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No OS Means No PC?

Every once in a while, I get to bare witness to some very lame corporate comments. Something along the lines of, “of course, McDonald’s is healthy.” Most people have the bare intelligence to know that McDonald’s is fast food junk food. Now we can witness it in the PC world.

Check out this article: French consumer group files complaints against HP by Jeremy Kirk.

In it, Alain Spitzmuller, legal affairs director for HP France is quoted as follows.

The PC without an OS is not a product because it doesn’t work.

We believe the market is for products that work.

Of course, it’d be nice to know the full context in which he made this statement. But his idea of defending the necessity of having Windows on their PCs is quite… well, ignorant at best.

The PC is a machine, like any other. The operating system is just that. Something that allows you to operate a PC in a certain way. OS’s come in all shapes and flavours. But Windows is not a necessity. Some of us might even label it a curse. If someone wants to buy their box MS-free, then it should be their right. At the same time though, no one’s really forcing you to buy an OS-free box. (Maybe not always.) Unfortunately, the way probably 90% of the world buys their PCs is WITH a pre-installed OS like Windows.

Whether or not this consumer group wins their case, won’t be as significant as the points they’re trying to raise.

There’s nothing wrong with giving customers options. If they want to save some change from their vendor by getting it without that MS label on it, why not let them?