Acer asks for £50 more for a notebook WITHOUT Windows?

I covered this in an article earlier but felt that it actually needed a proper write-up with further explanation. All I was trying to do was work out whether certain vendors would supply me a sensibly priced laptop without Windows installed - because I want it for testing Linux distros. Today I received a response from Acer that really made me smile.

Acer asks for £50 more for a notebook WITHOUT Windows?