Read how a user got EUR 77.53 refunded from Dell for Vista Home Basic and Works 8.0 after buying a new machine from Dell Germany. The process is put down in details for that people interested in doing the same, can benefit as much as possible from his experience.
I ordered a C521 a few weeks ago online from Dell Germany, determined to return the Vista OS that I had to order but would not use. Before coming to the install screens, where I intended to decline the license and take pictures of it, I put in an Ubuntu Live CD to check out the hardware. Vista's installer ignored the CD despite the BIOS settings and I found myself in the installer - unprepared (i.e. no camera). As there was no way to abort the install decently (click "exit"), I had to switch off the machine with the power button. Ouch.
Next time, I came prepared with my friend ready to take pictures of anything happening on the screen. I switched the system on, expecting the same installer to appear but it did not. Vista did not manage to recover from the aborted install process the previous day and got lost in an infinite loop of reboots. (I wonder what people do with a power outage during install as there was no such thing as a Vista-CD delivered...)
http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/news/article.php?story=20070326123924115