Laws regarding Selling Computers?

I have a friend who builds and sells home computers as a side job. The computers are nothing fancy (sells them as 2nd computers or computers for kids), but he makes decent money. My question is regarding the software. He sells the computers bare bone, but he charges to load optional software (operating systems, office, antivirus, anti spyware, etc.

Is it illegal to do this? Or is it ok? He says as long as he doesn't sell the software alone (by making CD copies which he knows is illegal), then it's legal.

Laws regarding Selling Computers?download

As long as he is paying for each copy he sells, then its legal.

However, I don't think its a very good business to be in right now. Office Depot was just selling a complete HP system with a monitor, cd burner/dvd and printer for $199. The software was preloaded. It would be really hard for individuals to compete with that.

For $299, you got the flat lcd monitor with it instead of the crt kind.

Laws regarding Selling Computers?hijackthis

It is legal to do so unless he is pirating software for profit and not telling anyone about it.
Let's be clear here... there are lots of different kinds of software.

All software is copyright by the person or company who created it. But, some companies (e.g., Microsoft) charge people to get a copy of their software, because that's their business, and other companies (e.g., Mozilla, Red Hat) don't or can't charge for the software they distribute, because they didn't write all of it. Such software is usually called Free Software, and the best-known examples of it are Linux (an operating system) and Firefox (a browser).