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Mandriva Businesses

HP To Sell PCs With Mandrake 9.1 338

theoddball writes "HP just announced a new PC model (HP Compaq d220) that's available preloaded with Windows or Mandrake 9.1. The machine appears to be targeted to business users, although it's on the lower-end of the scale - specs are here. Mandrake also has a press release announcing the deal, which will grow to include four other HP models. Is this a sign that top tier manufacturers are taking Linux more seriously, or at least seeing a profitable niche?" We commented on MandrakeSoft's status update yesterday.
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HP To Sell PCs With Mandrake 9.1

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  • by deadsaijinx* ( 637410 ) <animemeken@hotmail.com> on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @07:31PM (#6354404) Homepage
    yes, a 2ghz celeron is low end. The keyword being celeron. They are cheaper and slower, much cheaper and much slower.
  • Well (Score:2, Informative)

    by MisterFancypants ( 615129 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @07:33PM (#6354417)
    Well on the one hand this is great news, on the other hand despite what the press release says I don't see any way to configure a system to ship with Mandrake instead of Windows XP on their little site store page that is linked into that press release. All of the d220 models I see listed are shipping with Windows XP with no way to change that option (I was hoping to see what kind of price difference, if any, that option would cause).

    Hopefully this is just a case of the press releasing being issued a bit before the website is changed to handle the new systems fully.

  • by joestar ( 225875 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @07:33PM (#6354420) Homepage
    Despite the fact that Linux is apparently not ready yet for "mum" (certainly because of a lack of third-party applications), it really seems there is a growing momentum for Linux on the desktop in the field of corporate environements. My guess is that StarOffice/OpenOffice.org are responsible for that, and also that Mandrake 9.1, with its great desktop environment, offers most things that corporations need for their daily tasks. This includes OpenOffice.org and Mozilla for instance.
  • Not yet on the store (Score:5, Informative)

    by LinuxTek ( 36519 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @07:35PM (#6354436) Homepage
    If you try to buy a d220 microtower, there's no option available yet with Mandrake Linux. If they're going to do a press release, isn't it better to have the actual product first?
  • Format text :) (Score:2, Informative)

    by grantsellis ( 537978 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @07:38PM (#6354461) Homepage
    Ack! That's unreadable. Take a few moments to put the br's in :)

    HP Delivers Affordable, Reliable Microtower PC to Small- and Medium-sized Businesses
    PALO ALTO, CALIF., JULY 2, 2003

    HP (NYSE:HPQ) today introduced an affordable, high-quality desktop PC for small- and medium-sized business (SMB) customers: the HP Compaq Business Desktop d220 Microtower.

    The microtower desktop features Intel® Pentium® 4 or Celeron® processors and offers three PCI expansion slots, two double data rate (DDR) memory slots and five drive bays in a compact microtower platform, allowing for expansion or future upgrades.

    "Our SMB customers are looking to maximize their IT investment, and the combination of low purchase price and consistent, reliable performance in the HP Compaq d220 provides value-seeking businesses a solid platform choice," said Keith LeFebvre, vice president of business desktop division, Americas, HP Personal Systems Group.

    The HP Compaq Business Desktop d220 is designed to keep IT simple, with the choice of customizable or pre-configured solutions optimized for affordability and quality. Customized solutions, available beginning July 7, start at an estimated U.S. street price of $349 (1) with an Intel Celeron 2.0-gigahertz processor, 40-gigabyte hard drive and 128-megabyte DDR SDRAM. Customers also can opt for an Intel Pentium 4 2.4-gigahertz processor, 40-gigabyte hard drive and 128-megabyte DDR SDRAM for as low as an estimated U.S. street price of $499. (1)

    For customers interested in pre-configured solutions with an Intel Celeron 2.0-gigahertz processor, pricing starts at an estimated $429. (1) Or, for customers requiring additional processing power, the HP Compaq d220 is available pre-configured with a 2.4-gigahertz Intel Pentium 4 processor, 40-gigabyte hard drive, 512-megabyte DDR SDRAM, integrated Intel Extreme Graphics, DVD+RW/CD-RW combo drive, six USB 2.0 ports and Microsoft Windows® XP Professional - priced at an estimated U.S. street price of only $799. (1)

    HP Compaq desktops are available with the latest operating systems from the industry leader, Microsoft, as well as a robust Linux offering from Mandrake. The HP Compaq d220 offers a choice of Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows XP Home or Mandrake's Linux v9.1, providing customers with the versatility needed for today's mixed-use environments.

    The HP Compaq Business Desktop d220 Microtower is now available directly from HP or through authorized resellers. More information about the product is available at http://www.hp.com/products/desktops .

    About HP
    HP delivers vital technology for business and life. The company's solutions span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing for consumers, enterprises and small and medium business. For the last four quarters, HP revenue totaled $70.4 billion. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com .

    (1) Actual prices may vary.

    Intel, Pentium and Celeron are U.S. registered trademarks of Intel Corp. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

    This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development and performance of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP 's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to HP 's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2003, and subsequently filed reports. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HP 's results could differ materially from HP 's expectations in these statements. HP assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
  • by joestar ( 225875 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @07:41PM (#6354484) Homepage
    It seems that these products are mostly targetted to small & medium businesses, so it's likely that most units will be sold by value-added resellers.
  • by cyber_rigger ( 527103 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @08:00PM (#6354607) Homepage Journal
    I think the article said that the Linux offer will be on HP's website Monday.
  • old stuff (Score:2, Informative)

    by abhisarda ( 638576 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @08:05PM (#6354626) Journal
    HP has already been selling Compaq desktops with Linux since Oct 2002 [hp.com].
  • Re:Microsoft Tax (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @08:23PM (#6354714)
    In Australia HP/Compaq PCs have been available with Mandrake for several months now, not just on low end machines, but also the D510 & D530 mainstream corporate machines.

    And NO, you do not pay the MS tax, they are cheaper (by approx $150 AU) than the equivalent Windows box
  • Re:Paperclip? (Score:4, Informative)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @08:37PM (#6354791)
    Install vigor.
  • by Surak ( 18578 ) * <surakNO@SPAMmailblocks.com> on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @09:25PM (#6355074) Homepage Journal
    Just a small point, but Mandrake started out as Red Hat+KDE. This is no longer true, of course, but it's still largely a Red Hat clone in many aspects.

  • by Christianfreak ( 100697 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @09:57PM (#6355215) Homepage Journal
    I haven't installed 9.1, but with 9 if you choose workstation install, I don't think it installs any servers and if you do server install I don't think it installs a lot of the graphical stuff.

    And the advanced install warns you about what servers you installed and gives you the option to turn them off.
  • by frodo from middle ea ( 602941 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @10:11PM (#6355279) Homepage
    You mean this Bill Gates [thesmokinggun.com] ?
  • by cloudless.net ( 629916 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @10:53PM (#6355478) Homepage
    He was talking about iPaq, the Pocket PC PDA, not the Compaq desktop. It is definitely not old stuff, because HP never even announced to ship a Pocket PC with Linux pre-installed.
  • No Microsoft tax (Score:5, Informative)

    by opkool ( 231966 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @11:30PM (#6355624) Homepage

    If you check the prices, you will see that they come with no tax:

    HP-Compaq D220 with MS-WindowsXP: $429

    HP-Compaq D220 with Mandrake 9.1: $349

    For MDK 9.1: "Customized solutions, available beginning July 7, start at an estimated U.S. street price of $349" [hp.com]

    See price for MS-W-XP: "starting at: $429.00*" [hp.com]

    My question is: when will they be available in Europe? Peace!

  • by The Vulture ( 248871 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @11:31PM (#6355631) Homepage
    Sorry, the Commodore 64 did have 64K of RAM. It also had (I believe) 20K of ROM (8K BASIC interpreter, 8K kernel ROM and 4K character ROM) mapped in at various addresses. However, the RAM "underneath" the ROMs is available, but only in machine language.

    The BASIC interpreter is mapped in at $A000, the character ROM is mapped in at $D000 (I think, I don't quite remember), and the kernel ROM is mapped in at $E000. Due to the way that the VIC-II works, being able to access only 16K at a time, the character ROM is also mapped in at $1000 and $9000, but only the VIC-II sees it this way, the 6510 sees the RAM there.

    Now then, to map out the ROM's, you need to play with the MMU, which is at memory location 1. Also, like I said, you have to be in machine language, because using any of these methods, you end up mapping out either the BASIC interpreter, BASIC and the kernel, or all of the ROM's, and if you're in BASIC, unless you've copied the ROM to RAM, you'll crash the machine.

    These values will work, although you shouldn't just set them, since they also set some of the Datasette lines as well. Set the MMU (memory location 1) to these values to get the RAM:
    $36: Map in the RAM under the BASIC interpreter (8K at $A000)
    $35: Map in the RAM under the BASIC interpreter (8k at $A000) and under the kernel (8K at $E000)
    $34: All 64K of RAM.
    There are other values as well, but I don't remember how they work, as I didn't use them very often.

    Note that when you map out the kernel or use all 64K of RAM, you MUST disable interrupts. The 6510, when it receives an interrupt, jumps to the vector pointed at $FFFC ($FFFA for NMI's), and for IRQ, this is $EA31 (I don't remember the NMI). If the CPU does it's JMP($FFFC), and there's garbage there, well, your C64 goes off into
    never-never land.

    Also when you map in all 64K of memory, you only have about 63K of memory. That's because most of zero page (0-255) is reserved, $100-$200 is the stack (you don't want to mess with that unless you really know what you're doing), and $300 contains some semi-important pointers (file I/O, IRQ, etc.). But from $400 up, you're all clear.

    Of interesting note... The game Impossible Mission (by Epyx) used all but 1K of RAM. And yes, I'm a former C64 demo coder, I've set the machine to use all 64K of RAM many times.

    -- Joe
  • by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @12:00AM (#6355759)
    Windows 2000: Install it. Takes like 45-60 minutes. And I am presented with a 640x480 screen with 16 colors, no sound, no network. Couple of hours later, countless reboots. Drivers in. Now Windows update. Many 100's of MB later, and dozens of reboots later, that's done.

    Ok, reboots are one thing, but just FYI, on my last install of Mandrake 9.1 several days ago I was presented with nearly 300MB of updates and bug fixes after install. This is on a release only a couple months old, mind you - Win2000 has several years worth of updates built up. This is not a selling point for Linux.

    I also have a Red Hat demo account (installed RH on another machine) and hardly a day goes by that I don't get some sort of "errata" report from them in my inbox.
  • by Captain Large Face ( 559804 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @01:17AM (#6356122) Homepage

    This is merely speculation, but the drive to Debian might have been led by Bruce Perens [perens.com] (Bruce used to be the Project Leader for Debian GNU/Linux) when he was an exec at HP. Now that he's left, it might explain why the association has disappeared.

  • by egreB ( 183751 ) <berge@t r i v i n i .no> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @06:31AM (#6356987) Journal
    I started on an Apple II but so what? You can't get any real useful work done on one now and yes, even the 400mhz and 733mhz CPU's people are talking about in here are getting pretty long in the tooth for business use.
    Only yesterday I saw a Mac Plus doing its job for a librarian - granted, only for text processing and printing, but still. It did its job. I actually asked wether she would rather like a new computer - there were quite a lot of them around. Of course not, she replied, as the Mac does its job. I beleive the librarian did "real useful work" on that Mac.

    Just because you happen to be internet content creation, doesn't mean that your computer would fit everybody else. The reason you see such many "Word and Excel"-arguments around here, is because the majority of business computer users only to text processing, spreadsheet and e-mail. Computers have been able to do that for quite a while, now. In the real world, people look as computers as tools, not as the real work.

    I'm a web developer. As I run Linux, my applications ranges from Gimp to web/script/databaseserver to several web browsers, of course in addition to mail and news applications and all the small stuff like XMMS and Gaim. For these tasks, I have an AMD K6-II 400MHz with 128MB RAM and a 16 MB video adapter. I'll upgrade the RAM soon, but the computer is sufficient for my needs, and it's not painful.

    I think the definition of real work needs some polishing. I admit that my computer have troubles with the latest games, but I don't linke this trend of always needing the latest and greatest hardware. People did real work on PDP-11, for crying out load!

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