yes you were robbed by Microsoft

If you are in India and have bought a PC or a notebook computer in your life, you would not have thought much about which operating system to use before you bought them.
There are two kind of buyers in India when it comes to computers
1) Assembled PC
2) Branded PC and Notebooks
If you have bought an assembled PC i can bet you did not busy and authentic licensed software with it, let alone the operating system.

If you bought a branded one you were lucky that you did not have to busy the OS (operating system), the company gave it for free.
 In the later you were fooled by multinationals like Microsoft.

Most of us never recognize that the most important part of a computer is the operating system, and there are tens of different operating systems available in the market.

There are two kind of OS
1) Licensed (Microsoft and Apple's)
 You have to pay for these, and most of the applications that can be later used with them
2) Open Source (Unix and Linux)
 These are absolutely free, in fact the OS disc is shipped to your place for free.

But who needs open source OS like Linux when you get Windows preloaded on you Laptop for free?
There are two answers to this

1) Like 99%  of the buyers you don't know you have paid(between 6 to 8 thousand) for that preloaded OS 
2) Like 99% of the users you would end up loosing the licensed copy of your OS, thus loosing the money you paid for it.

Microsoft have pacts with all the major laptop manufacturers and are selling their OS through these laptops.
Earlier there were Acer Laptops available in the market with UNIX OS which were 7 to 8 thousand cheaper compared to their counterparts loaded with Windows. But thanks to Microsoft these are not available anymore.

Today If you buy any brand of Laptop you end up buying Windows 7. Whether you want it or not.
The Windows OS loaded on the Laptop is a genuine copy and you have to activate it with the activation key so that it is registered to you in Microsoft databases.
Secondly you have to make a backup disk of the OS from which you can recover your authentic licensed OS if your system crashes.

BUT Most of us never do the registration and do not know how to create a backup disk. So as soon as we opt for formatting the Laptop we end up loosing our Genuine copy and become software pirates, as the new OS loaded is from some pirated OS disc.

Here is my personal experience.
I bought a dell Laptop preloaded with arguably the crappiest OS made by Microsoft, Windows Vista.( Those of you who have used Vista know my pain.)
The laptop vendor never told me that i have to activate the OS and how to make a backup disk.
One day my laptop crashed and could not boot anymore.
As i did not have a Vista bootable installation disc i opted for windows Xp. Thus i installed a pirated copy of Windows Xp. One day i tried to activate or to check whether my copy was genuine, but to my disappointment my copy was not genuine, and after 60 days without any warning, Microsoft Blocked my OS. All i could see was the Black screen of death. So i had to re-install an OS on my Laptop.

Thus i ended up loosing the 7 thousand i paid for the OS. and precious data. Thanks to the thankless laptop vendors and tech support department

Next time if you wish to save some money on OS. Get a laptop with UNIX installed on it and later upgrade the OS to LINUX. You can always buy Windows 7 later if you are not comfortable with LINUX.