31 May
2006
31 May
'06
3:11 p.m.
Hi Eric,
In the meantime I mailed IBM/US and the lenovo representatives here in
Luxembourg (Hesper apparently).
I found the email address for the company in Hesper on the US site (only) :-).
A couple of years ago, I spoke to IBM people about
this,
essentially they are bound by some sort of contract (which
may or may not be illegal) with MS to sell only with MS
licenses (ok, that was before the Lenovo deal).
They were bound as well as lenovo is (2bn $ contract).
But things have changed, Linux has evolved a lot and gained an enormous amount
of acceptance. So I at least try to get one without m$ license :-).
You might try to get a refund from MS, but that may
be
hard and tedious.
If I can't get a laptop without the license I will sure try that.
The other variant is to go the very hard but
principled
way, i.e. as Brent did: sue them for illegal bundling (they
don't even detail how much the OS costs in the package).
Apparently (researched that some) forcing a customer to buy something that you
bundle with your product but is none of your products is illegal here in the
EU (that is how I understood it).
So even if I would win such a case, I don't have the ressources to start
one :-/.
- accept to buy different hardware (option: tell
IBM/Lenovo
why they lost a sale) Some vendors sell without OS at all,
some do even provide some distribution of Linux.
Would be hard because I kinda fell in love with those thinkpads :-D.
Great quality, very nice up to date features, not too bad linux support...
I don't really think they care that much about loosing 1 customer
- raise enough of a stink with IBM/Lenovo or one of
their
resellers, maybe they'll accept providing you with an
"unbundled" Thinkpad. Don't count on it being any cheaper
though.
Before actually buying one, I will for sure do anything possible to get an
unbundled one.
Thanks :-)
--
regards,
Georges Toth