Windoze refund (was: RE: [wplug] Laptop Criteria)

[Vanco, Donald]

John Harrold wrote:
> Sometime in May Vanco, Donald assaulted the keyboard and produced:
> 
>> John Harrold wrote:
>>>> Sometime in April Vanco, Donald assaulted the keyboard and
>>>> 	produced: My current laptop was a real compromise - only one
>>>> PCMCIA (I routinely need 2), no floppy, no serial, but @$$ kicking
>>>> graphics & display, a 2.4GHz P4 and a boatload of RAM for $1300
>>>> and my WinXP refund from Dell.
>> 
>>> how hard was it to get the refund and how much did you get?
>> See:
>> http://tinyurl.com/aqrp
>> 	...plus an additional $50 here http://tinyurl.com/aqrv
> 
> so you got ~150.00, color me impressed.

	I was pretty happy, but then read the sobering comments by the site
admin.  He makes some valid points - a small victory for me, but overall the
result really doesn't do anything for the "equality fight" with OEMs.  I
figure Dell is just giving the $100 refunds to shut folks up - I suppose in
a perfect world they'd get annoyed by it and at least offer a "No OS" option
on home systems, but I'm sure their agreement with Microsoft won't allow
that to happen easily.
	Equally amazed by the number of folks clamoring to buy the virus on
eBay - I saw similar copies go for >$70 - I was frankly surprised that mine
closed so low.  Still, 150 shekels is a lot of wings @ Hooters.
	....and yes - I really did nuke the install of WindozeXP that came
on the laptop.  It's been running Gentoo (and nothing but) since the second
time I booted it.

Don