My assistant wanted to buy a new computer, so she did her research.  She spent a day at the computer centers, asking questions, checking prices and equipment.  She also spent some time on line to check for further discounts on the computers that she liked most.

In the end, she decided to buy the computer she liked best from a Chinese bank that offered discounts.  When her computer was delivered, she checked the box, and there was no software included.  I told her that, having bought a number of computers over the past few decades, I had never gotten a computer that did not come with an operating system plus other software.  The delivery man assured her that she could just take it to the service center for that particular brand, and they would install an operating system.  I explained to her that each piece of software, like operating systems, is only able to be registered to the user, at most on several computers.  So, she took her computer to the service center, and they told her that they would be happy to install the operating system, as soon as she goes and buys one, which would cost her around Y400, which is about what she saved by going to the bank instead of a dealer.

She was very unhappy, so, I told her to call around and ask people to whom she had talked at the computer center about whether or not that computer is supposed to come with software.  As it was explained to her (I, personally, saw this coming), many people, in China, take the software out of the box before they sell computers, and, then, they sell the software, separately, to other people.  When the buyer of a computer sees those discounted price, they jump at the opportunity, thinking that they are getting one up on normal computer dealers, only to find that something in the box is missing.