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Around eight years ago, a man named Vincent Deroo-Blanquart set out to buy a Sony laptop in France for €549. Like most laptops, it came with Windows pre-installed, something that he wasn't planning on using, so he contacted Sony to see if he could get a refund for the software. The request was denied, which led to a huge lawsuit that could have had lasting repercussions for Europe's PC industry. However, this week, the EU's highest court came to a verdict, ruling in Sony's favour.
The European Union's highest court ruled today that it is not illegal to sell a computer with an OS pre-installed without offering an additional “barebones” option, free of any software.
The lawsuit itself wasn't seeking crazy amounts of money from Sony, though it does massively overestimate the value of a copy of Windows Vista. As Fortune points out, Deroo-Blanquart wanted a €450 refund for the software on the laptop, plus an additional €2,500 in damages for what he considered to be unfair commercial practises.
The suit argued that it was unfair to force customers to pay for a PC without any option to just buy the hardware. The Court of Justice of the European Union went on to handle the case, and pointed out that most buyers expect their computers to come with an OS installed. Another factor in the decision was that Sony offered a full refund for the laptop at the time of complaint, an offer that the customer refused at the time.
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KitGuru Says: If you are buying a laptop from a mainstream company like Sony, having it come with an OS installed seems like a given. Do you guys think more companies should offer OS-free laptops? Do you agree with the EU's verdict here?
He KNEW it had an OS pre-installed. He isn’t an innocent victim has he proclaims, that or he is so mentally challenged he shouldn’t have bought it to begin with. The verdict is okay in my eyes, but they really should open up for the ability to buy a laptop without an OS
Give me 15 minutes and you can have your OS free laptop. If he’s smart enough to know how to go about installing OS’s then he surely knows how to format a drive. This appears to be a scam for quick money by trying to go after a small hole in the system.
While I wouldn’t mind seeing OS free systems, I highly doubt that they would be anything much less than $50 off normal systems.
Customer loyalty = get sod all, Customer acts like a spoiled brat = gets whatever they want. logical
The dude really couldn’t be assed to uninstall windows that much?
From what it sounds like he just didn’t want to pay the extra amount that windows is worth, but if he was happy enough with the price in the first place then what’s there to bitch about
Can you imagine how the computer illiterate would react to machines that were sold without operating systems?
At a lower price point of course 😉
He initially asked for a refund for the cost of Windows, which Sony refused because that copy of Windows was activated and therefore used. Then they offered him to return the laptop for a full refund, he refused.
The whole point of the lawsuit was probably to bring about awareness of the fact that it’s not easy to buy an OS-less laptop… mainly because of Microsoft offering incentives to bundle them.
This maybe the only time I side with a corporation. That guy’s an idiot.
The lawsuit was frivolous in it’s entirety, but as a person who doesn’t use Windows at all, I found the idea of it bringing awareness to the practice to be fine.
However, the EU, as always, ruled the right way and rejected his suit.
OEM’s should offer the option to remove Windows from new laptops, though, and lower the price by the cost to them (not what customers think it retails at).
Dell offer their XPS 13 Developer Edition laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled. But the issue is that:-
* They’re shit (I wanted an XPS 15 with Ubuntu preinstalled – yes, I just installed it myself in the end)
* The price isn’t that reduced, if at all where it should be.
While that might be true, he could’ve created awareness in a lot of different ways, yet he chose the (imo) most arduous one.
If he wanted a os free laptop he should have known better then to buy from a big brand
Looks at smaller more special makers like clevo
He was being a twat, absolutely 😛
if he wanted a refund for what windows cost, he would only get the trade value.. so about £30, not the £400+ he was asking for. lol. what a twatbag