I have a sneaking suspicion that Dell probably had standing orders to not bother to argue with someone who wanted a reimbursement for Windows, and just get it over with. If you care enough to want that, you care enough to argue your case and make life a hassle for everyone if Dell refuses. To even ask the question is a shibboleth that instantly marks you as someone on the edge of the bell curve.

I also have a similar suspicion that that order has been lost to time, partly because it's very rare that people do that (and Dell even offers Linux machines to those who do care), partly because the support's been outsourced to someone who hasn't read that part of the script, and partly because the world has become more hostile towards consumers during the past 15 years.

I am seriously saddened by the complete takeover of mobile computing by Apple and Google. There is no freedom on your own device to choose your own software, except inside the very narrow constraints allowed.

> Which was extra nice because I had no idea I was in fact charged for the bloatware, but I still got ~50€ for it on top of the OS license price.

I actually expected those to pay for being pre-installed, offsetting or possibly even exceeding the cost of the Windows license.

> I had no idea I was in fact charged for the bloatware

It’s complicated. Those licenses have a dollar amount for accounting purposes.

So your personal computer was not tied to a specific OS and you were easily about to get a refund for the license cost of the OS that shipped in box. So what’s the issue? Do you want hardware to ship without any software?

[dead]

I would rather get full refound for laptop, if I disagree with the license. Windows is unseparatable from hardware after all...

Use laptop for a few months, than finally boot windows install...

A laptop is whatever uses a rigid clamshell form factor with a screen that folds down over the keyboard. A screen with a flippy floppy detachable keyboard is not that, so:

- A chrome book is a laptop, it uses the laptop form factor.

- A Steamdeck is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor.

- An iPad is not a laptop. It does not use the laptop form factor out of the box, it needs peripherals to even pretend to be one.

- A surface Pro is also not a laptop, but the Surface Laptop is. Just "having a flippy floppy magnetic keyboard pre-bundled with it" doesn't make a tablet a laptop. Having a rigid clamshell design makes it a laptop.

And yes, that makes the Asus Zenbook a laptop, because it is. It just has the circuitry in the screen instead of the base. Hell, Asus literally calls them laptops themselves.

I can't think of any software engineers I personally know who use Mac. In my industry, pretty much anyone who uses Mac is in a managerial position.

Software devs absolutely live in their own little world. Regular people don’t even know what an OS is. All the details of computing have become so abstracted away from the user that they’re completely unaware.

> what is a laptop?

There's actually a very simple answer to that! A laptop is a mobile device with the set of functionalities that macOS has, but iPadOS hasn't :)

I wish this was ironic (I'd love to use the iPad Pro as laptop), but it isn't.

A portable IBM PC is a laptop (lawful good).

Try finding a PC manufacturer that lets you choose Linux instead of Windows when customizing your PC. I remember one or two companies offering it, and even giving a discount for it (~$100?), but the rest simply default to Windows.

Others let you choose Linux, but you have to pay to remove Windows. They can't install their bloatware (or are unwilling to, anyways), so you have to pay the unsubsidized price.

> Software developers really just live in a different world than normal people.

They actually don't, which is why the vast majority of software developers would never "raise an eyebrow" to the very well known obviously true statement that the vast majority of laptops are only sold with Microsoft Windows, regardless of what they themselves or their coworkers use.

Clearly a computer is a laptop if you can use it comfortably while it’s sitting on your laps.

Or as Apple once (in)famously asked, "what's a computer?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S5BLs51yDQ

> It got me thinking though: what is a laptop?

A cat.

bro, ethernet and cellular data is called WiFi now

The key word here is "impose". I can imagine a world where at time of purchase you would select which OS (if any) you would want pre-installed on the machine. Even a checkbox for Yes/No Windows would be an improvement.

> This is not a reasonable expectation.

I may be of a different age, but in my time it was common to buy computers without any OS pre-installed. It was on you to install one (from CD, floppy, whatever).

Of course, vendors selling PCs often also sold OS's...

Oh I am interested in buying a piece of hardware, they thought it would be convenient for customers to pre-install software I don’t want, and make money with it (the real convenience), and if I am to demand that I pay/ask only for the hardware, my expectation is unreasonable.

How convenient!

Yeah, one of the reasons why I chose my current Acer laptop was that it didn't come with Windows pre-installed. That made it cheaper and I didn't have to give money to Microsoft.

I hear what you're saying, but there are issues when you continue the line of thought one step.

Imposing Windows implies requiring agreements to unknown eula's at the time of purchase. Consider Windows is there in the first place because of anticompetitive practices. Stuff like this is unreasonable too. I think moreso. I guess it comes down to if you think consumers or big tech is more deserving of protection.

this has only been somewhat possoble for laptops within the last decade even then you're limited to a narrower selection of models.

> Seems like it makes a lot more sense to buy a computer without Windows preinstalled.

For the vase majority of users, it only makes sense to buy hardware with a preinstalled OS.

Is this complexity intrinsic, accidental or even intentional? Bundling is a powerful move to defend monopolies.

i think its reasonable that people who sell computer monitors also demand you purchase a computer or other output device from them. Why do you feel differently here? after all, a computer monitor needs a computer or other output device to work, no?

Now you tell me...

After drowning my last laptop in tea I needed a PC urgently and bought ASUS. Had I known that a refund was possible, would I have applied, to get what amounts to £10 refund on a £2K machine?

I am not sure!

The Windows install means my laptop has some value in the second-hand market, should I need to sell. Without it, I am not going to easily find a buyer, because it is still not yet 'the year of the Linux desktop', and even then, stock Ubuntu is not as fashionable as some other Linux variants.

What did surprise me was how flaky Windows is these days. If memory serves me correctly, I needed to boot into Windows to turn 'bitlocker' off, in order to resize the drive for my Ubuntu partition. However, there was no UI to turn 'bitlocker' on again afterwards. Allegedly I need a 'pro' version of Windows to do that, since the UI is just absent from the 'Home' version of Windows.

This process means that I did 'accept the EULA' and therefore denied myself the opportunity to claim back the Windows tax. Drat!

In previous decades I kept the Windows install just in case I needed MS Office or Adobe products to do work. MS Outlook was the 'gotcha', but then they got the web version of MS Outlook working acceptably.

Nowadays I am quite confident that there is nothing Windows that I want, so this use case has gone, yet I have new rationale to keep paying the Windows tax, to 'insure' my PC with some resale value.

I wish manufacturers such as ASUS provided Linux support, even if in a 'community' guise, so as to not upset Microsoft. With my example, I needed to change the power setting on the Wifi card to ensure that Bluetooth worked for the mouse. That was it, yet I had to work that out for myself, with no instructions provided. If I was completely new to Linux then I might have struggled with this or lacked the confidence to spend £2K on a machine that might not run my chosen OS.

In 2026 we still have a long way to go!

I honestly would assume that’s a pretty honest price for an OEM license paid by a company as big as Asus, they definitely don’t pay retail!

... If the product is as good. Sadly if you buy a worse product for ideological reasons, it's still a sacrifice.

I did the same in germany for Diablo 3 around 2014. Boxed game, ToS not outside = not part of the purchase contract.

Got my money back from the store after 15 minutes of quoting the specific law.

The Windows boxes had the ToS on the outside though.

In what sense is it unfair or do they get a pass? I’m asking in earnest. My impression is that you may be confused about the dynamics or are just trying to compare Apples to Oranges out of distaste.

No one at Apple paid for a macOS license on your behalf in any sense a legal regime might recognize so there is nothing to be refunded if you choose not to accept the license. It’s one of the many, many structural advantages of vertical integration.

Apple doesn't pay to ship macOS on its devices.

Nobody complaints that MS laptops ship with Windows - this is about hardware companies partnering with MS.

MacOS is free, what refund would you expect?

I reckon Apple buyers are more interested in the OS than in the hardware, in general.

Finding it's much easier to migrate to linux with an llm as a troubleshooting assistant.

Even used it to make a task bar applet adjacent to Media Controls, where I can rate the current plexamp song without having to open plexamp.

A big plus of linux is the easy ability to use workspaces and switch between them with a hover over the workspace taskbar applet and the mousewheel (and other options).

"more than anything it was the incessant push to associate my OS account with an online Microsoft account"

Absolutely. Obnoxious and unacceptable. Then there's the fact that Windows has regressed into a clinic on UI incompetence and defective design.

I put Mint on my 2014 27" Intel iMac and it's slick.

I switched my primary PC over in 1999, my secondary over in 2001, and haven't looked back since.

You're in a better place today than back then as finding software solutions to common problems is much easier now.

For other OS needs, just virtualize. I started off using VMware Workstation, after a decade (or so) transitioned to Virtualbox, and now today, virt-manager (qemu, kvm through libvirt).

Good that you decided to do the move. Often any existing problem on Linux has already been solved by someone; it may just take a while when you find a solution. In that case I also recommend to make local notes. I do so since +20 years. Some of those local notes helped me many years later.

It was good back then as long as your hardware wasn't too new.

Do you have a source for this practice? I couldn’t find any evidence of it with a search.

Which is why Dell doesn't have a process. You can just buy a Dell machine without Windows in the first place

Lenovo also takes orders without Windows. Only for "configurable" skews through the website though.

Because the quoted price for their laptops always includes Windows, the option to configure and remove the Windows license is effectively a discount for alternative OS users. :)

I think the reason for the this is the additional software applications pre-installed on top of windows where the publishers of those applications are paying for the right to be “distributed” in this way. Think in terms of software that is pre-installed but requires a subscription for continued use like anti-virus software, productivity software, media editors and players, etc.

Ie: the Windows OEM license costs less than the total amount of money that the other software publishers are paying for distribution and if you reject windows, your are rejecting things that subsidize the price of the PC itself.

IANAL, but consumers usually do have to finalize the installation, in particular activate the license online. From a legal perspective the technicality of a running kernel may not satisfy completion.

When you buy the computer, the price of a Windows licence is included in the sticker price. Even if you never boot Windows you've already paid for it.

Its not like you enter in your payment information to buy the Windows license after you buy the computer. That's the thing. You inherently already bought the license when you bought the computer, it was just another item in the overall package like the RAM and the SSD and the battery and what not.

So even if on the first boot you just immediately booted into whatever other operating system, you still paid for Windows.

I believe they are referring to preinstalled Windows as an OS when you buy a PC. The PC price itself already includes the price of the Windows License. And the article advocates requesting refunds if you intend to install a different OS.

I see your point, but this doesn't seem to be in good faith. There's a distinct difference between ice cream and pony rides (which would be, awesome, with a new laptop) - and a business practice which maintains a monopoly on consumer hardware.

I think it's reasonable for manufactures putting their own software on (I.e., Mac or Microsoft devices running what they want), but all other hardware manufactures only offering Windows just benefits Microsoft, and is clearly part of the MS strategy

If you don't like Cyclospora , don't buy lettuce infected with it. Similar regulatory problems, at least with the lettuce the diarrhea is temporary.

It sounds reasonable to have the opportunity to buy hardware without software you do not intend to use. Though, I do assume that from the POV of the company selling the software, it would be ideal for the customer to not have a choice. I guess companies also want free ice creams and pony rides.

This is so incredibly naive. You're basically saying no consumer laws should exist at all. Any commercial activity is fine no matter how underhanded.

This is such a boomer coded 'deal with it' take. The manufacturer is going to charge you a premium for the software license. If you never intend to use that license, it's completely reasonable to think that we could live in a world where you could uncheck a box and avoid that altogether.

In my experience, unfortunately it’s fast until you need to use a webapp (Gmail, FB, Netflix…).

For document editing or code it’s pretty awesome but a sluggish web is a deal breaker for many these days.

Yes, I'm offended, because you excluded Windows Server.

Upgrades to SSD, thinks the OS made it faster. Ok

It shouldn't be offensive. The assessment is accurate. I used to think computers 'degraded' and got slower and worse over time. It always seemed weird to me since logically, the silicon is there. However, when you run a proper operating system, there's no degradation. It's a software problem in its entirety. Nixos has kept my laptop running for almost a decade at this point with no performance degradation. I am only considering upgrading due to fundamental hardware constraints, but the machine itself is fine and still snappy.

even finds network printers on its own

would be interested to see comparison: 1. windows + hdd

2. windows + ssd

3. linux + ssd

I know that Linux can greatly speed up startup, but more likely that ssd gave bigger impact.

> Windows (non-Server editions) is a junk OS

Some people realized this 25 years ago

The server editions are junk too, lol.

I switched to Mint and never looked back. It's one of the easiest transitions IMO, and if you really miss Windows, you can bring the aesthetic with you: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes/view/Chicago95

Dual boot off a second SSD with a Grub EFI loader (it will recognize the Windows boot-loader on the other drive), and leave your windows install untouched. Still backup your TPM drive keys from windows before touching your bios settings, or you could lock yourself out of your account.

Everyone has an opinion on distros, but Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop is going to be easiest to migrate over use wise (looks like XP/win7.) Debian family of OS like Linux Mint or Ubuntu 26.04 LTS support most drivers like Brother network laser printers and scanners (check support before buying.)

For most users, Linux Mint will work with your hardware out of the box. Again, do a quick laptop model search to see what others say about your hardware drivers in a specific distro. Note, Ubuntu 26.04 with rtx 5070 ti needs a bit of driver customization, and quite a bit of patches to be pleasant. =3

Switched to Arch Linux with GNOME. Whenever an issue comes up, I have an AI agent look into it and it gets done. Worth it to get off of Windows.

I work in the refurb department of an e-waste recycling company. I put Linux Mint on most of the PCs I list for sale, and I've never had anyone complain.

I haven't tried Fedora in like 20 years, but I remember odd things being broken, adding up to a death by a thousand cuts, but I've never had a bad time with Mint (or anything based on Debian).

maybe Azure Linux? :)

I don't think Microsoft actually cares (or they consider it to be a good thing) because the default out of box experience on Windows 11 is to drive the average non tech home/consumer user towards a whole array of microsoft monthly recurring subscriptions for xbox live, office365 type products, onedrive, etc. In addition to driving traffic to Bing.

"Oh, you need more backup space! Take this special offer now for more storage, only $NN a month".

> 100% legit.

Grey market means the codes often work (valid KMS generation etc) because they match the algo,

and or were validly issued to a manufacturer,

but that doesn’t make them “100% legit”.

Otherwise you wouldn’t be saying “grey market” - it would just be the market.

You could have bought Windows 7 or 8 then upgraded (free) to 10 then 11. If you ever logged in with a Microsoft account for a user, then the entitlement is tied to your Microsoft account.

> I don't know how that KMS AIO tool got on my hard drive, officer; I swear it isn't mine! Someone must have dropped it there accidentally.

The (still limited but better) choice exists now in large part because of many years of activism[1][2][3][4] similar to that in the linked article as a consequence of Microsoft actively abusing their market position to make it hard to avoid paying for Windows.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Refund_Day

[2] https://www.wired.com/1999/01/the-non-refundable-refund/

[3] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/...

[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/279926.stm

> How about this: don't buy a product that you don't want.

How about laptop manufacturers stop making shady deals with Microsoft to force its OS on everyone?

It’s crazy how many passes these companies get. A huge number of them are still selling high-end laptops with Intel chips because they signed agreements that effectively prohibit them from offering AMD variants.

Let's stop pretending like any of this is acceptable.

Given the very wide selection of x86-64 platform PC workstation hardware which is capable of running linux just fine, limiting yourself to only a few vendors just because you don't want it to have win11 out of the box is really doing things the hard way just because.

It's like going car shopping and having a choice of a dozen brands and 8 or 10 different types of subcompact, compact, sports cars, compact SUVs, full size SUVs, minivans, EVs from each manufacturer. But no, you can only buy this specific model of Toyota Camry or or maybe 3 different models of Hyundai. Oh, you wanted something else? So sorry

I mean, I bought a random Intel N150 with 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD mini PC on Amazon to run Home Assistant on, it came with windows 11 out of the box and immediately got wiped. If I'd gone buying only the equivalent hardware that came with no OS or linux on it I would have paid hundreds more for the exact same thing.

It literally says:

> Want to buy a licence-free PC directly? Search for your nearest Linux-friendly shop on LinuxSi! (Italian-only).

Sure, but imagine how funny it would be if you could buy something from Apple and get a refund because you don't want to use their OS.