PCs with Compulsorily Bundled Software Should Be Outlawed

I’ve written about the Microsoft Tax many times before and have even had a minor success with regards to getting it refunded.

Now a fellow Open Source blogger and businessman, Dr Adrian Steel of Mercian Labels, is trying, so far without luck, to get the cost of an unwanted Windows License refunded from a company called Fonestop Ltd. He’s kindly providing an ongoing record of the correspondence between himself and the supplier whilst he seeks a fair refund for the software that he does not want nor require.

This example goes a long way to indicate why the bundling of software and hardware in this way is so wrong. It is incredibly hard to buy a computer in the UK that is not already infected with an inefficient, outdated, expensive, bloated and, still alarmingly, insecure operating system called Microsoft^® Windows^™. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to get even a partial refund due to the updated terms in the EULA that comes with version 7 of the OS (you can read most of the license agreements here):

By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, contact the manufacturer or installer to determine its return policy. You must comply with that policy, which might limit your rights or require you to return the entire system on which the software is installed.

In earlier versions the statement about returning the entire system was not there. Here’s what the Vista EULA said:

By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, contact the manufacturer or installer to determine their return policy for a refund or credit.

Reading Adrian’s struggle to get back the money that is rightfully his makes me quite angry. There are plenty of computer users that do not want or need Windows software when they buy a new computer. Even if they are not aware of the great Free Software operating systems such as Ubuntu or Fedora or many others, they probably already have a perfectly legal and valid CD of Windows in a drawer or cupboard anyway. Even I have a legal and valid Windows XP CD in my office; not that it ever gets used nowadays…

So what’s to be done? I really feel like starting some kind of campaign to get the lawmakers here and across the EU to make this kind of practice illegal. I as a consumer should be able to select and buy any computer I like and decide for myself if I wish to pay for a pre-installed operating system or not. That should be a choice I am free to make. Currently, apart from a few very brave and admirable vendors, I do not have this choice. And now it’s even harder to obtain a refund due to the change in the wording of Microsoft’s EULA.

These Brave and Admirable vendors deserve a mention:

• Brave because I’m sure that they will come under pressure from businesses like Microsoft to bundle their software and conform to the way that they want you to sell Computers.
• Admirable because they are standing up for something which is good and noble and may not be the most profitable course for their company to take.

As many of you know we started a website some time ago called Naked Computers to track these Brave and Admirable suppliers around the world. It’s been useful to many but it has been quite quiet recently and it could definitely do with a revamp to make it look more appealing (any WordPress Theme designers fancy knocking up a new look and feel for the site?).

In the UK there is one computer supplier that, in my humble opinion, should be applauded for their attitude: Novatech. I think that every machine they sell from their website or retail outlets are offered with or without an Operating System; it’s your choice. It’s quite interesting to look on their site and see just how expensive Windows really is: ~£70 to ~£800 or more!

Recently I noticed Novatech making a few noises on Twitter and I commented positively on their approach to selling naked computers. This was their reply to me:

@opensourcerer Thanks for recommending us, we sell all systems without operating systems as we like to give our customers a choice.

So come on you lot! Let’s try and come up with a plan, ideas and suggestions as to how to go about fixing this problem once and for all… Our company, The Open Learning Centre can host a wiki or something if needed but please use the comments here to start the ball rolling.

Are there any lawyers out there who fancy a challenge? Want to fight for Freedom and allow consumers to make their own choice rather than be forced to pay for something they frequently neither need nor want?

Finally, for those naive souls who believe that an EULA gives you some protection or guarantees, think again…

Going Headless

I have one monitor on my desk, quite a nice one, but only one. Right now I want to install Ubuntu Lucid on another desktop I have in the office, but I still want to use my monitor for other stuff (like writing this blog post). No problem, Ubuntu has an accessible installer, I just plug in the speakers and keyboard and go through it with audio, lets see how it goes.

Firstly I remember there is something on the Lucid installer about pressing the keyboard to get to the accessible install, but then what? And when do you press stuff? No cheating and plugging in the monitor, but I am allowed to Google for instructions on my other PC.

Apparently the process is

Press space every 3-4 seconds, several times, then enter, then
F5, then 3, then enter

hmm, ok. That sucks a bit. How about a beep or something at the point when I am supposed to interrupt it? Bonus points for playing a soundfile telling me what to press for an audio install. Anyhow, I seem to have missed the opportunity to press space, it seems to have done some stuff and now stopped. Lets reboot and try again.

Just realised I was looking at the CD activity light, to see what it was doing in the bootup process, that is cheating so I turned it round so I can’t see that (I could hear the heads moving too and feel the vibrations, but clues from lights are not allowed in this experiment.)

OK, booting again, lets hope I hit the magic moment . . .

. . . silence.

Really not sure what is happening here, did I miss it? Have I waited long enough? Is it going to tell me what to do next? Is it sat waiting for me to plug in a monitor. I have no idea.

Can’t feel or hear any activity from the CD any more, left it a few more minutes. Hit return and it started doing stuff. I think I must have missed the accessible install and it was sat at the normal live cd/installer option. Lets give it another go.

Rebooted, now pressing space every few seconds. The CD stopped spinning, maybe it is time now. Enter, F5, 3, Enter . . .

. . . . silence.

Enter again perhaps? Yes, it is doing something now. I wonder what.

CD stopped spinning, no sound at all.

OK, time to cheat a bit and plug in the monitor hopefully when I understand the process I will be able to do it without cheating.

Plugging the monitor in doesn’t power up the monitor and show me the display, presumably it didn’t set up X properly without monitor resolution information.

Right, cheating totally from the start I understand it a bit better, the instructions I googled were wrong, missing an extra enter on the end. Rebooting and lets do it without the monitor.

Power on

Count to 15 from the bios beep (your hardware may vary)

Press space. This goes to the boot menu from previous releases, starting with the language selection.

Press enter to select English (presume you could go up and down to get accessible installs in different languages, but not testing that right now)

Press F5 for Acccessible installation options

Press 3 to highlight the third item in the list which is “screen reader”

Press Enter to choose the highlighted option

Press Enter to start the live CD.

Wait in a silence broken only by the sound of the fan and the CD doing stuff.

. . . nothing

Not really enjoying this any more.

So does it really need a monitor plugged in to do an audio install? Why the heck would I bother with a monitor if I couldn’t see? Why couldn’t it tell me that it has failed because it needs a monitor?

OK, I borrowed the monitor from the kids computer in the playroom and plugged it in, but put it face down on the floor.

Count to 15 and we are off again . . .

Yay, jungle drums. Seems that monitor is essential.

“Welcome to Orca, starting Orca preferences”

“Tab list, general page”

WHAT???

It seems to have dumped me in the Orca preferences page, which goes on forever, with no guidance at all on how to do the install or use Orca? (and anyhow “Welcome to Orca” – didn’t I just start “Ubuntu” did I get the wrong CD?)

up and down seem to let me choose between desktop and laptop – but I think that is an Orca thing, not an install thing.

Tab seems to let me go through a bunch of preference options, but I really have not much idea what preferences I want, I assume the defaults are OK. I wonder if Enter will just select the defaults and let me get on with using the live CD?

“Return Checked” hmm OK

Because I kind of know what I am doing, lets try alt+F2 to run an application

Yup, that works, and I am going to run gedit

After a few spurious audio messages about the orca preferences window, but then gedit was running, I managed to type a little document and save it.

lets browse the applications menu, Alt+F1

yes, that makes sense, I went to the Internet menu, then over to Firefox.

Spurious audio about other windows that are open, then it loads Firefox and tells me there is no internet connection (which there isn’t)

Lets try to actually get to the installer now. I don’t know how to click the icon on the desktop, but I know it is in the menus somewhere, Alt+F1 gets me to the Applications menu, Right to System menu, down twice to the administration menu, right gets me to computer janitor, down to disk utility, down again gparted, again to hardware drivers, once more to Install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. hmm, that was burried deep. Enter.

“Install frame, Step 1 of 7, Quit Button Forward Button”

hmm, OK. Lets try enter on the forward button. Wonder what else was on that page?

“Install frame, panel”

err, what?

Up and down seems to be a country list, selecting United Kingdom. Enter.

“Window menu”

I seem to be in some other kind of list, might be timezones. I found Europe, then I think I ended up in Belgium, or perhaps the Indian Ocean. Really not sure what is going on there. Tabbed a few times and found the forward button.

ah, now the keyboard

apparently it has suggested one for me, but doesn’t tell me what one it is.

tab gets me into the test box, and shift 3 is # rather than £ so it got the wrong keyboard, shift tab to get back to the selector radio button, I can choose my own, or have it guess. Lets see if it can guess. Tab, “Guess button”, lets press that with space.

Nope that didn’t really work, it didn’t read out the keys it wanted me to press.

Managed to get to the manual selection and find the UK keyboard. and test, shift 3 is now “pound” tabbed to the forward button and lets see what happens next.

OK, this is the partitioning tab, starting to get the hang of the radio buttons now, erasing and using the entire disk. and moving forward.

“What is your name, Text” Tab

passwords are funny, it echos “asterisk” for each keypress

filled out the form without much difficulty

“read only text”

hmm, ok, well read it to me then!

I can’t read the summary, but I can tab to the forward button.

Focus switched back to the Orca preferences window for a second then to the installation progress bar. It should have finished asking me questions now.

While it is doing the install lets think about some conclusions from this experiment.

THIS SUCKS.

And now some more constructive recommendations for improvement.

• Add some help text to the install process, use a really basic command line sound playing application, not a text to speech thing, just something that can play a wav or ogg file with very few dependencies such as aplay. Initally get it to play “press A for an audio install” then just do the boot to the desktop without going through any other menus.
• Get X to start without a monitor and assume something like a 1024×768 desktop, or play a clip when X fails saying “You need to turn the computer on with a monitor plugged in to start the desktop”. Giving no feedback is terrible.

Right, the install has just finished and I am rebooting.

• On booting to the desktop play some text (possibly through the text to speech engine) describing how to operate Orca.
• Tell the user to press Alt+F1 to get to the menu
• Tell the user how to kick off the installer
• Get Orca to read out more of the text on the installer pages.

OK, it has rebooted, and Orca has started, I feared it wouldn’t so this is a good thing.

I have logged in as me. yay.

oh back to the Orca preferences window. boo.

Well the plan for this was to neatly do an install, by using the audio install to save me having to use a monitor, thereby proving that this bit of accessibility technology is a handy tool for everyone to use. In the event I discovered that the accessible install is hard to get to and barely fit for purpose, but I don’t think it is beyond rescue, it just needs to give the user more advice and feedback on what it is doing. If you have a few minutes and a spare computer please have a go at reproducing my little experiment. Put that monitor on the floor or wear a blindfold and install Ubuntu. I can genuinely imagine this being a really useful process on a headless server in a rack with just a set of headphones and a USB keyboard, if only it worked a bit better.

If you want to help make Ubuntu more awesome for everyone who at some point in their life might find an audio install a handy utility then please come and join the Ubuntu Accessibility team .

• Mailing List – ubuntu-accessibility AT lists.ubuntu.com (subscribe) and ubuntu-accessibility-devel AT lists.ubuntu.com (subscribe)
• IRC – #ubuntu-accessibility on freenode
• Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility
• Forum http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=145

Why Windows still has good sales figures

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Couple of updates. I am in the UK, so that was through the dell.co.uk site, I don’t want one from the US because it would have the wrong keyboard and I would be stung with customs charges and it would take a long time to get here and I like instant overnight consumer gratification.

If you are tempted to go ask similar questions of the Dell online chat thing then go right ahead with the following conditions:
1) You must take a credit card out of your purse/wallet, rest it on your keyboard and be totally prepared to use it, if they find you a suitable laptop.
2) Do it once, don’t repeatedly bother them.
3) Be polite and respectful, the Code of Conduct applies.

Profile Roulette

One of the great things about the online community is the speed at which an idea can spread. Barry Smyth, a member of the local community team in Ireland who is working on a masters degree in computing is looking at ways to improve community involvement as a part of his course. He came up with the idea of focusing on one member each day in order to help everyone get to know each other better through a profile of the day project. This seems like a fine idea, so we have picked it up in the UK LoCo and added a few extra twists. In order to document stuff you do relating to Ubuntu everyone can create their own personal page on the Ubuntu Wiki, mine is here so you can see the sort of stuff that goes on it. People can edit other people’s pages if they want, it is a wiki after all. If you like something that someone has done, you can leave them a testimonial on their wiki page. These are looked at when people apply to be an Ubuntu Member or go for a position on any of the various governance boards and committees in the community.

We have now launched Profile Roulette!

This is a game that everyone can play, you can subscribe to the Profile Roulette page to get an email each time the wheel spins, every day it will point to the personal wiki page of someone in the UK LoCo. You can see who the person of the day is, maybe you would like to leave them a testimonial or help them fix up their wiki page in some way. If you want to be on the page then what you have to do is create your personal wiki page (just go to wiki.ubuntu.com/YourName and create a new page there) and at the bottom of the page add the text:

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[[CategoryUKTeamProfile]]

Then when the Profile Roulette wheel spins it might be your turn under the spotlight, don’t forget to subscribe to the Profile Roulette page so you get notified when it is your turn.

If any other LoCo teams want to join in then please feel free to give me a shout in the #ubuntu-locoteams IRC channel on Freenode if you want some help setting up the wiki pages. Once you have got it set up, do add a link to it on the Irish team Profile of the Day page, it helps us find them all and will also help Barry with his degree.