Fujitsu-Siemens shame on you

by Salvatore Iovene on 17 October 2007 — Posted in Opinions

I found myself in the process of realizing a dual-boot system on a laptop, with Windows XP and Ubuntu 7.10. After wiping out the content of the disk and partitioning it appropriately, I proceed to the installation of Windows XP (knowing that I needed to install it first, since it would overwrite the MBR and completely disregard and disrespect user’s freedom), so I put in the so-called Recovery Disk provided with that particularly Fujitsu-Siemens laptop. After a little while, the Recovery Disk was proposing me to install Windows XP either using the full disk, or in two partitions, with a 10 GB “data” partition. I was astonished and outraged. It seems that the Fujitsu-Siemens people were thinking that the user wasn’t smart enough to be able to choose what partition use for his or her Windows install. They would rather limit the user’s freedom, and not give him or her some choice. I suspect this was the result of some pressure from the Microsoft end: this “trick” basically stops the user from installing other Operating Systems along Windows, unless he or she buys a new non-branded copy.

Fujitsu-Siemens and Microsoft: shame on you!


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1 Comment »

  1. I suspect this is a fairly common trend amongst laptop manufacturers. I remember my Sony Vaio recovery disk offers the very same choices. Most likely though, the Dell/Ubuntu partnership is going to change that…

    g’tings from homeland ;)
    nu

    Comment by nu — October 17, 2007 @ 6:57 pm

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