You see, before Windows ever existed, back when MS/PC-DOS 2.1 was the most spectacular operating system shell Microsoft had to offer for the PC, I migrated to QNX. Most folks these days know QNX as "that process control OS", and it is, really ... but for over half a decade, when SCO-UNIX finally came out, QNX was also the only game in town for anybody with an Intel 80xxx box who wanted a multitasking operating system. (I still miss, BTW, QNX's exquisite message-passing functionality.)
Anyway, by 1986 or so, although officially retired I was developing QNX software, mostly on homegrown boxes. Building my own system was much cheaper than buying them pre-assembled, and anyway what'd'ya expect from a hardware hack? In 1987 I bought my first 80286, which was also my first pre-assembled machine, and although I kept a small PC-DOS partition on it, all I ever really used was QNX. I had a text editor, mail program, network-ability, an accounting program, the only games I was interested in playing, not to mention a C compiler, and that was kinda all I did with my computer in those days. (Hey, I was retired!)
I don't remember just when my partner and I first heard of Linux, but we'd been watching it, playing with it parttime, for some time when the day came for me to finally upgrade my poor, obsolete '286. As usual, I checked out the pre-assembled to see what was what for the day, and was surprised to find how much cheaper they were. I went ahead and bought one in late 1992. At that time, I was given a choice of accepting with it some incredibly-high version number of MS-DOS (5 or 6, I think) and what was then the most advanced operating system Microsoft had to offer: Win3.1. Well, I figured it was about time I checked in on what so-called "average" folks were doing with their computers, so I picked up Windows and tried it out ... but not before we reformatted the hard drive and installed Linux on it. That was when we went to Linux fulltime. I dabbled with Windows a little, but it just wasn't very exciting, ya know? Linux was new, exciting, knew about networking, and didn't force me to use a mouse.
For five years, then, my hardware needs were met with components, and Linux kept me from even feeling the desire to scope out new applications. Those years were, apparently, the years when Microsoft started getting aggressive about preloads. For me, though, Microsoft just didn't exist, and I didn't even know about the consent decree from (when was it? 1993? 1994?) until 1997, when I went to buy a notebook.
Honest, I wanted to support VA Research, which was at that time the only place where I could find an 80xxx-ish notebook computer without Windows preloaded on it. I live a highly principled life and have often paid the cost for those principles. But let's be realistic. I was retired and had just decided to start a web design business, and I was faced with the choice of spending approximately $1,000 to get my new machine now, or approximately $2,000 and receive my new machine through mail order. Also in my defense, I was really caught short by news of the forced preload -- remember, the last time I'd bought a pre-assembled, I'd had a choice over accepting or refusing bundled software.
I told you it was a simple story, din' I?