some more thought on that (Score 1)

It's true that these hardware vendors now stop shipping Windows along with the PCs.. but.. I don't think we can all assume that Gateway, Dell or Compaq is all going to ship Linux or any *nix instead. The simple reason is because most corporation(like the one I am working now) have their own NT or 95 CD image and they don't want to pay two copies of Windows License. They have already paid for their NT image license and so there's no point for them to have another copy come with the machine.