And to really waste another post, here's one for the tinfoil-hat brigade - and it comes with a tinfoil hat warning, which I liked.

It mentions that certain OEM preinstalled OSes seem to use up four primary partitions on a laptop hard drive. Wonder what it is they don't want folk to be able to install ??? (Rhetorical - and as I say, a touch of tinfoil about it - but one does wonder. Seem to remember someone here - Scylla, perhaps? - encountering a similar problem not long ago with another make.)

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=1970555

I love the way at least one bod dealt with the problem by simply ditching the offending OS altogether and replacing it with something more ethically appealing.

Although I honestly can't believe that this mess is the result of actual evil intent, as that would make the perpetrators look altogether too silly.

Wouldn't it?