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This is such a boomer coded 'deal with it' take. The manufacturer is going to charge you a premium for the software license. If you never intend to use that license, it's completely reasonable to think that we could live in a world where you could uncheck a box and avoid that altogether.

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Unfortunately, in practice most PC vendors get paid to bundle a giant pile of bloatware/malware/adware on the system, and they eagerly accept those payments because PCs are a low-margin business. So if your refund actually represented the amount the vendor spent, you'd end up paying them more to have a system without Windows.

You are forgetting that we are free to change and invent new rules whenever we want. PC manufacturers can change this. Some already have, like Lenovo (sorta) and Framework. It does not need to be the way that it has been.

I agree that's reasonable. But does the world you're thinking of have a law that forces that to be the case?

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