Then you don't know anything about Amiga OS.

Workbench ROMs, all of which were copyright owned by Commodore and normally only sold with a complete system

Speaking of not knowing anything about Amiga. There was a huge market for Kickstart (the firmware, Workbench was the software) 2.0 ROMs and most people didn't buy a new system to upgrade.

Store policy on pre-optimized units (be they laptops, game consoles, etc.) is that if the sales person cannot "sell" the service to the customer, and the last units are all pre-setup, the customer does not pay for a service that they do not want.

Store policy may well be that. Reality, however, is not. As I've experienced on two separate occasions. "Sorry, we cannot provide the service for free, and it has already been performed."

Often times a customer will gladly pay the 40 bucks for a laptop with no trial software, a full battery charge and all updates

"No trial software" - I saw this once. They'd deleted the icons from the desktop. Not even from the start menu. "A full battery charge" - with LiIon/LiPolymer batteries, the last four laptops I've taken from their boxes had 99%+ battery charge on first plug in. "All updates" - potentially valid, but it's not like manufacturers don't slipstream.

a simple call to the corporate number would fix that issue if it ever occurred to you

I'm not the Best Buy Sales Policeman. Instead I'll go home, and buy it online, and Best Buy will get none of that sale.

Why not just admit that you work for Best Buy? You've posted nine comments in this topic, all defending the practice from various angles. Hell, four of your posts make the same point about network connectivity, which whilst valid, is most definitely in the very small minority - "people who buy a state of the art console, buy games that are as old as the console's original release date (and hence have no firmware), and / or have dialup Internet, or less". Okay then...

his is so far from the truth its not even funny. I'm a Geek Squad Agent and this is not the case at all. In fact if they are the only ones left and you dont want it, you get the service for FREE. You are NEVER EVER EVER required to pay for a service you dont want.

Utter BS. My wife bought a Netbook at BB. Surprise surprise, they were all "pre-optimized". None that hadn't been touched were in stock, surprise surprise - but they had six pre-optimized models below the desk.

I didn't want the pre-optimization (heh, what basically amounted to 'uninstall some Windows features, remove the System Restore image, and install a trial of Norton Antivirus').

They weren't willing to compromise, even at the cost of losing the sale. They lost the sale.

I think he'd be a borderline celebrity. Anyone who is doing a job that only a select handful of people on the planet will ever do, who are trotted out regularly for press conferences and PR, who appear before Congress, who have a TV channel dedicated to showing what they are doing can't really claim to be "a person of no public interest".

Sometimes. But definitely not always.

~ Yours, A Volunteer Firefighter

I'd love to get an even taller moniter... a 2560x1600 30" S-IPS would be heaven, but for the price you could buy half a dozen cheaper screeens.

This... I upgraded from an S-IPS (early model Westinghouse L2410NM) 24" 1920x1200 this week to a Dell 3007 WFP-HC 30" 2560x1600, and it is another world. Entirely beautiful.

A likely alternative in the market would be that his insurance company would have deals with local fire departments or multi-function firms and if they failed to help the client they'd pay out to replace it and sue the department.

Insurance companies are already using private firefighters to protect "high-value homes" of clients, whilst ignoring other homes burning around them...

Perhaps in this case if his home insurer wanted the assistance of the fire department, they could have footed the bill and added it to his premium.

Firefighters get paid, or there would be no firefighters (AS THIS STORY HAS PROVEN!). The city pays for and has firefighters. The county DOES NOT HAVE firefighters.

Actually, no. 73% of American firefighters are volunteer.

or a hefty county tax

Hefty? My small fire district has 6,000 people, 24 sq. mi. We have three engines, two tenders (water supply), two ambulances, command vehicles, three stations, 8 full time staff, and approx. 50 volunteers who receive approximately $5,000 each a year for their efforts. Plus all assorted and associated equipment. Our "hefty" county tax for this fire service is $1.05 per $1,000 of assessed property value.

Fire departments have enormous up-front costs to acquire resources like equipment, maintenance, training, etc. Every time a department deploys those resources, it lessens its ability to respond to future emergencies.

There is, and I don't think many people realize that. Our area just bought a new ladder truck. How much do you think that thing cost? $1.2 million. And all that equipment. Struts to stabilize your car while we pull you out of it? $20,000. Jaws to cut open said car? $20-40,000. Basic FF training? $2,000... EMS? $2,000... incident command, fire behavior, adjunct training (night ops, hybrid cars, etc, etc)... cha-ching, cash register. Facilities. Maintenance.... it adds up.

However, in this case no *human* lives were at stake. Therefore the fire department is not obligated to respond to a call that is not within their coverage boundary. Additionally, stepping outside of their boundaries would have voided any occupational hazard insurance they may carry, because providing fire response outside of their duty radius is considered action outside of the line of duty.

Agreed, but to clarify, there would have been lives at stake, those of the firefighters. One of the first things we are taught? "Risk a lot to save a lot. Risk little to save little."

Haha. My fire district (which /doesn't/ operate on this policy) services 6000 people, runs 800 EMS and maybe 50 fire calls a year, of which less than 5 are fully involved structure fires.

How many fire engines, ambulances and staff were you hoping to keep going on $375/yr, exactly? Because if people only had to pay the fee during or after an event, I can guarantee that they'd /only/ pay then.

What confuses me every time I try to use Windows is how many tasks I have to do on the top of the desktop that Linux does for me automatically without any intervention from me.

Name a few, name three. Three examples from your claim of "how many tasks" should be easy enough, right?

Windows 7 runs just fine on my old P4 1.6 with 768MB of RAM. And my wife's Atom netbook with a 16GB SSD and 1GB of memory.

I'm not sure your so-called point...