For those computer want to install Linux or other operating system themselves, a laptop without Windows pre-installed is now available from Dick Smith Electronics (New Zealand). (Computerworld NZ reports.)
I fell there're changes in agreements between manufacturers/retailers and Microsoft. Companies can now choose not to bundle Windows into all of their products. Microsoft used to set unfair advantage for themselves, including requiring retailers not to include other party's software (e.g. Netscape browsers), and compulsory inclusion of Microsoft Works (suite) for much cheaper OEM fee.
You might argue that from small computer store, you can buy a system with Windows; but for a nation-wide store, this is something unusual.
I have no idea if Dick Smith Electronics (Australia) will have the same offer.
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.6
