|
Legal agreements governing use of a laptop that I just bought, that was debranded, that was offered as having no operating system, that had no apparent Win CoA, that booted only from the hard drive (live-disc booting failed), and that apparently offered no access to most of the BIOS settings are problematic. My solution (I'm not a lawyer and this is in the U.S.), available to me because I'm an individual (this solution may not be available to corporations, for example) and because the retailer stated that it would not offer a full refund, only a refund minus a restocking fee, was to agree to both Hewlett-Packard's and Microsoft's agreements so I could then access and erase the whole hard drive (running DBAN for comprehensive erasure that FDisk-like software couldn't do when I tried). DBAN got rid of Windows, thus ending Microsoft's jurisdiction, if there ever was any. Since the laptop was offered for sale as debranded, HP lacked authority to deny me use of the laptop on other than their terms. If either agreement was a contract, since I'm an individual and HP and MS are not, it's a contract of adhesion, so anything ambiguous is to be applied in my favor. And one or both said that if I didn't wish to agree then my remedy was to return the laptop for a refund, but that's not fully available, considering the restocking fee. An implied warranty of acceptability may also apply. It may be relevant that I apparently bought the last such laptop, exhausting the retailer's stock. Afterwards, I installed non-MS software, mainly Linux.
|
