation where people who DON'T want Windows et al end up paying MORE for their PCs than people who DO want it is ludicrous. What is happening is that people who don't want this crud are subsidising the people who do. Sure, maybe a SMALL charge for special-building a laptop, and then lop off the cost of the Windows licence.