Can you give me a good reason?

Obviously, I will not get a "Best Answer" out of this but here goes. You actually are not forced to buy anything you do not want. You have choices. You can buy the computer components without any software at all from many different vendors, both offline and at computer component stores. People like the management of some computer manufacturers and retailers choose to make these deals with MS so they can have an operating system at little or no cost. They get the system so they can sell an up and running system to their customers at a cheaper price and MS captures more customers. This is how the free enterprises system and capitalism works. I am sorry you do not like the decision your vender made but for most of their customers,it works out fine and they are satisfied getting it. They can download Open Office to work with the MS system. The company is free to set its own sales and market policies and you and I are free to choose another company's products. Godd luck.

Ok you dont want to have vista, but you still kept it installed. Why?

Well one should never be forced to buy things he dont like or dont need.As to answer your question i dont think you were forced to buy that laptop.You had the freedom not to buy it.It was the sellers duty to answer your questions and he answered them in right way.Also i dont think microsoft forces laptop manufracturers to install windows on their systems.It surely is the joint collabration between the two.Also if you wanted to go for linux you should have looked for those products instead of looking for windows and then try n convert it to linux. i hope i am not rude and no i am not defending microsoft or anyone.I just wrote what i feel.Hope you get what you want and like.peace.

Now you know what the "free" in free and open source software really means. You are free to have whatever operating system you want. You are free to purchase whatever computer you want. If you don't like your vendors sales practices you are free to go elsewhere. Manufacturers make deals and install Windows and trial-ware on their machines because it helps their sales and profit margin. That's what they are in business for, to sell machines. Check out System76 and get a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed if that's the direction you want to go. Or just wipe the hard drive and install some version of Linux. Microsoft and Apple do not believe in freedom when it comes to software. Be "free"!

Hi sadly your freedom of choice is being dictated to you by microsoft. most of the computer companies are in leauge with microsoft. you ask why the only real explanation can be that they are because of money. they benefit from an operating system that they can put on there systems and leave the updates to some one else. its a finacial thing they are taking hand handers for this is the only explanation. may i suggest also that they will not support linux as they have no control should it go wrong and in a new laptop the warranty is invalid should you be using it. what a geek would do is buy this laptop, extract the hard drive and put a similar one in it. and load that with linux. alternatively frind a dealer who would back compatible to xp which would allow for a dual boot system. this keeps the warranty on the laptop.

Well they probably won't install it for you because they don't know how to run linux, they know how to run Windows, and if they give you linux and you have a problem then you'll complain to them, or tell other people about it because they don't know how to work linux.

technicaly you should have a choice.. The reason many manufactu's choose vista is because slot of hardware is technicaly designed for it also because windows vista has that security warning it trys to prevent people from downloading torrents I think the reason the sales person dosent want you to have a Linux platform is because it would void your warranty and any chance of returning it would be null asi many programs are now becoming vista compatible and all of them arealowly not going to be able to support certain versions so if you have an older version of windows it is sort of forcing you to upgrade in a way where did you buy your laptop?