[TriLUG] your favorite lowish cost thin laptop

[Kevin Hunter]

At 4:31am -0500 Wed, 19 Jan 2011, Mark Kempster wrote:
> The only time windows will be on this machine is the time between
> first boot, putting in the ubuntu cd, and rebooting. I was hoping to
> support vendors that sold a machine with a linux distro, to support
> those efforts, etc. But in reality I'm not expecting that.

Not that anyone would ever know since you immediately blow away all the 
info on the HDD with a Linux distro, but you can specifically not accept 
the EULA and some OEMs will give you a refund.  Since you overwrite the 
HDD anyway, the only real need to specifically check the "I do not 
accept this EULA" (or equivalent text; it's been a few years!) is 
perhaps personal integrity, or for documentation purposes.

If this route is of interest, you might want to check the return policy 
before you buy the machine.  (And if this route is not of interest, you 
can skip the rest of this message.)

Here is the first section of the Windows 7 Basic EULA (EN)

-----
By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept
them, do not use the software. Instead, contact the manufacturer or 
installer to determine its return policy. You must comply with that 
policy, which might limit your rights or require you to return the 
entire system on which the software is installed.
-----

Which I believe has been amended from XPs, because enough people were 
doing what I was doing and specifically asking for a refund.

You can make a strong argument that despite it being marked as $0.00 in 
the receipt, that it was a hidden cost of the product that you are not 
using and therefore you would like a refund.  Bear in mind that the 
value of any refund on an included item (e.g. marked as $0.00 in the 
receipt), will likely *not* be worth the time to do it.  However, you 
may be interested in the philosophy of sending a message.

You may also appreciate some of the comments in this Slashdot submission 
from almost 3 years ago:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/27/0027212

Cheers,

Kevin