The Empire Strikes Back

May 2017: The purchase of new Linux notebooks for the entire family is brutally stopped. Not a single economical 13'' notebook without operating system is more to be found in the offers.

May 2016 I bought an Acer ES1-331-C0YK and installed on it Linux Ubuntu 16.04. Here is my report. November 2016 my wife got an Acer ES1-331-P498. After everything has developed to the full satisfaction, 2017 my two daughters should be equipped with new Linux notebooks. But I had made the plan without Microsoft. The empire struck back.

No offers to find on price comparison "Geizhals”

November 2017 I found on Geizhals no Acer ES1-331-C0YK more. The puzzle could be solved quickly, the successor model was Acer ES1-331-P498 and had instead of the Celeron N3150 a Pentium N3710. According to my filter criteria had been in November 2016 about 10 other notebooks. There were models of Acer, Asus, Lenovo, HP.

Display-size starting with 12"
Display-size up tos 14,9”
Display-resolution starting with 1366x768
CPU Quad-Core
CPU-TDP up to 10 W
RAM starting with 4 GB

At operating systems appear 4 Chrome and 22 Windows offers. The rich offer. I could still see in January 2017, “without operating system” or “Linux” is completely gone.

Request at Acer Austria
	How is it possible that within a quarter a large range of economical 13'' notebooks without operating system suddenly only with Windows is available?

Acer Austria answers
	Of course, you also get a 13 '' notebook without Windows, but only with expensive high-end models, which are more than three times as expensive as Your devices.

The duel of free browsers
	How did the pre-installed MSIE Microsoft Internet Explorer browser work against the other free browsers? From 88 to 5 in 14 years!

Why? Did Microsoft intervene?
	Why does the offer of economical 13 '' notebooks without operating system completely disappear? In January 2017 all major manufacturers had been present.