So some dude spent four years fighting a legal battle to save the cost of an unwanted Windows license.
But perhaps this means that, at least in France, OEMs may have to now give the option to desktop/laptop buyers to not charge for unwanted Windows licenses.  Wouldn't mind if this could be the case here.

Quote:Lenovo ordered to pay €1920 for making French laptop buyer pay for Windows too
The court based its judgment on a European Union directive, which campaigners hope will make the ruling applicable elsewhere

A French laptop buyer has won a refund from Lenovo after a four-year legal battle over the cost of a Windows license he didn't want. The judgment could open the way for PC buyers elsewhere in Europe to obtain refunds for bundled software they don't want, French campaign group No More Racketware said Monday.

Stéphane Petrus bought a Lenovo 3000 N200 laptop from French retailer Cybertek in December 2007. The PC had Microsoft Windows Vista and other software installed on it, none of which Petrus wanted, so he sought a refund from Lenovo under a French law forbidding the sale of one product to be tied to the sale of another. In November 2008, the court rejected his request, telling him that if he didn't want to pay for the copy of Windows, he should have returned the PC.

The judgment was overturned by the Court of Cassation two years later on appeal, and sent back to the court in Aix en Provence for retrial, on the grounds that the lower court had not considered whether the case was covered by the provisions of the 2005 European Union directive on unfair commercial practices.

After reconsidering the case, on Jan. 9, Judge Jean-Marie Dubouloz ordered Lenovo to pay Petrus legal costs of €1,000 (around US$1,300), damages of €800 and to refund the cost of the Windows license. Petrus had estimated the cost of the software at €404.81, but the court found that excessive, given that he had paid €597 for the PC and software together. Observing that "it is commonly accepted that the price of a piece of software represents 10 percent to 25 percent of the price of a computer," the court ordered Lenovo to reimburse Petrus €120 for the software.

Source: http://www.techworld.com.au/article/4145...indows_too

(This post was last modified: 07/02/2012 08:32 PM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

Quote:"it is commonly accepted that the price of a piece of software represents 10 percent to 25 percent of the price of a computer,"

Give us the option to have none of it then.

The next best thing I've seen is Sony giving the option to have no crapware on a customized laptop...

.. but it worked so you had to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional to have the crapware removed - so you ended up paying more for having less software. ^^'

(This post was last modified: 08/02/2012 03:20 AM by S7*.)

I heard some companies pay OEMs to have their crapware installed on laptops, so I guess that kinda makes sense.
In fact, I wonder whether the installed crapware more than subsidises the cost of the Windows license.

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I'd agree with Kuu on principle to be honest, but:

(08/02/2012 08:15 PM)Kuu Wrote:  There are laptops available that come without an OS.

Where?
All major OEMs seem to be bundling Windows with every laptop they sell.  And stores here only sell laptops from these OEMs.
I have yet to see a laptop (excluding Macs) which doesn't come with Windows preinstalled.  Only exception was a period of Linux netbooks, but it seems all the OEMs backed out of that relatively quickly.

Perhaps there's some small online stores which assemble their own machines, which aren't particularly well known, but with the majority of laptops over here, you don't have a choice.

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(09/02/2012 01:15 AM)Joom Wrote:  Target sells Acer laptops and netbooks with Fedora these days.

That's nice, though, Acer laptops don't have particularly great build quality (compared to other brands).

Haven't seen any such things over here - maybe they'll permiate through eventually...

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