User paid to uninstall Windows XP

[burner1]

A Sheffield man has won a refund from Dell for not installing Microsoft's Windows XP on a laptop he bought from the PC giant.

Freelance programmer Dave Mitchell ordered a Dell laptop on 21 October, and the machine was delivered a few days later.
As Mr Mitchell was planning to run the Linux open source operating system on the machine, he had no need for the copy of Windows XP Home that had been pre-installed. <!-- E SF -->

When he started it for the first time, he clicked the box that said "no" on the Windows licence agreement that asked him to agree to its terms. The text of this agreement states users can get a refund for the "unused products" on their new computer if they get in touch with the machine's manufacturer.


Cash back
Mr Mitchell, who is an active member of the open source community, said he knew that other Linux fans had tried to get refunds in a similar fashion with varying degrees of success.
The origins of this campaign date from 1999 when open source activists in the San Francisco area started campaigning to get refunds for software they had no intention of using.
<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=208 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5></TD><TD class=sibtbg> I was pretty gob-smacked that it was so easy


Dave Mitchell


</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->Every time a computer-maker, such as Dell, sells a PC or laptop they must pay Microsoft for the copy of the Windows operating system installed on it. While many PCs are now sold with a customer's choice of operating system installed, no laptop-makers yet offer the option of anything but Windows, said Mr Mitchell.
To bolster his case, Mr Mitchell shot photographs of every stage of the process that ended with him declining Microsoft's licence terms.
"I had a clear record of what the licence did or did not say," he said.
"I fully intended to take it as far as the small claims court," he said, "just to be bloody-minded."
He then wrote a letter, outlining what he had done, to Dell's Bracknell office and waited for a response. In the letter he did not mention his digital document of the process with photographs.
<!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->"I assumed that would come out when it came to the small claims court," he told the BBC News website.

However, two days later, Dell rang him and told him to expect a refund to his credit card soon after.
"They only took two days to respond," he said. "I was pretty gob-smacked that it was so easy."
The total refund was for £55.23, which Mr Mitchell took to be the value of a pre-installed version of Windows XP Home.

A couple of days after the refund was agreed, an invoice from Dell arrived through the post, which described the refund as "goodwill unspecified".

Although Mr Mitchell has now waived the right to use the copy of Windows XP Home on his laptop, Dell has not asked for the installation disc to be returned.
"I've cost Dell £50, not Microsoft, which is a slightly annoying," said Mr Mitchell. He encouraged other people to try to get a refund and wondered if Dell's policy on which operating systems it offered on laptops would change if enough people tried.

>>>SOURCE<<<

[the.insane]

well done to the bloke, its ood to hear that multinational companies can be fucked around with like this by ordinary people who are determined not to ripped off

[whatnow]

so 50 bucks off all new dell machines eh? Not bad at all

[DJAd]

Yeah, Thats bloody good. I wonder if you could just tell them to upgrade memory or other stuff to the value of £50. The parts would be cheaper to them so I cant see why not after reading that.

[Over Carl]

Doubt it, MS makes pc manufacturers sign an agreement stating that pc's must be shipped with some kind of OS - windows, linux, whatever. Thing is linux people favour all sorts of different distributions, so a big company would have difficulty in negotiating a good discount, as the amounts purchased off each vendor wouldn't be that high - leading to this kind of situation.

[Northernbloke]

So the moral of this story for anyone buying a new PC is to ask for a refund for the windoze you won't be using - Format the pc and re-install a downloaded copy of windoze and head off to the pub to spend the £55 refund - superb

[beerman]

wish I'd read the license agreement when I got my pc from dell. I only paid £150 for it but didn't use the preinstalled xp home. I formatted it and used my licensed copy of XP Pro. I could have got it for £95