Try to buy a DELL or Gateway or almost any NEW pre-built computer w/o an operating system (and try to get back the $75/$100 dollars to Microsoft dialed into the price)...
Getting an OS-free PC is a fairly new phenomena typically limited to REFURBISHED machines and you have to know where to look to find those...
Of course, since day one you could assemble your own computer from components and install whatever OS you wanted...
As for the article, it presents many new facts i wasn't aware of: in particular Windows XP is really not much more than NT... I thought it was a new code base (should have known better)
Well, duh...sure, buying from a major distributor you're going to get the Windows OS almost forced upon you. Look locally for a Mom&Pop shop that sells computers or check
http://www.pricewatch.com/ for computers that can be ordered to suit your needs, without a Windows OS. Dell and Gateway are not the only sources on the planet for getting a new PC. Finding an alternative using the Internet takes about 5 minutes.
Getting an OS-free PC is a fairly new phenomena typically limited to REFURBISHED machines and you have to know where to look to find those... Not really. We've been doing it for years. We were an SCO Unix (previously Xenix) reseller and we never had a problem getting a system without an OS.
No, you are not going to get one from Dell. But there are plenty of other places. Get a copy of Computer Shopper magazine.