I just installed Windows 7 HP on someone else's Dell. It was an upgrade version but I chose to do a clean install. Everything went fine. I set www.msnbc.com for the start page in Internet Explorer. When that page came up, at the top of the page it said "(My Town), IA" and the current temperature. The owner of the Dell does not live in my town. Nowhere in the installation of Windows 7 was I asked anything other than the Product Key. There couldn't have been any cookies set as this was the first visit to that site. I really never worried that much about privacy, but that sure makes me wonder. You s'pose they know my street address and phone number too?

Maybe your Dell has an in-built GPS receiver. Without that, you would have to choose a "default location" in Ctrl Panel > Regions and Language > Location to receive local weather reports, for example. Even if you make your own selection, it won't appear automatically on sites like msnbc where you'd have to change the displayed default to the location you are at the moment (I'm seeing New York, NY on the main page, Chicago, IL on the weather page, both different from my selected "default location" in Windows)."I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. (Thomas J. Watson, Sr.)

Typically the town is initially determined by the location of the ISP based on it's address until you tell it where you live. The ISP locaton will depend on which server is in use at that time.

That is most likely it. Since I run my own webserver, I have a fixed IP. My town is unincorporated and about two blocks long. I'm surprised they'd waste that much resouces just to pinpoint a location when you have the option to set it anyway. Thanks... that makes sense.