The department has evidence that Microsoft has forced manufacturers to pre-install its browser.

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Founded in 2009, People Power is working on getting phone service providers and appliance makers to pre-install its software in their products.

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Canonical currently serves the leading PC OEMs: ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo all certify the majority of their PCs on Ubuntu and pre-install it in global markets.

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Customers may also pre-install other high performance components to the servers from the factory, including low latency network cards, high performance memory, and hot swappable front-facing PCIe SSD storage.

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The government said it is simply providing the software free of charge, as a pre-installed file on computer hard drives or as a CD, to give users to choice to install the software.

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To install on the Windows 8 PC, I used a product key given to me by Microsoft for pre-release testing, otherwise you would have to go to Office.com to buy a subscription and get a product key. (A free 30-day trial is available.) The Windows 8 PC install took about 20 minutes, and a helpful introduction walked me through key points of Office 365.

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