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Get your Windows license refund

en.refund4freedom.org

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Re: Get your Windows license refund

#141

Post by ozozozd »

gwbas1c wrote: post #76

Seems like it makes a lot more sense to buy a computer without Windows preinstalled. > Device manufacturers and vendors should not impose an operating system or software on consumers This is not a reasonable expectation. Hardware needs software to work, and software runs on an operating system. You can't expect every vendor in the work of every kind of product you can buy to offer you a slightly different version tha…

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!

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#142

Post by dazzlefruit »

Theodores wrote: post #85
vkaku wrote: post #2

This is great. It tells you how many manufacturers make it easy and difficult to get refunds. ASUS is the most specific one, albeit their refund range is between 9 and 65 EUR. Great work.

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 th…

Better option is to wipe the drive and install Linux. The Windows OEM license is tied to the hardware, so you can always reinstall Windows Home from scratch later if you end up reselling it.

That said, calling Windows flaky for shipping disk encryption on a laptop seems odd to me. On a device that’s easy to steal, that’s a feature you want. You can turn the cut-down BitLocker that Home gets back on in the security settings: search “Device Encryption” in the Start menu and you should land on it.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#143

Post by flyingshelf »

BeetleB wrote: post #139
gwbas1c wrote: post #76

Seems like it makes a lot more sense to buy a computer without Windows preinstalled. > Device manufacturers and vendors should not impose an operating system or software on consumers This is not a reasonable expectation. Hardware needs software to work, and software runs on an operating system. You can't expect every vendor in the work of every kind of product you can buy to offer you a slightly different version tha…

> 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...

Sorry but this isn't the 70s. Even businesses expect devices to somewhat work out of the box so it's completely unreasonable to everyone except people who buy things like Raspberry PI, which are a tiny minority.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#145

Post by qmr »

AnodicElegy wrote: post #108

I switched two of my PCs over to Linux Mint last week. The automatic driver support is shockingly good compared to when I last installed Linux on a PC (almost 20 years ago). It even found a driver for the random no-name USB wireless receiver I bought on Amazon, whereas I had to install that driver manually on Windows. Part of my motivation was that one of the machines was still on Windows 7, but more than anything it…

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

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#146

Post by 93po »

scrollop wrote: post #127
AnodicElegy wrote: post #108

I switched two of my PCs over to Linux Mint last week. The automatic driver support is shockingly good compared to when I last installed Linux on a PC (almost 20 years ago). It even found a driver for the random no-name USB wireless receiver I bought on Amazon, whereas I had to install that driver manually on Windows. Part of my motivation was that one of the machines was still on Windows 7, but more than anything it…

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).

A recent ubuntu update made my boot fail - the splash screen for disk decryption has a known bug in the latest update for my exact video card. Being able to get into terminal-only recovery mode and launch Codex CLI and ask it to diagnose the problem was incredibly nice. I don't think I'll ever deviate from Linux again since most of my issues with it were random bugs like this, but they're now easily solvable.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#147

Post by tredre3 »

BeetleB wrote: post #139
gwbas1c wrote: post #76

Seems like it makes a lot more sense to buy a computer without Windows preinstalled. > Device manufacturers and vendors should not impose an operating system or software on consumers This is not a reasonable expectation. Hardware needs software to work, and software runs on an operating system. You can't expect every vendor in the work of every kind of product you can buy to offer you a slightly different version tha…

> 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...

Expectations change over time.

But I also believe your recollection is erroneous or must differ by region because I was there as early as the 80s and computers sold without an operating system weren't common. If you were buying a PC clone in the 90s you could buy it without the Windows license, of course, but the default was to include it.

Even before PCs, computers typically shipped with BASIC, which was their operating system of sort. Macs, Amigas, they all shipped with an OS as well.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#148

Post by MoonWalk »

AnodicElegy wrote: post #108

I switched two of my PCs over to Linux Mint last week. The automatic driver support is shockingly good compared to when I last installed Linux on a PC (almost 20 years ago). It even found a driver for the random no-name USB wireless receiver I bought on Amazon, whereas I had to install that driver manually on Windows. Part of my motivation was that one of the machines was still on Windows 7, but more than anything it…

"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.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#149

Post by BeetleB »

flyingshelf wrote: post #143
BeetleB wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Sorry but this isn't the 70s. Even businesses expect devices to somewhat work out of the box so it's completely unreasonable to everyone except people who buy things like Raspberry PI, which are a tiny minority.

I'm talking about the 90's.

I'm sure they did sell computers with Windows pre-installed in the 90's. But almost every place also sold computers without any OS. It was not at all unusual.

The computing world wasn't just in the US, you know. Microsoft didn't have a deal with all PC manufacturers in the world.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#150

Post by stronglikedan »

gwbas1c wrote: post #76

Seems like it makes a lot more sense to buy a computer without Windows preinstalled. > Device manufacturers and vendors should not impose an operating system or software on consumers This is not a reasonable expectation. Hardware needs software to work, and software runs on an operating system. You can't expect every vendor in the work of every kind of product you can buy to offer you a slightly different version tha…

> 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.

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