[rfugger]

I doubt any major vendor will do this. First off, they don't want to be locked into selling Microsoft-only machines. If they can't pretend Linux is an option, Microsoft can charge them $1000 for a Windows license and there's nothing they can do about it.

I doubt that secure boot is a factor in this, since it would be easy for vendors to disable by default in the factory if they wanted to install Linux.

The point of the article isn't that the machines will be Windows-only, but that dual booting may no longer be possible. It makes a point of emphasizing that secure booting will likely be easy for the user to disable, although that will disable Windows 8 as well.

[dpark]

> The point of the article isn't that the machines will be Windows-only, but that dual booting may no longer be possible. It makes a point of emphasizing that secure booting will likely be easy for the user to disable, although that will disable Windows 8 as well.

Never going to happen. Win8 will install on machines built for Win7.

Win 8 is not going to refuse to boot on machines that have boot signing disabled.

[wmf]

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the Windows 8 Logo Program, which is basically that sticker on a new PC that says it is certified to run Windows 8.

[dpark]

I think we're actually talking about some paranoid hype written about a blog post written about a slide deck.

Maybe Microsoft will require OEMs to support secure boot to be certified for Win8 (fine by me). That doesn't mean that the user won't be able to disable it if they want, and it definitely doesn't mean Win8 won't run when it's turned off.

[caf]

Right, but Windows 8 should still happily boot on a Windows 8 Logo'd PC which has had signed boot disabled by the user for the same reason that it happily boots on non-Logo'd PCs.

[jrockway]

Am I the only person that would pay extra for a computer without all those fucking stickers on it?

[Hyena]

Perhaps we should consider this part of Apple's price premium.

[chaosfox]

This story almost makes me want to buy a Mac. Almost.

[drcube]

They carve their logo into the case instead.

[Hyena]

Yeah, I've never quite been a fan of the glowing white Apple logo on back. It made more sense on the old white MacBooks.

[Luyt]

Ha! That's the first thing I always do with a new computer: remove all those stickers. Some Vista stickers are extremely hard to remove. That being said, my Air came with absolutely no stickers on it.