Avoid the Microsoft Tax?

[The Liquidator]

Folks in the UK who are interested in maybe saving a bit of money

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/

If you watch the banners fly by you see a price for windows 7 pre-installed, but click on a product and it opens up with a price for no Operating System at all. There is a sizeable difference in price - probably because they are a small player.

I've not bought one as I don't need a new laptop yet, but when I do I'll seriously consider them. Also, in response to customer requests they have set up a linux support forum too, so they must have some interest in it.

[Zhao]

Re: Avoid the Microsoft Tax?

That is really nice However here in Portugal there are physical stores that also offer online service in which one can just buy a PC piece by piece and choose not to buy an Operating System. Even if you cant put all the pieces together by yourself the store can do that by a small fee (something like 15€). You can get a great desktop PC by a good price and if you have chosen a nice configuration of hardware you get a much better desktop PC than any other OEM could offer you and by much less money. In what concerns portable PCs, there are also a few stores that can sell you one without an OS or with Linux installed by default.

At least here in Portugal, if you are interested in and google a bit about it you will find stores (physical or online) in which you can trust that will sell you a PC the way you want. The biggest Portuguese forums have a section where people can ask for help with a good hardware configuration for their needs and about how much money they can waste. Stores like the ones I mentioned are always used there. Even if you like Windows, you can get a better desktop PC by a lower price by building it piece by piece.

[Jonas]

Re: Avoid the Microsoft Tax?

That is really nice However here in Portugal there are physical stores that also offer online service in which one can just buy a PC piece by piece and choose not to buy an Operating System. Even if you cant put all the pieces together by yourself the store can do that by a small fee (something like 15€). You can get a great desktop PC by a good price and if you have chosen a nice configuration of hardware you get a much better desktop PC than any other OEM could offer you and by much less money. In what concerns portable PCs, there are also a few stores that can sell you one without an OS or with Linux installed by default.

At least here in Portugal, if you are interested in and google a bit about it you will find stores (physical or online) in which you can trust that will sell you a PC the way you want. The biggest Portuguese forums have a section where people can ask for help with a good hardware configuration for their needs and about how much money they can waste. Stores like the ones I mentioned are always used there. Even if you like Windows, you can get a better desktop PC by a lower price by building it piece by piece.

It's the same here in Sweden and I built all my systems myself, however building a laptop is trickier, and I haven't found a store here that sell laptops piece by piece.

Folks in the UK who are interested in maybe saving a bit of money

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/

If you watch the banners fly by you see a price for windows 7 pre-installed, but click on a product and it opens up with a price for no Operating System at all. There is a sizeable difference in price - probably because they are a small player.

I've not bought one as I don't need a new laptop yet, but when I do I'll seriously consider them. Also, in response to customer requests they have set up a linux support forum too, so they must have some interest in it.

Those are nice prices (could be the UK pound is weak compared to the swedish crown atm), I know one retailer who sell with the option without installed windows and they ship with Ubuntu by default http://www.ggsdata.se/index-en.html. I've never bought anything from them and quite frankly the site look a bit 'tacky' but have a good reputation according to prisjakt.se, 8.8 out of 10 customer review (there are no review on pricerunner.com) Prices aren't that great however, when I've looked before on the general laptops with windows, the price with or without windows are more or less the same compared to ggs-data.

I have my doubts when retailers say "no operation system preinstalled", it's all semantics. Some year ago my sister bought a laptop and was asked if she wanted Windows installed by the retailer for a service fee of 1000 SEK (~100 Euro) I don't remember if this was meant as there wasn't anything installed but she asked me to 'install' windows. All I did was push the start button, booted up and windows installed by itself. I'm not saying that this cut is a service fee but retailers make a habit of cutting the price in one end and not seldom does it pop up in the other.

I'll bookmark novatech, seems like a retailer I'd support if/when I need a laptop for studies after the summer. thank you for the tip Liquidator

[Zhao]

Re: Avoid the Microsoft Tax?

It's the same here in Sweden and I built all my systems myself, however building a laptop is trickier, and I haven't found a store here that sell laptops piece by piece.

There are at least two stores here in Portugal in which you can trust that will sell laptops with modifications, but I don't know of any that will sell a portable PC piece by piece. They give you some specific laptops as a base, you choose one and then you can choose to upgrade some components like the processor, RAMs, hard drive, DVD drive and some other accessories. However I must confess it can become quite expensive. It's very different with desktop PCs. However if you choose to have Linux installed by default instead of Windows in a laptop PC (out of those 2 stores, only 1 will sell with Linux installed by default, the other one only sells with Windows or with no OS) you really get a discount of around 80€.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Avoid the Microsoft Tax?

Comparing the price differences on several models it appears that the Win7 TAX is about 25% of the price of the machine alone!

[The Liquidator]

Re: Avoid the Microsoft Tax?

On the entry level laptop I was looking at Win 7 Home Premium adds 25% to the price (£280 goes to £350).
Stick Win 7 Professional on there and it's a whopping 42% (£280 to £400).