I am trying hard to remember, but I don't believe I was required to accept any sort of license to begin using either of the two laptops I've purchased in the past two years. I suspect the laws surrounding this may vary from country to country. Personally, I'm in the U.S. Maybe Australia is different.

My policy is to build my computers from parts gathered from dead computers or use second hand computers, so the license problem is not really such for me.

The license is accepted when you do what the licenses says you need to do to accept it. It's like what the Privacy Policies of web pages do: "By using our services, you are accepting the following conditions..." I haven't used Windows since a long time ago, so excuse me if I can't remember the details. For pre-Vista systems, it was considered that you had accepted the EULA when you clicked "I Accept".

To be fair, I think that if they enforce the license on the user without giving then a clear chance of rejecting, this practice is illegal in most areas and the EULA is not valid (for example, you install the software and the EULA pops up "By installing the software, you accept our satanic deal" when it's too late to reject).

Expecting a refund when the OEM has not a clear return policy or there is not a legal precedence seems foolish to me. Some court cases have ruled in favor of the Linux users here, so in the countries involved in these cases you have legal ground to claim the money, and some OEMS have software return policies (which are inconvenient, but at leas they exist).

If you are that decided to pay no MS tax, my advice is not to pay it from the start. Buy a computer without OS or with the OS you want, or build one yourself, or get it second hand. I think these are better options if you manage to get them.

As the original poster with a new PC I can tell you that the suppliers of this box will essentially build what you want and I could have saved money and asked them not to install an operating system but I do need Windows

That's OK, but as people was talking about rejecting the EULA, I thought it was not a bad idea to write my opinion even when it does not apply if you want Windows.

Here it's like this: you buy a CD/DVD with Windows, and as soon as you have opened the plastic foil it doesn't matter if you agree on the EULA or not. The medium could already have been copied and distributed.

I bought a laptop which wasn't available without windows vista, and I had to install it and boot it to make sure the laptop works correctly. Of course the idea was always to wipe win after that, but there was no other way to make sure I can get help or replacement if something didn't work as was sold to me. I have to admit that I removed the windows stickers already before it was ready to boot

The only issue back then (if I remember, it was with Slackware 13 or so) was the Intel Graphics Driver, which was unstable. Crashed around every 20th time I booted, so far it was ok. Of course, Murphy's law, it was always when people looked over my shoulder...