Turns Out Ubuntu Dell Costs $225 More 361
Posted
by
kdawson
from the implemented-and-reneged dept.
from the implemented-and-reneged dept.
An anonymous reader writes "One week ago this community discussed the apparent price advantage of Ubuntu Dell over Vista. The article linked to a Dell IdeaStorm page with the status: 'Implemented.' Today the status has changed on that page to 'Reneged: Ubuntu Dell is $225 More Than Windows Dell.' The full price of a Ubuntu Inspiron 1420N is indeed $50 cheaper than the identical hardware configuration with Vista — except that a $275 free upgrade to 2GB memory and a 160-GB hard drive is available for Windows only."
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:2, Insightful)
Just buy it with Vista (XP would be better) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:2, Insightful)
And this arouses suspicion because...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I have no plans to upgrade to Vista any time soon - at least not at home. If faced with the prospect of getting a machine with Ubuntu at $X, or a machine with double the RAM and a bigger hard drive with Vista at $X, I'd take the machine with Vista, thank you very much. Shrink the partition as far as practical, install Ubuntu, and you're ahead - you've got the higher-spec machine, AND the ability to boot into something that the Dull PhoneMonkeys won't hang up over. Okay... that's a path a geek would take, not a regular consumer, but I doubt at this time that there would be very many non-geeks opting for Ubuntu over windows anyway on a new Dell.
Besides... if you're going to criticise Vista, you should at least have first-hand experience of what it is that you're criticising.
Last time I checked.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just buy it with Vista (XP would be better) (Score:5, Insightful)
By telling people to just buy Vista, you are only allowing Microsoft's hold on the software industry to continue. This is all about free choice, and I for one am glad that there are people out there who are keeping an eye on these things and pointing them out to Dell and its customers.
I'm not eating $225 for 'free choice.' Incidentally, I don't want Ubuntu anyway. What I want is a laptop that I know will work with Linux. As long as the Windows and Linux versions have the same hardware, I'll buy either one since I'm going to wipe and reinstall anyway.
The point is that this gives Microsoft an unfair advantage over other OS providers and it must be dealt with.
Love the use of the passive voice there - who's doing the 'dealing'? Not sure what is 'fair' anyway. Do you mean it's a violation of Sherman anti-trust? If not, you're just whining.
If you want Vista, fine! But if you don't want it, you shouldn't have to buy it. It's that simple!
And I 'should' have a pony. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work on 'should.' The fact is, Dell does get a lot of revenue from pre-loaded crapware, cost savings by making essentially identical Windows computers in volume, etc. The best you have to hope for is the Linux version doesn't cost *more*, and I do agree $225 is excessive. However, the wipe/reinstall option is always available.
FFS, isn't this a no-brainer? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Buy the PC that gives you the best hardware for the lowest price. If that means taking a Windows PC that has "free" extra memory and a bigger hard disk drive then do it.
2. Shrink the Windows partition (that extra disk space is a boon), install Ubuntu and/or other operating systems of your choice.
3. Go about your business as normal.
4. If you ever have to speak to Dell tech support, you have the additional benefit of being able to tell them that you're using a Windows system (true), and them not giving you the cold shoulder when you tell them that you're using Ubuntu, etc.
5. If you sell your PC at sometime in the future you give yourself a more attractive package to sell and thus recoup more of your initial sale price. More RAM, more disk space, Windows Vista Home all have a value, and the Vista Home alone may make a huge difference to the resale price on eBay. Remember, 90 percent of PC users won't even have heard of Linux, so why cut them out of your resale equation?
Dell is simply trying to protect its standard business model, which includes making money from pre-installing offers from third parties (such as ISPs and AV vendors) on their Windows installations. There's no reason why you can't let them do that and still benefit from their reluctance to abandon that model.
Saving $50 (or is it now $25?) if it means half as much memory and half as much disk space (1GB/80GB vs 2GB/160GB) seems to be a false economy.
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the choices on their various buying portals, it should be no surprise for advertising sake, they have very specific configurations for a specific price that are cheaper then what you could together using configuring their own. These same specific machines with upgrades are what ends up in the mailed out advertisements and the back of magazines and may even be a loss leader for them but it gets people to the site in hopes they can get an up sell as well.
Some don't like the choices of configurations, some do. For those that do a little leg work on Dells site, you can get a really good combo deal. If you want to buy one with minimal effort and do not feel like browsing around, you can do that as well. Dell is trying to maximize profit AND cater to the person with some extra time that does some research. I view that the same way as a grocery store putting smaller higher priced items near the register lines or selling a cold 20oz bottle of Pepsi for $1.29 and a warm 2 liter bottle for $0.89 back in the pop isle. You have a choice, convenience or lowest price.
Actually it is about a $600 cheaper (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Add office professional (ships with open office) I am sure that is at least a $200 savings.
3. Scratch having to take the machine into a shop every three months to clean all the spyware, crap etc out of the machine to make it actually work again. There is another few hundred bucks $200
I did not even list the other software it ships with and the equivalents would likely run you into the thousands.
Re:Just buy it with Vista (XP would be better) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:3, Insightful)
Just FYI, according to Pricewatch, a 160GB notebook disk goes for about $90 and 1GB DDR2 to fit an Inspiron 1420 will set you back about $53. According to Microsoft, you'll have to shell out $99.99 for Vista Home Basic.
At the very least, if you price two machines with identical hardware specs, and you don't come out at least a little cheaper without Vista, you are getting RIPPED OFF, plain and simple. This holds true whether the two machines are base models or fully-upgraded-to-the-gills gaming rigs. If they're identical hardware-wise, they should be significantly cheaper without Vista.
What you do with the disk space beyond what your OS needs is generally entirely up to you - not your OS. It's not like you're just storing a bunch of backup copies of Vista or something - you'll fill it with music, movies, photos, p0rn, third-party software, whatever. Same stuff everyone else fills their boxes with - you just have 6-7GB less space to work with if you choose Vista, at least if the vendor did the right thing and offered the same hardware upgrades to the non-Vista customer, at the same prices/differences.
I realize there are people here who need that extra disk space for high-end stuff (Oracle springs to mind), but the majority of people who get one of these boxes will do so with something else in mind besides maintaining a multi-million-record database for a large corporation. Hell, I'd only use one for watching movies, listening to music, or coding.
Sorry to ramble on, it's 9:13am and I haven't slept yet.
Who knows what a Dell costs? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure anyone knows what a Dell costs unless they are a business negotating a deal for a few thousand of them.
Re:Just buy it with Vista (XP would be better) (Score:3, Insightful)
Not everyone with a computer is as competent as you are. Also, there is no way to tell how competent you are outside of listening to you explain it. As most of us already know, certifications and degrees don't necessarily mean you know your stuff. Although the the lack of them are used as reasons not to give out raises and such quite often.
Generally, what I do is asked for level 2 support and hope I'm not just given to another seat filler in the call center. And I'm not afraid to ask for someone who speaks English as their first language. You still have communications issues but generally not as much.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking purely from a business stand-point and ignoring all philosophical issues, this is not definitively true. That is, it may be true that you're being overcharged but it isn't necessarily so. You're looking at one particular cost - the cost of purchasing the operating system - and assuming that every other cost is the same. It may very well not be, even on identical hardware. It's been well documented that Dell gets paid to load crapware on the system. That's revenue that they do not or may not get on the Linux machine, which means they must increase the price to reach the same margin. Its also quite possible that other cost, such as support cost, are increased for Linux machines. This could be due to a number of reasons, such as people using Linux calling in more because they're less familiar with the OS, or help desk people requiring additional training or being harder to find. The bottom line is that computer sellers operate on razor thin margins, and there's a lot more that goes into price calculations than what Microsoft charges for their OS. That doesn't mean that we should set back and pay unwarranted mark-ups without questioning them, but it does mean that simplistic statements such as the one you made above don't tell the whole story.
Re:Astounding. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's talk about half-full / half-empty glasses.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:5, Insightful)
"I did not have that problem, and you didn't give me enough diagnostic information to adequately help you solve it. You can attempt to find someone else with a similar problem, or we can work on it a little bit longer and try and get more information."
Plus, we don't know if the GP was messing around with things that he shouldn't have. People that are new to Linux (especially if you're having problems) shouldn't be messing with their Gnome install, advanced user settings, or extremely experimental beta eyecandy software, despite how tempting it can be.
Without knowing that information, I think that mhall did a great job addressing AC's problems. He recommended that, even though he wasn't sure exactly what the problem was (since he had never experienced them), he should:
- Check his screen resolution (and possibly video card drivers),
- Not mess with Beryl or Compiz,
- Create a new, default, user account and see if that helps, or
- If he doesn't have much to lose, try re-installing.
You're ridiculing him for some advice that he offered (for free) that was more helpful than most customer service departments (where they get paid), especially given the limited amount of information he had.Re:Vista needs the space (Score:3, Insightful)
He's complaining about a large number of items I've never seen under Ubuntu in various versions. I've worked in offices where Ubuntu was the workstation OS/distro of choice for programmers and they didn't seem to have those complaints either.
That guy must be really lucky...
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not anymore. (Score:2, Insightful)
She's gonna be getting a vista one anyways and just reformatting it though. The only available 15" screen with Ubuntu doesn't give you any decent hardware to choose from.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:2, Insightful)
Theres something wrong with the tag line (Score:2, Insightful)
Misleading tag.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. mhall doesn't deserve to be insulted in that manner.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:3, Insightful)
I now there is sub-pixel rendering available for Linux fonts, but I don't recall what it is. It may not be installed by default on Ubuntu because of patent issues. If you're getting a "rainbow" halo, it may be that the sub-pixel rendering has the pixel order different than what your monitor actually has (BGR instead of RGB). I don't have an LCD monitor, so I'm not very familiar with this. Try asking about it on the Ubuntu forums.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:3, Insightful)
If you followed the advice given in that thread, you would not be getting GRUB error 25 anymore. So it was solved.
In your mind, it seems, the solution was inadequate because the problem was different. The problem wasn't getting a working Ubuntu install with no grub error, it was somehow fixing your unbootable install using the unbootable install itself without you doing anything to help them at all, like it was some kind of game show challenge. Sorry if everyone else was more focused on the realistic problem of fixing your computer than your little brain-teaser "boot the unbootable" challenge for the Ubuntu forums.
Your problem was fixed. Stop acting like it wasn't. If you go to the mechanic with a blown head gasket, do you complain that they replaced the gasket instead of somehow un-breaking it? Do you complain that your car had to be out for 3 days, when you wanted it magically unbroken instantly? You should some day, because the look you'll get from the mechanic is the look your posts are getting now.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:3, Insightful)
Note: I'm using Feisty Fawn. I don't know whether the icon was removable in prior versions.
I don't think the guy with these problems had any right to imply that his expectations are the correct ones. There are all sorts of different expectations for default behavior, his problem with the icons is a matter of personal taste, some of his problems sound like they're due to a bad install, and it strikes me as perfectly reasonable for the movie player to come up when you click on an MP3 (pretty much every media player you install in Windowsland will try to make itself the default for both movies and music). But he seems intelligent and seems to mean well, so his input carries some value.
Last thing: I noticed you switched a critical couple of words around. He said it "doesn't 'just work'", and you say he says it "just doesn't work". Completely different concepts. "Just works" implies a seamless user experience where the user simply performs the most obvious action and gets the result she expected. "Just doesn't work" implies that, no matter how many different ways you try, no matter how many config files you edit, you simply cannot do what you were hoping to do. There is a huge middle ground between the two, and it sounds like he's living in the "it works, but it doesn't 'just work'" region.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:1, Insightful)
For a home user, I'm going to obviously purchase the Vista Dell box, and put Ubuntu on it, simply because I know what I'm doing, and I get better hardware for less money. Then, on top of that, if I *shudder* like Vista, I have a license...
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:2, Insightful)