Follow up: About W/L double-boot systems

[Michael <codejodler@gmx.ch>]

Funny. 

I just cleared off the Adobe Reader stuff from my laptops' W$, a few days ago, replacing it by a free viewer, which as side effect released some hundred Mbytes of harddisk space. No notorious updates anymore, no amazing list of software patents on every startup.

I preserved the OEM thing in my doubleboot system because i thought i would need, for example, the ThinkVantage tools for BIOS upgrade. But burning and using the BIOS Upgrade Boot CD from the Lenovo website worked like a charm, and those ThinkVantage tools don't do anymore else then updating themselves, and backup the Windows, which i didn't need for anything since long. GRUB can boot the Rescue partition anyway, which again primarily deals with recovering the unneeded Windows; and for anything else a Knoppix shell has much more capabilities.
(I think i a specific linux backup on that partition would be more useful to me.)

So right now, the main reason i keep the preinstalled system is because i'm curious how long i can refuse the introduction of the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool. (Lastly, they even went so far to let me choose "Yes i want install IE 8 *and* the MSR" only together, or nothing.)

I think there are reasons to run a Windows, for example if you're doing .Net and need a good DE. It's just it always leaves you with a paradox feeling that it's not you using the system but the other way round.