Italian Consumer Watchdog Sues Microsoft Over 'Windows Tax' 313
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from El Reg:
"[An] Italian consumer watchdog is suing Microsoft over the 'Windows Tax' – the near impossibility of an ordinary user getting a refund if they decide to delete Microsoft's software from a new computer or laptop. The class action case says Microsoft makes it too difficult for people who buy a computer with Microsoft software on it to remove that software and get their money back. Most users do not realise that starting the software means you have accepted the end user licence."
Updated TOS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:To be fair, not a Microsoft problem *IS*TOO* (Score:5, Informative)
Contrary to popular impression, monopolies are not illegal. But they are restricted by law from doing things (mostly that would preserve or extend the monopoly) that are perfectly legal for other companies.
Tying or "bundling" is one of those illegal things that monopolies must not do. Selling their product as part of another sale. Software, including should be a sales choice ("Do you want Windows with that?") and invoice line-item.
How the boxen are configured and shipped is a separate matter. It would probably not be illegal to ship a machine with MS Windows pre-installed (and even stickered) even though the OS was refused at sales time and no price was paid for it. Quiet about virus! This would not authorize use, although a gift recipient might have an innocent user defense.
Re:Kind of absurd in my view... (Score:5, Informative)
The theory is, Microsoft makes it very difficult for manufacturers to sell computers without Windows. In the past Microsoft has been proven in court to have been strong-arming OEMs into not selling computers with other OSs, or no OS, because for most OEMs their core business is computers with Windows pre-installed, and they don't want to lose their favourable volume discount from Microsoft.
I don't know if this still goes on now, but it is really difficult to buy an off-the-shelf PC with no OS. Arguably the situation is a bit different now than it was 10 years ago, Linux is very much on the radar as is Mac OSX. However, countries differ in their competition and consumer protection laws, and it may well be that, in Italy, it's possible that the current situation runs foul of those laws/regulations.
To answer some of the other posts here asking why no-one complains about OSX, well - maybe some people would like to buy a Mac without an OS. This isn't the point though - it's very difficult to force a company to sell a certain combination of their own products. The issue here is that the MS Windows / Generic PC combination is two different products from two different companies, and that could run foul of competiton and consumer protection rules.
Re:Kind of absurd in my view... (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, it was from a court case that basically said people had the right to buy a computer without having to pay for a Microsoft OS they're never going to use.
Microsoft had argued that anybody buying it without an OS was going to pirate Windows anyway, so they should get paid.
Basically, it was found to be uncompetitive behavior and harmful to the consumer as it was nearly impossible to NOT end up paying Microsoft around $100 on every new computer sold.
Except, Microsoft doesn't sell branded PCs, and as part of the anti-trust settlement they made, they agreed to stop doing that.
You can't buy a Windows 7 phone without an OS on it either -- it's a completely specious argument in this case.
a couple of sources for Linux boxes (Score:5, Informative)
Here are a couple of places from whom I've bought linux boxes: http://system76.com/ [system76.com] , http://www.zareason.com/ [zareason.com] Based on my extremely small sample size, I've found system76 to be a little better in terms of quality, but I've seen lots of positive comments about both of these businesses on the web.
Of course I realize that the existence of alternatives doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't massively exploiting its monopoly power over the market ("monopoly" in the legal sense, which does not require 100% market share). But if nobody bothers to buy from the alternatives, then I can sure as heck guarantee you that the situation will get worse, not better.
Some big retailers such as Fry's, Target, and Walmart have tried selling linux machines. As far as I've been able to tell, none of them have been successful, and I don't think the failure has anything to do with strong-arm tactics by MS. A while back, Fry's used to sell linux machines for $180-250 that were actually pretty decent. I bought several of them (one for my father, one for my daughter, etc.), and they lasted a long time and gave yeoman service. But they stopped selling them, and when I asked one of the salespeople at Fry's he said that they'd had so many returns that it wasn't profitable. Realistically, what was happening was that a lot of people were buying them, wiping linux off the hard disk, and installing a bootlegged copy of windows. Then when the windows install didn't work correctly, they would return the machine. This wasn't subtle at all. The machines came with a custom linux distro (ThizLinux) that nobody in the U.S. had ever heard of and that didn't even have a web page in English. The docs that came with the machines consisted of five pages of instructions on how to install windows, and no info whatsoever on how to use the linux that came preinstalled.
Walmart was selling the gPC for a while. I bought one, and although the hardware was decent, the quality of the software integration stank to high heaven.
What the smaller sellers like system76 and zareason are doing right is to stop trying to invent their own crappy linux distro and just ship their machines with ubuntu, which works. Another thing they're doing right is to market their computers to people who actually want to run linux, as opposed to people who don't know about, don't care about, or don't want linux.