Will I get my money back from HP for an unused Windows Vista License?

February 9th, 2010

First of all, let me make a clear statement about Microsoft and their Windows products. In no way do I have anything against Microsoft or their Windows products. They have their right of a share of the Operating System (OS) market, just like Apple, BSD, Solaris and Linux.

What I would like to have is a freedom of choice in shops: I want to be able to choose any piece of hardware, and put any piece of software on it, or have it preinstalled by the shop if I choose so.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in my country (the Netherlands). Less than 1% or the laptops sold in shops are sold without an OS preinstalled. Luckily, there is some jurisdiction in the EU, which states that an OS can be returned to the manufacturer of the pc/laptop in exchange for the paid license fee.

I just bought a magnificent piece of hardware, an HP ProBook 4310S, which came preinstalled with Windows Vista Business. No problem I thought, I’m tech savvy enough to take that off and put my favourite OS on it (Ubuntu Linux).
Now, get my money back from HP, and I’m done.

No no no, it’s not that easy when you have an HP!!! I’ve found similar cases in The Netherlands, where people buying Acer laptops get the opportunity to send their laptop back, have the HD wiped, and they get a certain refund. Dell even offer the possibilty to just send them an email, and you get a refund.

Phoning up HP, they told me

“Our policy is to not do any refunds of the OS in the EU. Send back the laptop, and you get a refund.”

What? They have a POLICY to not refund the OS?? In the EU?? What’s that all about, I want your hardware, not the bundled software, thank you.

One day later I sent a polite email, stating that I don’t need the OS bundled with the laptop. A curt response followed, containing the following message:

“Our policy is to not do any refunds of the OS in the EU. Send back the laptop, and you get a refund.”

Mmm, sounded familiar… these service desk people must’ve been brainwashed?
Yes, they in fact are people: I got my hands on a confidential internal note which circulates among the HP service people:

HP CONFIDENTIAL
Drawer Statement: The HP position on the bundling of the Microsoft operating system Windows on its PCs in EMEA

** Media Statement **
January 30, 2008
___________________________________________________________________________

Primary Press Contact:
Please refer ALL calls on this subject to:

Manuel Linnig
Manuel.linnig@hp.com

This statement is has been prepared for use in a:

___ Broad fashion – Use with one and all as appropriate.
___ Narrow fashion – Use with select reporters, refer to press contact above.
_X_ Reactive fashion (the traditional “drawer” statement) – Use only in response to an inquiry.

Situation/Background – for Internal use only

In EMEA certain consumers have claimed a right of return and reimbursement for the Microsoft operating system pre-installed on its HP PC on the basis that they either refused the related Microsoft license terms or were not interested in acquiring or using the pre-installed operating system.

HP has refused doing so, offering instead a right of full return and reimbursement of the entire product (hardware and software) provided that it is returned unused within a certain timeframe from the purchase date.

Statement – for External use

Today, based on consumer market demand and efficiency considerations, HP markets to consumers in EMEA PCs with a Microsoft Windows Operating System (Vista Home Basic, Home Premium or Ultimate) (‘MS OS’) only.

The mass production of consumer PCs with MS OS permits HP to offer better PCs at lower prices.

HP does not currently identify in EMEA a consistent market for consumer PCs with a pre-installed Linux distribution or other alternative OS version and hence does not see a viable business opportunity for consumer PCs with another OS than MS OS.

For technical, commercial and warranty reasons, HP does not market any bare PC (i.e. without a pre-installed OS). As most IT manufacturers and IT specialists, HP considers that a PC with a pre-installed OS constitutes a single product and a pre-installed OS cannot be regarded as a product separate from the PC. HP firmly believes that the distribution of PCs with a pre-installed MS Windows OS provides the vast majority of consumers with the most rewarding computing experience and is more valuable and beneficial both from a technical and economic perspective.

Prior to the purchase, consumers are duly informed of the pre-installation of the MS Windows OS on the HP PC so they can make an informed choice.

Consistently, should consumers not wish to use the pre-installed MS OS or refuse the MS license terms, HP does not offer a pro rata refund for the pre-installed OS alone,.

In this respect, the Microsoft license terms associated to the OS explicitly refer the consumers to the PC manufacturer return policy for any refund or credit. According to the HP return policy communicated with the PC products, consumers not willing to accept the pre-installed MS OS license terms, are eligible to a refund of the entire unused product (i.e. both hardware and software) provided that it is returned unused within a certain timeframe from the purchase date.

The HP return policy is in line with industry best practice.

HP keeps its sales strategy and return policies under review ensuring that the company meets its customers’ requirements in EMEA as they develop over time.

# # #

This media statement is for the exclusive use of HP employees and external designees, assigned by HP, to proactively and reactively communicate with the media about a potential business issue. This statement encompasses all information that currently can be stated and should be used verbally to communicate with media as required and designated by its author. It is not intended for use with HP employees, industry or security analysts, third parties, customers or other parties.

And there is more:

ATTACHMENT A – STANDARD WRITTEN RESPONSE TO END USERS

DRAFT LETTER TO BE TYPED ON HP LETTERHEAD AND TO BE CUSTOMISED FOR THE PARTICULAR CASE AS NEEDED

[CUSTOMER]
[address]

[DATE]
BY POST/FAX/REGISTERED MAIL

Dear [NAME],

Your request for a refund of [insert appropriate windows product here] Licence Fee

We duly received your letter of [DATE] and regret to inform you that HP does not offer a pro rata refund for any product components (including operating systems) pre-installed on our computers but which customers do not wish to use.

Customers do have the right, based on the HP Return Policy, within 14 days of purchase, to return the entire unused PC (i.e. hardware and software) and receive a full refund of the purchase price.

Our Return Policy is in line with industry best practice. Be assured that we are keeping our sales strategy and return policies under review ensuring that we are able to meet our customers’ requirements as they develop over time.

We hope this clarifies our policy for you.

Yours sincerely,

Ok, that clarifies a lot, thank you HP.
It sounds like you’re saying:

To keep our position in the market, we must fuck over all consumers, and sniff MS up their arses.

Was that it, HP? Is that the message you’re trying to get across?

I received a response after I begged them to obey the law, and don’t leave a lone customer in the cold. I explained them how I love their hardware, and I don’t like my rights to be violated in this Free world.
I saw this response coming though:

“Our policy is to not do any refunds of the OS in the EU. I can only offer you to send back the laptop, and you get a refund.”

Yeah yeah yeah, is that needle stuck in that record or what?? I want your fucking laptop, not that bundled software. Sorry, I seem to be stuck on repeat as well.

Thankfully, there seems to be a God in this world. I contacted my reseller (www.4launch.nl), and they mailed me back quickly stating:

Send us back the gear (cd’s, license sticker and a photo of you declining the EULA) and we”’ make sure HP will give you a refund

And these guys weren’t even from the SERVICE-desk. Keep you posted on any progress.

***UPDATE 16 Feb 2010***
It seems that anyone can start a ‘case’ at HP. At the normal service desk. That’s what I’ve been told by the guys from the shop where I bought my laptop. In that ‘case’ you can demand your money back for the Windows license, which is what they’ve done for me.
They sent me an email today stating that it’s looking good for me, and they expect to give me good news soon!!

DISCLAIMER:
I just want the right to choose. I don’t like to get Windows shoved up my arse when buying a laptop. I don’t like the feeling, thank you very much. I do NOT have any problems with Microsoft or Windows itself.
IANAL

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Music Player Daemon with an M-Audio Revolution 5.1

February 5th, 2010

The Music Player Daemon concept is just amazing: I have a silent small Atom server near my amp. It holds all my tunes and I can control it with whatever laptop (linux/windows/mac) is around. Even an Android client is spotted!
Controlling my music without being physically attached to it had always been my wet dream. Call me sad or what you want, this is a dream come true.

Ow, and I could tweak a bit with the hardware of my server as well, since there was no room in the small Atom server case to contain the PCI card, so I installed a PCI riser card, lead it the flat serial cable outside of the case. For leading it out of the case, I had to modify the case with an angle grinder to make that cable come out. Then I externally installed the PCI card. No problems using it whatsoever. Will post some pics at some point.

Now, to the point. This post is for those people that have just set up their headless Ubuntu server, want to have a Music Player Daemon running, and happen to want some good sound quality from their digital SPDIF connection of their M-Audio Revolution 5.1, which had the VIA ICE1724 chipset where the IEC958 controls the SPDIF output.
I just set this up, and it’s quite easy:

Install the Music Player Daemon, following this wiki.
Open up /etc/mpd.conf

sudo vi /etv/mpd.conf

Edit some variables (type i to insert text) like where are those tunes? what’s the IP it needs to listen to?, and near the sound bit, make it look like this:


audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "My ALSA Device"
device "plughw:0,1" # optional
# format "44100:16:2" # optional
# mixer_device "default" # optional
# mixer_control "PCM" # optional
# mixer_index "0" # optional
}

Save the file (press esc and :wq and ‘enter’), and install the alsa stuff on the server.

sudo aptitude install alsa-utils

Now, open up .asoundrc in your home directory

sudo vi ~/.asoundrc

Make it look like this (press i to type)


# hw:0,1 designates the Digital Coaxial Output


# mpd
pcm.!spdif {
type plug
slave.pcm "hw:0,1"
}


# mplayer -ac hwac3
pcm.!iec958 {
type plug
slave.pcm "hw:0,1"
}

Save the file (esc, :wq and ‘enter’)

You’re almost there.
Open up alsamixer (just type alsamixer), move with your cursor to IEC958, both left and right one, now move your cursor up or down, to edit them as PCM. Press esc to leave alsamixer.

You’re there now: restart both mpd and alsa

sudo service mpd restart
sudo service alsa-utils restart

Hurray! Digital sound!

I hope this post makes someone’s life easier.

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Tweaking Android / T-Mobile Pulse

December 22nd, 2009

The T-mobile Pulse is a very nice cheap Android phone. However, out of the box it lacks some features and has some annoying extras. Three things are essential to the Pulse to make it even better.

Vanilla Android (Cupcake)
Instead of using the pink stock rom on the Pulse, upgrading it to a vanilla Android has some positive side effects. First, the phone is much faster using the rom provided by Bouygues. Although designed for a slightly different phone (Huawei U8230), that phone is equipped with the exact same internals, so the rom is working fine. Secondly, you’re getting rid of all the magenta effects and will experience a clean vanilla Android experience.
Downside is that you only have two languages to choose from: French and English. Both for th phone as a whole, as well as texting/emailing.
Another downside is that Roadsync stops working with that app. Try this app, which syncs your Activesync/Exchange email to your phone. Unfortunately no contacts or calendar.
Here you can find detailed instructions on how to install that rom.
Ow, and you want it rooted and have a recovery image installed as well.

Increasing the poor battery life with setcpu
The battery of the Pulse lasts a day in my hands. A bit short in my book, so increasing that is essential.
To increase the battery life of the Pulse, or any Android phone, you can downclock the processor with this neat tool.
(Or you can download version 1.4.2 from here if you’re not an xda-developers member).
With this tool, you can set it to downclock the CPU to 160Mhz when it’s in standby (choose ‘hero’ as hardware profile), this saves a lot of battery. Makes mine last for over two days now.

Task manager
To be able to kill applications after you’re done with them, you need a task manager. I’m using the paid app Advanced Task Manager (look in the Market for it), which does a perfect job, much better than the free ones.

Flashing lights when receiving a text
Not that essential, though quite handy is a little app especially written for the Pulse, which makes its lights flash when you’ve received a text. So if you’re not near your phone when the message arrives you can still immediately spot when a text message has arrived.
App is available here.

Happy tweaking!

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T-Mobile Pulse & Android

November 21st, 2009

I recently bought a T-Mobile Pulse a.k.a. Huawei 8220, which runs Android 1.5.

T-Mobile Pulse

T-Mobile Pulse a.k.a. Huawei 8220

Obviously I had to have it unlocked, since I don’t have a T-Mobile simcard. Also I wanted to replace the shipped rom to something with more capabilities, and without the T-Mobile shortcuts in it. Here’s what I did to make all this happen.

Unlocking the T-Mobile Pulse

To unlock the phone, I requested a code from this website, which was posted in this thread. After two days I received the code in my mailbox: inserting my non-T-Mobile sim in the phone lead to being asked to type in the code. And voila, phone unlocked. Can’t be any easier.

Adding root permissions to the Pulse

In linux root is what administrator is in Windows world. Since the phone runs linux (Android), we want root access, which is handy for all sorts of tweaking. Following this guide, fixed that for me. Only installing that thingy and rebooting gave me super powers!

Adding a recovery image to the Pulse

Then I needed something on the phone which would make it easy to install a modified OS. After installing this on the phone, I can select Quick boot from the phones’ usual menu and then do a recovery boot.

Installing a new OS on the Pulse

That was really easy: download a new rom for the Pulse (for instance this one, and unlike what it states, a ‘wipe’ (of the sd-card) IS necessarry).
Now put your Pulse in recovery mode. Once you’re in recovery mode take out the microSD card and repartition it: I used gparted under Ubuntu to make a primary 3GB fat32 part and a primary 1GB ext2 part. The ext2 part will be used to install your programs on.
Now copy the rom (exactly what you downloaded) onto the fat32 partition. Put the microSD card back into the Pusle which is in recovery mode. Choose from the menu Apply sdcard: choose zip, press the green button. Let it do its thing. Then reboot. The first boot will take some time since it will move all your installed program files onto the ext2 partition.

Recovery menu, thanks to Paul O'Brien (MoDaCo) and Amon RA

Recovery menu, thanks to Paul O'Brien (MoDaCo) and Amon RA

When installing app’s keeps failing

The fact that your apps will be installed on the ext2 partition can cause some troubles, since when you hook the Pulse up on your pc/laptop the partitions on the sd card will be mounted by both the Pulse and the pc. This will cause errors in the filesystem of the ext2 partition, but these are easy to fix whenever you see the installing failed error message.
Do a recovery boot by chosing Quick boot from the main menu -> Recovery. In the Recovery menu you choose Repair ext filesystem and you’re done!

Enabling OpenGL ES on the Pulse
It seems that the T-Mobile rom and Modaco rom contain a wrong library for playing OpenGL ES enabled games. Those are the 3D enabled shooters and race games. Because of this library you’ll experience a 2 frame per second gameplay, which is unplayable. To fix this follow this forum post. File can be downloaded from here.
UPDATE The above isn’t necessary if you’ve flashed to the updated 1.3 MoDaCo rom (Android 1.5): the right library is already included in that rom.

Adding cool pictures as wallpapers
Pictures need to have a resolution of 640×960 (yes that’s right, width = 640, height = 960), to keep the phone from stretching it. Only pics with this resolution look good on the Pulse.

One smart thing to keep in mind with the Pulse and Android in general: Do not put too many shortcuts on your Home screen. Android gets really slow. Maybe it does some kind of prefetching?
I have 7 shortcuts and it runs fine, but more than 10 makes it annoyingly sluggish.

Happy tweaking!

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HP Compaq 550 & Linux

February 10th, 2009

HP Compaq 550

My mum needed the most simple (=cheap) laptop to do her email and writing letters. I thought the cheapest HP (~400 euro’s for the 2GB, 160GB, Celeron 550 M 2,0Ghz, Intel X3100 graphics) would be good enough (sorry, but I couldn’t find an English link).

HP/Compaq 550

The operating system wouldn’t be good enough though, since that was Windows Vista. I decided to take up the challenge and install Ubuntu on the thing.

Wifi

The first problem I thought I faced was the Wifi card. It was Broadcom. That needed to be swapped for my all time favourite card, Atheros.

Error 104

After making the swap, I booted the thing, and got an error “Unsupported wireless card detected. Please replace the card and start up again. Error code 104″. That meant the laptop would only accept HP branded wifi cards. Cunts.

After some googling, I found out that I needed to change the Eeprom on the device to make it work. Sounded complicated, I couldn’t be asked to do that.

I decided to put back the Broadcom card, and see what would happen in Ubuntu.

Linux / Ubuntu 8.10 Superiority

The superiority of Ubuntu 8.10 was demonstrated there and then: I installed Ubuntu in 5 minutes via a USB-pen, and it installed all of the drivers in one go, even the restricted Broadcom one. The cool thing was that it didn’t even need that driver, it connected to my wireless without it.

So, buy that laptop if you want to run linux on it, it’s fully supported in Intrepid Ibex. Even the desktop effects work out of the box! It’s actually blazing fast! Probably too fast for my mums computer skills.

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Nicotine with the new Soulseek server on Ubuntu

December 23rd, 2008

I noticed on the Soulseek homepage that they have started using a different server: now there are 2 clients in use both using a different server.

For us ubuntu lovers there is a client called nicotine (apt-get install nicotine). However there is only one Nicotine version, which connects by default to the old, almost obsolete server, and there are no good tunes  to be found over there.

Luckily I found the solution: just change (edit->settings->server) the server and port Nicotine connects from the old server (server.slsknet.org:2240), to the new server sk6.slsknet.org:2242 reconnect and you’re good to go!

Happy soulseeking!

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Attansic Technology Corp. Unknown device 1026 (rev b0)

November 27th, 2008

The above is some of the output I see when I lspci to see which lan chip I have on my new motherboard. The ‘unknown device’ statement should tell you that it’s not working. And that was a bit of a surprise, since I’d bought this motherboard (Asus P5Q), for the following reasons: high overclocking potential, very popular and Intel chips.

Asus P5Q

The last two reasons made me assume that all the stuff would work out of the box (Intel P45 chipset). Unfortunately Asus soldered the Atheros AR81XX on the mainboard, which is, unlike most of their wireless chips, not yet fully supported in the linux-kernel. Luckily they make linux drivers, and on the Ubuntu-forums I found some guidance how to install them on Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

Download the drivers from this place. Extract this file. Now open up your terminal and cd into the stuff you’ve just downloaded, go into the directory named src , and run these commands:

sudo KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make

sudo KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make install

cd /lib/modules/<insert the kernel you're running atm>/kernel/drivers/net/atl1e/

sudo insmod ./atl1e.ko

Now the lan chip will work under linux!

Btw, ubuntu will only work on this motherbord if you have your sata-drives set to AHCI mode. Ubuntu won’t install when they run in IDE mode. So change this setting in the bios if you’re planning to install ubuntu on this motherboard.

UPDATE: It’s almost needless to say that Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) uses a new kernel, with the right driver already loaded. So if you want out of the box support for this motherboard, go for Ubuntu 8.10.

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Digital TV on Linux

November 23rd, 2008

My neighbours did something to our TV-cable, resulting in a TV-less house for the past 2 months. I thought it was time to take advantage of the digital television that we have in the air nowadays in the Netherlands.

So I bought a usb dvb-t receiver, one that is supported in the linux kernel, the Asus My Cinema U3100. However, beware when you buy one, Asus seems to have started using a different chip that isn’t supported by default, only with their closed source linux drivers. Asus My Cinema U3100
Mine is supported, and it’s not that difficult to get it working on Ubuntu Hardy Heron & Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex.

This is what you need to do to get it to work with Totem. Plug in the usb-dvb-t antenna. No need to reboot, it works right away. The relevant kernel modules are loaded straight away.
Now you need to tell the digital antenna to what channels it needs to listen:
Install w-scan, find instructions on how to do that on this website. Follow all the steps in your terminal and you’re good to go.

Now make a configuration file for Totem with w_scan:

w_scan -X > ~/.gstreamer-0.10/dvb-channels.conf

This will take a minute.

You’re finally done. Open up Totem (Applications -> Sound & Video) and click at the top left on ‘Movie’ and ‘Watch TV on DVB Adapter 0′.
Totem will ask you to let it search and install a suitable codec for watching the telly. Let it do its thing and it will install some Fluendo Mpeg2 codec for you.

You’re done! On the right in the sidebar under playlist you can find all the channels that it has found, and watch the ones that are free for you. In my case the Dutch state controlled television. Have fun!

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Open source music!!

October 23rd, 2008

Finally Jono Bacon’s project Severed Fifth has released their debut Denied by Reign.

Music that is free to download, distribute, copy, share, remix and sell the album if you like, since it’s been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. We’ve all been waiting for an initiative like this. I hope the big media companies will pick up on this and start similar operations.

The distribution of creativity should not be limited by restrictive licenses. Those restrictions stagnate the evolution of human creativity. And that’s a bad thing.

Whether it’s art, science, music or software, it should all be open source so we can all contribute to the growth of humanity.

Go Jono, open up the eyes of the world!!

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SPSS 16 for linux on Ubuntu 8.10

October 3rd, 2008

Finally i’ve come round to installing SPSS on my linux laptop. Being forced to use Windows can be very frustrating, and although SPSS is closed source and I eventually want to move to R, I’m still forced to use SPSS for now. I need to earn a living.

This is what you need:

  • an authorization code for SPSS (mine is a legal one from my employer, intended for windows but happens to work for the linux-version as well :-) and yes, I have permission to install this on my laptop)
  • installation disc for SPSS 16 for linux (look on your favourite torrent site for that)
  • working installation of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

The procedure is fairly simple, mount the .iso (=SPSS installation disc), with gmountiso.

First install gmountiso

sudo apt-get install gmountiso

Now open the program (Applications->System tools->Gmountiso)
Give the iso a mountpoint (for instance, make a folder called spss in your home directory and give that directory in as your mountpoint)

Now open up the disc and install SPSS by running setup.bin:

sudo ./setup.bin

Use your legally purchased authorization code to license your copy of SPSS.

Now you need an old library onto which the binary SPSS blob depends:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

Using this older library next to the newer one shouldn’t cause any problems since they are separated.

Now SPSS should run without a problem; move to this path

cd /opt/SPSSInc/SPSS16/bin

now run SPSS with this command:

./SPSS

You can make a shortcut for that on your desktop if you like:

ln /opt/SPSSInc/SPSS16/bin/SPSS ~/Desktop/spss

Happy analyzing!!

/UPDATE 09-03-2010
I had to reinstall the program (Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala now), and received the following error: [code] /usr/share/themes/Human/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:51: error: lexical error or unexpected token, expected valid token [/code] and after switching themes: [code] /usr/share/themes/Dust Sand/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:50: error: lexical error or unexpected token, expected valid token [/code]
To overcome this, disable desktop effects / beryl / compiz, since that seems to confuse the Java installer.

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