Geeks are Sexy Technology News » Operating Systems

Court Orders Refund for “Windows Tax”

JLister — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:00:43 +0000

A French man has become at least the fourth person to gain a refund for a copy of Windows that came pre-installed on a new computer. This looks to be the first case, though, where a court has ordered the refund.

Microsoft’s general policy is that it sells Windows to the retailer and the retailer then sells it to the customer as part of the computer package. If you don’t want Windows (for example, if you want to run Linux on the machine), that’s between you and the retailer. That policy is covered by the End User License Agreement which you click to approve before using Windows.

In the three previous cases:

An American man persuaded HP to refund him $200 from a $599 laptop when he decided he didn’t want to use Vista (which is understandable.) Although HP tried to deter him, and at one point argued it was Microsoft’s responsibility, persistence eventually paid off.
An Israeli man sued Dell for refusing to refund him for Vista. Possibly fearing a court ruling setting a precedent, Dell eventually offered him an out of court settlement of $100, the price it had paid Microsoft for the Windows license. The man then talked them into paying the $137 he’s sued for, which covered the full consumer retail price of the system at the time.
A British customer persuaded Amazon to refund him the cost of Windows after buying an Asus laptop. It was a simple process, which appeared to be a case of him getting lucky and speaking to a customer service representative with a good knowledge of open source software.

The new case went as far as several court rulings. Stephane Petrus bought a Lenovo laptop and asked for a refund, citing a French law that says you cannot make the sale of one product dependent on the sale of another. The French court initially rejected that, ruling he should simply return the PC. An appeals court later ordered a retrial, saying the original judge had not fully considered a European directive on unfair commercial practices. Such directives must be adopted in the domestic law of European Union member countries.

The original court has now ruled in Petrus’ favor. It did reject his somewhat baffling estimate that of the €597 price of the computer, €404.81 was made up of the Windows license. Instead the court ordered Lenovo to hand over €120 as a refund, but a further €800 in damages for making him take the case through the courts, and €1,000 to cover legal costs.

Not only does this establish a legal precedence in French law, but the European Union directive angle means people across the continent may now have a stronger argument for saying they have a legal right to a Windows refund in their own country.

(Image credit: Alan Lord/The Open Sourceror)

The Future of the Menu: Say Hello to Ubuntu’s Upcoming Head-Up Display [Video]

Geeks are Sexy — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:00:10 +0000

This will speed up common operations by sooooo much… I can’t wait to give the HUD a try!

This is the HUD. It’s a way for you to express your intent and have the application respond appropriately. We think of it as “beyond interface”, it’s the “intenterface”. This concept of “intent-driven interface” has been a primary theme of our work in the Unity shell, with dash search as a first class experience pioneered in Unity. Now we are bringing the same vision to the application, in a way which is completely compatible with existing applications and menus.

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Nyan Windows 98 [Video]

Geeks are Sexy — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:00:40 +0000

Yep, this pretty much sums up my former relation with Windows 98…

[Via]

Building Windows 8: Reengineering the Windows Boot Experience [Video]

Geeks are Sexy — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:00:43 +0000

With continued innovation in the hardware ecosystem, the biggest shift in firmware in 30 years, and software changes leading to boot times of ~7 seconds on machines with solid-state drives (SSDs), we decided it was time to bring the PC boot user experience into the 21st century. In a previous post by Gabe Aul, we discussed how fast startup mode will make faster boot times a reality in Windows 8. You may have noticed from his fast boot video that boot felt different – not only was it super fast, it was seamless, from the time the power was switched on all the way to the Start screen. In this post, we will explore how the team has reimagined the complete Windows boot user experience to make that possible.

[Source: Building Windows 8 | Via [H]]

Windows 1.0 vs. Windows 8 [Pic]

Geeks are Sexy — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Yep, looks about right to me!

[Via]

Windows 8 Boots Fast… Really Fast! [Video]

Geeks are Sexy — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:00:12 +0000

Now here’s the key difference for Windows 8: as in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested). [SOURCE]

[Via]

XP Gets Yet Another Death Sentence

JLister — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:53:44 +0000

In the latest in a series of unconvincing announcements, Microsoft is claiming Windows XP really will die in 2014. All those previous announcements were just for show, but this time the company really means it. Honest.

Microsoft’s Stephen Rose has issued a statement that is, perhaps unwittingly, extremely telling about the company’s history over the past decade and the reason XP is still going:

Windows XP had an amazing run and millions of PC users are grateful for it. But it’s time to move on. Two reasons: 1) Extended support for Windows XP is running out in less than 1000 days, and 2) there’s an OS out there that’s much better than Windows XP.

He goes on to hype Windows 7 as said operating system. And what does that imply? That Vista wasn’t much better than Windows XP. Ouch.

The problem with all the various back and forth moves of extending XP’s official lifespan and then trying to encourage people to get off the system, particularly among business users, is that Microsoft is caught in a quandry. As well-received as Windows 7 has been, this isn’t a time in economic history when businesses will buy new software and/or hardware without a damn good reason.

And the most compelling reason Microsoft can offer is that when it pulls the plug on extended support, XP will become far more exposed to security threats. But if millions of machines get infected with malicious software, few are going to care that people are using the system past its official use-by date: the story will simply be that Windows is insecure.

Getting people off XP will be no easy task: some estimates put it on a 51 percent share of all computers worldwide. That figure will drop naturally as people either voluntarily upgrade or are forced into doing so when an old machine bites the dust. But it’s still one hell of a tough sell to tell the majority of computer users that their machine, which in most cases works perfectly well, is going to be thrown to the mercy of hackers in three years unless they stump up the cash for a new operating system and, in many cases, a new PC.

Introducing the ChromeBook [Video]

Geeks Are Sexy — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:00:31 +0000

Haven’t heard about the ChromeBook yet? Here’s a fun and informative video that will teach you everything you need to know about the new Chrome OS-powered laptops.

Samsung Series 5 Wi-Fi Chromebook
Samsung Series 5 3G Chromebook

Windows 8 Preview [Video]

Geeks are Sexy — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:21:19 +0000

Microsoft has just posted the first video of what apparently will be many showing some of the features of their upcoming Windows 8 OS. Check it out:

I don’t know about you guys, but this pretty much looks like something that would run exclusively on a touch-enabled tablet PC (or a desktop with a touchscreen.) Sure, the presenter does say that the interface will work fine via a mouse and keyboard, but as far as I’m concerned, it certaintly doesn’t look that way. I guess we’ll have to wait for them to release additional videos to find out.

So what do you guys think about the new interface? Let us know in the comments section below!

Nook Color Now With Angry Birds

JRivera — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:38:39 +0000

I have been relatively happy with my Nook Color as an e-reader in general. However, given its price tag and the adaptability of the Android platform, I’ve always thought that that the software was severely limited. It really never could play even Youtube videos properly, and websites were hit and miss. Also, I’ve really missed out on “apps” but since I don’t have a smart phone, call the Geek police, I don’t really know anything other than Angry Birds being missing from my life. I know that I could “nooter” or root my Nook Color, but I’ve never had time or been geek enough to make the jump, mostly because I wanted to finish the Sookie Stackhouse novels I downloaded.

Nook Apps, Video and Email Update

Today, I opened my email and was happily surprised to see an announcement showcasing the infamous Angry Birds as one of the Apps to be available now. They also promise a full service email program, upgraded browsing and video via Flash. Once I get home, we’ll see if it’s everything it’s promised to be!

LOL: OpenSUSE Chameleon’s First Contact with Apple’s iOS [Video]

Geeks are Sexy — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 18:30:45 +0000

[Youtube]

Memorable Linux Milestones: Celebrating 20 Years of Linux [Infographic + Video]

Geeks are Sexy — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 22:30:47 +0000

Click Picture to Enlarge

Yep geeks, the Linux Foundation is celebrating 20 years of Linux, and for the occasion, they’ve released a commemorative infographic (above), as well as an informative video titled “The Story of Linux” (below).

So, how many of you guys are hardcore Linux users? Got any special stories about the platform you wish to share with us? As usual, we’re eagerly waiting for your stories in the comments section below!

[Source]