Sunday, October 25, 2009

trying to buy a ThinkPad without paying for Windows

I got that Dell Mini 12 some time ago, and honestly it's been a pain. It's a good-looking machine, and the keyboard and screen are nice, but the Poulsbo chipset just has terrible Linux support. Like every third time I get an update, something breaks, and I haven't been able to make it suspend/resume reliably in months -- oh, and X just broke again. What I really want is a little ThinkPad.

So I just sent this email to Lenovo:
Hey, good evening,

I'd love to purchase a ThinkPad X200. I haven't found the option on your website, though, for how I can buy one without Windows? Could you point me to that link?

I'm simply not going to use Windows; I would install Linux on it as soon as I get the machine anyway, and I don't want to pay for software I won't use.

So if you can sell me a ThinkPad with no Windows, that would be fantastic, and I'll be really happy and gladly give you money and say nice things about your company.

Thanks very much!

--
-- Alex Rudnick
We'll see what they say! I might just buy the laptop anyway, not agree to the Windows EULA, and then go through the hullabaloo to refund it.
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1 comment:

Martin Robinson said...

I really like my ThinkPad for the most part, so I'd be very interested if this worked out for you. I'd definitely get the one-year warranty with it though (the one that covers damage from dropping -- I think there are two flavors).

Lenovo recently replaced a bunch of defective batteries (including mine), but the replacement program required running a Windows only program to detect the malfunction. I was forced to install Windows to get a new battery.

1:33 AM

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