By Rachel Chalmers
An Australian Linux user has succeeded in getting Toshiba to write a A$110 refund check for the Windows operating system pre- installed on his laptop computer. Geoffrey Bennett’s bureaucratic victory has inspired a campaign to seek multiple Windows refunds on February 15, 1999, designated Windows Refund Day. Bennett bought his laptop on February 2, 1998. Most Linux zealots buy desktop machines without Microsoft’s operating system pre- installed, but it is nearly impossible to get a laptop without Windows. Unlike most users, however, Bennett read his End User License Agreement for Microsoft Software (EULA) and discovered that if he did not agree to its terms, the PC Manufacturer – in this case, Toshiba – was obliged to refund his money. The Toshiba executives he contacted about the refund were stunned by his request. After a flurry of letters and email and a particularly fruitless exchange with one executive, Laurence White of Toshiba Australia, who told Bennett that since Microsoft wouldn’t refund Toshiba, Toshiba wouldn’t refund end users, Bennett eventually succeeded in proving that he had reformatted his hard drive without ever booting Windows. Toshiba finally gave in and gave him his money back. Bennett published his story on the web, where on January 19, 1999, it was picked up by the hacker news site Slashdot. Within 24 hours, two other sites (http://www.thenoodle.com/refund/ and http://linuxmafia.com/refund/) sprang up to coordinate the hundreds of non-Microsoft users who have decided to seek refunds of their own. The message is not ‘Windows sucks, I want my money back,’ wrote the organizers of the Bay Area’s refund drive. The message is ‘I choose not to accept this license, and am therefore exercising my right to return the product for a refund.’ The quality or lack of quality of Microsoft products is not the issue. Whether the mainstream media will construe it that way is quite another question.
