Paul Sutton wrote: > No only that isn't it also about hardware support, many years ago, > laptops were supplied with built in modems, that only worked with > windows, or to get them to work properly with Linux required more work, > so it also sends a message to suppliers that we not only don't want > windows but we also want hardware that is supported in Linux or similar > based operating systems. > > We have similar issues i guess with propriatory (sorry can't spell it) > drivers, again it causes issues, but that is another discussion i guess. > > Don't forget that When you buy a laptop + windows MS get some of that > money as a sale of Windows, so having a laptop minus windows should > work out cheaper for us. > > Paul >
Personally I think that they should be forced to offer an option of buying Windows as an extra and cutting the price on the machines. That way if you want Windows, just buy the specific Windows restore disc and licence sticker which is tied in to the machine and bung it in the machine. Nowadays most machines come with a recovery partition anyway with the option to make recovery discs. Since DVDs are cheap to manufacture in bulk the manufacturers could supply these as an extra and then the customer could restore the image themselves using these discs. They could even probably put some sort of bootloader on the drive which asks the user to insert a recovery disc. Then the savings could be passed on to the customers who don't want the recovery disc and they could choose if they wanted what version of Windows they wanted (say Vista Home Basic/Premium, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, XP Home/Pro etc). I doubt it's going to happen though unless the EU actually push for it and make it a legal requirement (and I don't mean none of this Windows Vista-N without Media Player, how many machines are shipped with this in the EU? It should be enforced). Rob Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
