Get your Windows license refund • Hacker News Board

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#131

Post by xp84 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #27

feelamee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think we spend a little bit too much time optimising startup time. Anything more than 3 seconds and less than 45 seconds is perceptibly the same, it's the same level of inconvenience unless you're in a rush. .. but I can't honestly tell you the last time I booted my Macbook from cold. Worthwhile suspend/resume is a much better goal for the modern computer user... Windows fucked us all with s2idle, including themsel…

I slightly agree, but it seems like I have to install a restart-required update for my Macs at least every two weeks nowadays. Which not only requires that full reboot sequence, but also 10 minutes of downtime waiting for what I assume is a bunch of encryption work. So I would counter that I would like to see that optimized better. (Of course, I would like it even better if we could just branch to the alternate timeline where Apple wasn’t encrypting and signing the system volume to avoid any chance of us modifying it)

> suspend/resume

Hard agree. Frustrating that I’ve still never had a non-Mac yet that I can just shut the lid and know that it won’t be blowing fans, apparently running, in my freaking backpack. Or wake up randomly in the middle of the night disturbing my sleep.

Nor can I be confident that when I open it, I’ll see the login screen already ready to go. How is this so hard? I would understand with Linux or with a home-built PC. But shouldn’t Lenovo and HP be able to make sleep work correctly?

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#132

Post by cdmckay » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

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).

Yeah this is an actually good use of AI in an OS.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#133

Post by Joel_Mckay » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

7bit wrote: post #123

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always, Microsoft lingers like a fart in an elevator on some laptops. =3 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/...

Yes, always. The link you pasted doesn't prove otherwise. It just shows a luck of understanding UEFI

Some vendor firmware blocks external platform key enrollments. Contains 100% farts.

Have a great day =3

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#134

Post by graypegg » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

yepyeppers wrote: post #128

graypegg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asus selling millions of PCs a year that each pester their users to make a Microsoft account is well worth a major discount to them than any sort of additional OEM licensing revenue. Giving Asus cheap licenses lets them sell cheaper units to more people. And yeah, Asus DOES need to sell windows laptops because the market demands it, but it doesn't mean they need to follow all of Microsoft's rules/goals. ("Pleeeeease…

That’s a narrow view to suggest it’s just Microsoft’s Copilot that’s pushing NPU’s on PCs. You need some NPU or GPU for system requirements not just for Copilot but for any local models including Gemini Nano in Chrome, open models, models running on Linux without Windows at all. Intel and AMD are both making chips with NPU’s on the die just like they have made them with integrated GPUs. AI isn’t going away any more t…

What? I think you're latching onto something meant as a general example, as something specific. Microsoft has many goals they'd like to push on their OEMs, I'm sure. You're having a different conversation.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#135

Post by davsti4 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

windexh8er wrote: post #53

OroPla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And this is what's wrong with hardware like Apple: it's sold as a general computing device and is able to run alternative operating systems, however Apple doesn't want you doing that. And so they've set this expectation with consumers that: hey we're an ecosystem play, we don't care if you like our hardware and not our software because they're a package deal. Consumers not caring about this is dangerous in the long t…

Microsoft did it, why can't they? Government Exhibit GX 649 (PDF). https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/atr/legacy/2006/....

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#136

Post by 7bit » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #133

7bit wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, always. The link you pasted doesn't prove otherwise. It just shows a luck of understanding UEFI

Some vendor firmware blocks external platform key enrollments. Contains 100% farts. Have a great day =3

That might be true. And has nothing to do with your previous ridiculous claim. Your comment is further proof you lack even basic understanding of UEFI. But I sense the feeling that logic won't change your emotional position on the matter, so I'm not going to bother you further.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#137

Post by xp84 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #35

anon291 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a fair point but capabilities do degrade relative to what is considered "ordinary every day use software" even if nothing is wrong with the OS. For instance there's a fair number of old laptops which exist now that can't play full screen 1080p content from youtube inside a browser without extensively dropping frames (way below a smooth 30 fps) because the cpu/video hardware has no support for hardware accelerati…

That’s a good one. Codecs are one of the few excusable reasons to me. It’s fair that we have ever-more strenuous codecs because obviously every new generation of them has better quality per byte.

What’s inexcusable is just that every application out there, web or Electron, the only two kinds that seem to exist anymore, is written with increasingly bloated stacks and layers of JavaScript. I’m pretty sure the system requirements needed for applications to run smoothly are scaling exactly in sync with the spec of the average software engineer’s (or PM’s) computer. For some reason, in 2012 something like Slack or Outlook or an IDE was exactly as performant on a PC with 8GB and 2 cores, as the current versions are today on a modern high-end machine with 32GB of RAM and 10 cores. Yet they do the same tasks. There haven’t been any big innovations in the calendar, or chat, or email - none that inherently require more hardware resources, at least.

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#138

Post by luxuryballs » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

am I the only one that feels like this is kinda tacky on principles, but also how much is it really worth the time, and if you ever resell or VM windows on that same box you can use your baked in license, seems like a small amount of money that is baked into your laptop cost already and they purchase in bulk, I am not convinced the effort of making this campaign was even worth the squeeze and it def is going to be more expensive for vendors to support than it would be for them to increase the price of their products in response...

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#139

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

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...

Re: Get your Windows license refund

#140

Post by dooglius » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

redeeman wrote: post #81

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…

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?

In fact, this is what happens in the case of laptop displays