[ShadowAce]

Tech ping

[Captain Peter Blood]

Of course she could have reshrink wrapped the boxes and then have taken them back. I've done that before just to get around those kind of rules.

[KoRn]

This is great! I was wondering about this today. What if I buy software from BestBuy. I open it and choose no because I don't agree with the 'fine print'. Can I get a refund? Funny I'm reading about this very thing happening on FR .

[claudiustg]

So what's she going to run her computer with, indignation?

[Alberta's Child]

I never really thought about this issue, but the more I think about it the more idiotic the "shrink-wrap license" arrangement sounds.

It's sort of like having Ford or Toyota offer you an extended warranty on a new car that gets automatically voided once the buyer inserts the key into the ignition.

[longtermmemmory]

Car dealers used to do this by having addendum terms in the glovebox after you bought the new auto. Usually in the owners manual. Courts shot that down.

[Light Your World]

Now if only we could get rid of pre-installed operating systems on new computers.

[zeugma]

While this is a fairly good thing, it is not quite the ground-breaking decision that the article has made it out to be. MS and other companies will still be able to use the same burdensome licenses that they've had before, but now they have to have a URL pointing to them printed on the box. Big woop. For this to have actually been effective as a consumer remedy, they should have been forced to include the license itself on the packaging so it can be read by the consumer at the point of sale.

Pointing someone to a website that can change at any time is pretty darned ineffective IMO. We've seen these licenses get worse, and worse each year. Did the folks who eagerly lapped up the XP-SP2 fix have any choice but to accept the licenses proffered by microsoft if they wanted to have the fix applied to the defective software they'd previously purchased? Some choice. Either continue to use a demonstratively defective product, or agree to a new, and even more restrictive license than you had before.

[stylin_geek]

I find this interesting, because I had to return some copies of XP that were outside the 30 day return policy that Compusa has, and, the boxes had been opened. Compusa wouldn't take them back, and told me to contact Microsoft. I did so, the gal I talked to was very nice, told me what I needed to do in order to get our money back, and within 30 days the company had a refund. Microsoft even refunded the cost of shipping the product back to them.