I remember I did it in the past with Dell (super cool company), and even with Acer.

In Italy you are entitled about 100€ back (and the law is pretty strict) anyhow.

In last september I bought Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 without any OS preinstalled for around $100 less than the exactly same model with Windows.

Because Windows is like "force sold" in combination with buying the hardware, where the hardware is a general purpose computer and that there is no reason you can't buy the hardware without and not pay their unnecessary tax to Microsoft.

Now, even if it is not very public, it is well known, and even if you can't buy most computers alone, you can still, in all case, ask the manufacturer to reimburse you for the windows licence that don't want to use.

This will work even if you just don't want the new "licence" because you want to reuse an old one, that is perfectly legal.

Something like 8/10 years ago I did the procedure and was given back something like 120/130€ I think, that will give the approximate price for windows that you pay with your laptop purchase....

Normally, a few years ago law should force retailer to display in sticker that part of the price that you will pay for windows for laptop sold with it. But I'm not sure that retailer are really doing it nowadays.

The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option (2022) (tmm.cx)

107 points by wibbily 55 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 33 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43232057

https://blog.tmm.cx/2022/05/15/the-very-weird-hewlett-packar...