Windows Refund day - reaction

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

| 	To me it all seems simple and obvious - you can't buy a pre-assembled
| 	Intel-based consumer-level machine without paying money to 
| 	Microsoft, whether you want or intend to use any Microsoft products.
| 	Linux users are the ones most concerned with this, because they
| 	are probably the largest segment of people for whom this is a
| 	problem.  But even some NT users don't want to have to pay for
| 	Win98 when they don't intend to use it.  
| 
| 	Why is there such an angry reaction?

It seems you partially answered this above.  The one remaining  piece
is  to  note  that Bill Gates has become one of the richest people on
the planet through his "marketing" tactics.

It's also rather aggravating to hear all  the  propaganda  about  how
popular  Bill  Gates'  software is.  What I keep thinking when I hear
such things is that my linux system came with W95 installed, and  not
only  did  I  have  to pay for W95 and then install linux myself, but
Microsoft lists me as one of their many  satisfied  customers.   This
latter is what especially gets our dander up.

It probably doesn't help among us computer types that Bill  maintains
this  "Hey,  I'm  just another computer nerd like you" image.  Right.
He's a Harvard B-school guy who had the right connections (note  that
III  on  the end of his name ;-) to get his hands on funding that the
rest of us never stood a chance at.  He used that capital to build  a
company  that  uses  its  billion-dollar  marketing  budget  to foist
low-quality software on innocent customers.  But most galling is that
he has the clout to force the real computer nerds to pay for his junk
whether we use it or not.  And he has the nerve to consider us to  be
happy customers.

So there's no mystery at all as to why there's such a reaction.   The
mystery is why it's been so mute until now.