I haven’t used Windows on any of my own computers for almost 10 years now, so paying for it when buying a new computer makes no sense to me. But buying a computer from any international manufacturer without an OS or with Linux has usually been a rather complicated matter since even if those options existed they were well hidden on the manufacturers’ sites and limited to a couple of models only.

So usually people who never use Windows still just buy a computer with it and reinstall it right away with Linux/*BSD/whatever else and a rare few bother with trying to get refund for the unused Windows. In the perfect capitalism you would be able to just vote with your wallet but a couple of years back there basically just weren’t any alternatives available.

This has never been much of a problem with desktops since those are easy to build yourself and there are lots of local manufacturers selling them without an OS. Things have always been a bit more complicated with laptops because  it’s hard to build one yourself and even though there are local manufacturers around, their build quality tends to be inferior to international brands.

About a year and a half ago when we were searching for a suitable laptop for my wife we had to settle for a local manufacturer’s product which was cheap for its specs and came with Ubuntu Linux.  Over the course of the year some problems started to bother her, among which are:

• the graphics support always broke with updates since the machine had the notorious SiS graphics that are (somewhat) usable only with a closed source binary driver that was last updated years ago,
• the glossy screen was very hard to use in the office setting, actually it could easily be used as a mirror.
• the build quality is nothing to write home about – when you move the screen it flickers, the keyboard is quite irresponsive etc.
• It’s a bit too large and heavy, which is mainly just a side effect of its 15.6″ widescreen.

So we decided to give that laptop to her mother and buy a new and smaller one for her. I was really surprised to see that there now were lots of laptops available in local shops without an OS or with different Linux distributions preinstalled from Dell, Toshiba, Asus and Acer. Most were ~50 – 127 EUR cheaper than the Windows version depending on the exact Windows version. Instead of the OS our most restrictive requirement became anti glare screen since almost all the laptops seem to come with a glossy one these days. What we settled upon was Dell Vostro 1320 which came with no OS installed which in practice meant that it came with a FreeDOS CD with full source and printed GPL license.

The store also had the same model with the same HW specs available with Windows XP pro and 3 years of warranty (ours has 5 years) and it’s 63 EUR more expensive.

Interestingly enough you can’t really just go to Dell’s site and configure this model (or any other model that I tried) with anything else than Windows as an OS, but local resellers have all these Linux & no OS versions readily available anyway. So Eastern Europe might be privileged in that way 😛