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Pre-Installed Linux Tops Dell Customer Requests
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Feb 19, 2007 07:11 PM
from the please-sir-may-I-have-a-penguin dept.
from the please-sir-may-I-have-a-penguin dept.
dhart writes "Within only a few days of Dell opening a new customer feedback website, they discovered that the feature most requested (by an almost 2-to-1 margin!) is an option on all new Dell PCs: pre-installed Linux. (And the number 3 request is pre-installed Open Office.) I believe they'll have a harder time now with the tired old mantra 'There's no customer demand for Linux.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Pre-Installed Linux On Dells Coming 340 comments
When Michael Dell took back the reins of he company he founded, one of the first things he did was to launch the feedback site Dell Idea Storm. Following up on the recent Slashdot discussion of the early results of this experiment — an overwhelming expressed desire for pre-loaded Linux — Dell reports on what it plans to do with this feedback. Quoting: "[W]e are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. [On the question of which distro to choose:] "[T]here is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux... We want users to have the opportunity to help define the market for Linux on desktop and notebook systems. In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line."
[+]
Your Rights Online: Dell Censors IdeaStorm Linux Dissent 228 comments
thefickler writes "It seems pointless to seek ideas and feedback if you're going to ignore and delete the opinions you don't like. That's exactly what Dell is doing with its IdeaStorm website, which the company set up to solicit such ideas and feedback. Dell deleted a post linking to an article that criticizes its handling of the 'pre-installed Linux' issue."
[+]
Helping Dell To Help Open Source 177 comments
Glyn Moody writes "Dell's IdeaStorm is turning into a fiasco — for Dell, and for open source as well. Instead of just shouting at the company to sell pre-installed GNU/Linux systems, how about helping them find a way to do it? Here's a suggestion that I've posted on the IdeaStorm site: that Dell set up an independent business unit for GNU/Linux systems, just like The Innovator's Dilemma tells us to do when faced with a disruptive technology."
[+]
Technology: Dell Refunds Vista/Works With Two Emails 277 comments
look@thealternative.ch writes "Although many people have asked for pre-installed Linux, and Dell seems to have listened, some still think that buying a naked PC won't be easy. But what about stripping it naked after you buy it? I managed to get Windows Vista (and a bit more) refunded from Dell Germany last week. The process was surprisingly simple: 1) After delivery, ask Dell Support for refund by email. 2) ??? 3) Refund!!! Read the full email conversation in the original German or my English translation. For the impatient reader: The refund is €77.54 for Windows Vista Home Basic plus Works 8.0 (that is 15% of the total amount I paid). The whole process took 2 emails, 2 more to say thank you, and less than 48 hours. The money is already in my account. Kudos to Dell Customer Care (esp. 'Veronika') for being efficient and customer-oriented!"
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Their system configurator (Score:5, Informative)
the Linux side
Re:The Indian tech support is worse. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Great Story: (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a teenage Filipina girl. Although she does have a noticable accent, her English is impeccable and easily understood. She's not a special case, this is normal for Filipinos. The Phillippines exhibit a situation of diglossia in which English is used for educational and government as well as other formal purposes. What this means is that everything from government proceedings to television reporting is conducted in the English language. In addition, English is the only language spoken in many schools, and textbooks are exclusively written in the language. According to the Filipina I know, any use of her local language in her school incurs a fine.
Thus, Filipinos, especially educated ones, can be expected to have a good command of English. This, coupled with the fact that their accent is quite easily understandable, would make them, on average and from a linguistic point of view, much better technical support representatives than their Indian counterparts.
Parent
Mod parent... Well, *you* decide... (Score:5, Interesting)
I won't tell you how to mod the parent, but I can throw my 2 cent's worth of experience in.
It is 100% true that English isn't a second language in the Philippines, it's a primary language. I work in a 24x7 datacenter, and a year or so ago, a new support center was opened in the Philippines to handle our night shift. I thought they were going to let a bunch of people go, but it turned out, they were expanding our operations, not replacing them. (Thank goodness!)
I was very skeptical that this would work. I had many of the same fears. Would we be able to understand their accent? Would they be undertrained an incompetent? Would there be any culture clashes?
The answers, to my surprise, were: They have no discernible accent—none. They're very smart and easily keep up with our local folks, and have often gone far above and beyond the call of duty to help us out. And yes, they are very familiar with our culture and ways of doing things. In fact, a nice bonus about the Filipino support center is that a lot of our night shift calls were coming from Asia-Pacific countries (since, duh, they were open at that time of night), and a lot of those clients feel much more comfortable dealing with our Filipino support center than our American night shift folks.
By now, you're probably thinking, "Right, you're just a management goober," but I assure you, I'm not. In fact, I was certain that I was going to lose my job due to Filipino outsourcing, but that never happened, since we weren't really outsourcing. And after working with them for a while at our shift turnover and seeing the quality of the work they did for us, I can honestly say that hiring our Filipino friends has turned out to be one of the few times management actually did something right at my company, and it's been a win-win situation for everyone.
I'm not saying that every Filipino person is smart and capable and a perfect joy to work with. Just like dealing with all people, your mileage may vary. But I can say that anyone who thinks that good customer service can't be provided by support centers in the Philippines is either stupid or doesn't know enough Filipino people, if any at all.
Parent
Re:Their system configurator (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Demographics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Demographics (Score:5, Funny)
(did I miss anything?
-nB
Parent
curious (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not so much that there isn't customer demand for LINUX, it's that there isn't a whole lot of customer demand for individual Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. It's too much of a PITA to worry about qualifying all that different hardware with all the different distros and then worrying about dealing with Red Hat, Novell and all the different suppliers of what's basically a free OS.
Now, if they had a service like "I'll send you the Linux distro I want, please preinstall it on the next 500 computers you ship me," that could be big.
Re:Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty much the same thing as with AMD processors. For the longest time the official line was "There's no customer demand for AMD." Well, obviously there's demand, which is why they are bringing it up in the first place. What they really mean is "There's customer demand, but not enough for it to be worth the cost of supporting more than one platform, plus the loss from making our current single-platform vendor unhappy."
Basically, just like with selling AMD-based systems, there's no way in hell Dell is going to sell pre-installed supported Linux until the financial incentive to do so is simply undeniable. And even then, they will at first just use the threat of doing so as a lever to get more concessions from Microsoft. If history holds true, expect Dell to be the last major OEM not shipping Linux.
Parent
Winds of Change. (Score:5, Interesting)
You think? I'm not sure anymore. Just a few weeks ago Michael Dell stood up with Vint Cerf and admitted 1 in 4 M$ computers is part of a botnet. Now his company is publicizing customer demand for Linux. If he was interested in toeing the M$ party line, he would have suppressed the results. The odds are Dell is moving away from being a M$ vassal.
2007 is the year of Linux. Vista sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!
Parent
Re:Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't speak for anyone else but if I were buying a computer with Linux pre-installed it would just be as a sort of guarantee that there are Linux drivers available for the hardware. For that purpose it really doesn't matter what distro they choose.
Parent
Re:Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
Believe me. If you order 500 computers, you can get any commercially available OS for a PC installed. It's called CFI or custom factory integration. Ask your salesperson about it.
The catch is that Dell will not support the OS unless it is one that is offered by Dell. Only the hardware is supported.
The difficulty is being able to support every distro of Linux. It's impossible. I say that one is picked, say Ubuntu and support that with proper drivers and support.
Parent
Re:Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be *really* nice if Dell would do some basic work to document device-driver compatibility for their systems. So if I was configuring a Linux system online, I'd like to see something like:
If Dell could do something like this, I'd give them *huge* props... and I imagine a lot of other Linux folks would to. I'd gladly order my next box or ten from them. It wouldn't even be that hard... I would guess that one guy working, say, 10 hours a week on this could easily document driver availability for all the hardware Dell sells with its desktop systems.
Parent
Requests != demand (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming, of course, that this wasn't a campaign launched by F/OSS zealots. For some reason, vocal minorities are often confused with silent majorities. I'll put more faith in this alleged consumer demand when Linux boxes start outselling all other systems by a 2-to-1 margin. In fact, I'd be amazed if they even sold at a 1:2 margin. It would be a pleasant surprise, but a surprise nonetheless.
Re:Requests != demand (Score:5, Insightful)
You put a radio button that reads "( ) OpenOffice, FREE ( ) MS Office, $49.99 Dell Discount Rate" and we'll talk about consumer demand.
Parent
Web comments != paying customers (Score:5, Insightful)
Which distro? (Score:5, Funny)
No one would ever expect a commercial product to succeed with that kind of internal market fragmentation, I don't see why they think it'll work for Linux.
Please vote for OpenOffice option (Score:5, Insightful)
With a default OO install, there will be an instant install base of ODF. It'll do wonders for adoption of the format. Other manufacturers might even follow Dell, seeing how Dell can add functional software with minimal cost, leading to even more adoption. Business users might purchase MS Office anyway, but the home users and small businesses needing basic office needs would benefit in a real way without spending more money.
So please, vote for OO.o. Having Dell install linux by default might be really cool, but voting for OO.o would help both Open Source awareness and adoption.
Certification would be better than install (Score:5, Insightful)
dhart submissions all over the place. (Score:5, Insightful)
He calls this an honest representation of customer demand?! When I got linked to by Slashdot, I got 28,000 hits. And that was a Sunday morning. Say bye-bye to any sort of reasonable cross-section of Dell users.
I love Linux, and haven't run anything But Linux on my personal systems since 2001, but this is very nearly astroturfing. At the very least, it'll strongly bias the demographic on ideastorm.
Re:Which distro? (Score:5, Informative)
Dell ships workstations and servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux preinstalled and re-sells the support contracts.
End-user boots up, configures their system (as they'd have to do with Windows on first boot) and logs in. The RHN updates icon tells them when patches are available (if they don't have a sysadmin to take care of all that). Easy as pie.
Parent
Hey Brutus! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Um... why? (Score:5, Funny)
If you want a Blue Screen of Death, then just get one of their Windows options.
Parent
Re:Um... why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now those who modded the parent insightful, please mod me *redundant*...
Parent