[ale] OT: M$ vs. Linux netbooks

[tom]

Actually, given the personal cost of going for the EULA refusal refund, I 
wonder just how useful it is. If your time is worth just a little more 
than minimum wage, you have perhaps 10 hours to hit break even, after 
which you lose more than you gain from a financial perspective. Should the 
effort get in the way of more productive pursuits, you lose faster.

OTOH, blogging and public notice type work can pay dividends both for the 
Linux community and yourself, even if the accounting is harder to follow.

Personal opinion - skip worrying about retrieving any M$ tax, purchase the 
lower cost machine, install Linux, and advertise the fact you are running 
Linux. If you get a copy of XP out of the deal, put it in a safe place or 
the trash, depending on the reliability of your software filing system and 
personal biases.

IMHO, fighting the M$ tax as such may well be a battle front from the 
past. Lets find a new way to put open source software in front of the 
public.

Of course, YMMV

On Wed, 4 Mar 2009, Jim Kinney wrote:

> loosing money on each machine sold will look very bad as the justice
> department revisits the monopoly status and begins the evaluation
> process to determine if anything has improved since the ruling.
>
> Again - buy the lower cost XP model, refuse the EULA (it should be the
> first screen) and demand a refund of the $50-$75 OS cost from
> Microsoft, not Acer. Inform Acer of the intent to demand the refund
> and blog like mad about it.
>
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Robert Reese~ <ale at sixit.com> wrote:
>>> I was thinking along those lines, but then statistically M$ wins,
>>> as my purchase counts as a M$ Winblow$ purchase and M$ gets a piece
>>> of the action.
>>
>> Not if they are losing money on each purchase a la the original XBox.  ;c)
>>
>> R~
>>
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