Dell Refuses to Sell Ubuntu to Business 522
An anonymous reader writes "I had a surreal experience with Dell today.
My boss asked me to order a new computer for our small, non-profit business. Wanting to support Dell in their decision to sell computers with Ubuntu installed, I decided to order one.
First, I talked to a small business representative, who informed me that I could not order one of the Ubuntu-based computers through the small business department. I had to go through the "home and home office" department.
I called the Home office department. I asked the representative if I could buy one of the ubuntu computers for my company. She said (and I quote), "these Dell computers are designed for personal use only, as long as you use it for personal use, you can purchase one."
So I lied and said I would....
Next, I tried to buy it on our business credit card. They would have none of that. She told me that I had to buy it through a personal card. Now, as a non-profit, our business does not pay sales tax (10% in Tennessee). Had I bought it with my own card, I would have had to pay tax (~$90), which my company would not have reimbursed me for. So.....no Dell today."
I can see (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see why they might want to sell different products in their different "channels", presumably they have different support staff for each one and not all are trained for all products.
I can't see why they won't accept a business card for an item purchased in the "home / home office" section though.
FreeDOS or Red Hat available on Small Business (Score:4, Interesting)
I would wager if you talked to the Small Business sales rep again you could still purchase an nSeries system with FreeDOS on it or you can purchase a Precision Workstation with Red Hat Linux. Simply go to www.dell.com/nseries.
I had a similar experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I looked at the specs for the Ubuntu laptop. 6 pounds! Holy crap, no way in hell I'm lugging that around. My current Dell laptop is under 3lbs. I brought up the page for Dells smallest laptop and wanted to compare the hardware to their Ubuntu one. I buy under government/higher-ed. Guess what...no mention of Ubuntu as an OS option in that category. Looks like it's only available in the Home section.
Ho hum, back to the old fashioned way. Checked for wifi support before I bought the littlest one, paid the MS tax, and kept my fingers crossed.
Dell's Ubuntu option is a nice idea, but restricting it to a single Laptop isn't all that engaging.
Dell is not first and not unique (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Probably Red-Tape (Score:4, Interesting)
I loath Microsoft, but I understand where Dell is coming from with their lack of support for Ubuntu, it's just not financially viable to train agents to support it. They have to protect the stockholders first and customers come second. I disapprove of this system, but that's a rant for another thread. I see a day in the distant future where Dell will slowly begin expanding it's Ubuntu selection and support. But i think it will be a long long time, and people complaining about how poorly they are doing now is only going to discourage their effort.
Re:Why go with Dell? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus I feel vaguely insulted every time someone calls me a consumer.
Re:Probably Red-Tape (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://system76.com/
Custom Linux laptops.
http://www.penguincomputing.com/
Linux servers and clusters.
Dell's choice to not sell to businesses should give these guys a fair boost in sales.
Re:Probably Red-Tape (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably a licensing issue (Score:4, Interesting)
I am pretty impressed with Dell for doing this - it is worth it to live with a home PC even though the support sucks and it is harder to purchase.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
The keyboard on the laptop (Pangolin Value) is not as good as my IBM work laptop, but not bad. The display is great though, which is what I care about most.
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Do they not allow that anymore?
Re:So... (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Dell is in some serious trouble. (Score:3, Interesting)
Dell is far preferable to HP now that Michael Dell is back at the helm. Remember the HP board pretexting and spying on HP senior management/other board members? Mr. Dell (speculation here) is biding his time, seeing where the hell Dell sits, and slowly trying to steer the ship back from the direction they've been headed.
Somewhat OT, but germane to Dell (Score:2, Interesting)
When I called the nice lady in India, she informed me that "Overnight shipping sijmply means that, when we ship the computer, it arrices the next day." Oh, really? It was beyond her understanding that the reason that people pay for overnight shipping is that they are hoping to receive the good promptly, and that perhaps customers might not understand the value proposition for overnight shipping taking place two weeks in the future.
I used to be a big fan of Dell.
Re:So... (Score:2, Interesting)
Laboratory Computers (Austin, Las Vegas, and Evansville, IN, but they ship anywhere) is where I bought my desktop, and they give the option of Linux, Windows, or no OS. http://laboratorycomputers.com/ [laboratorycomputers.com]
PowerNotebooks offers the same machines as Alienware, just without the fancy paint, and a lot cheaper, also with either Linux, Windows, or no OS. http://www.powernotebooks.com/ [powernotebooks.com]
...or rather... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ubuntu is pretty straight-forward and I've been using various flavors of Linux for a decade, but if I had a support line to call the first few days I was trying it out for the first time, I would have burned through the price of a cheap laptop in no time trying to get a few of my odder doo-dads to connect. I mean, honestly, when was the last time their support department had to tell a Windows customer "please apply these five patches to your kernel source v.xyz and recompile?"
Re:GPL = no commercial use (Score:3, Interesting)
The Solaris-using application is a standalone one, it does not converse with other servers (most of them — AIX). There are no "ssh headers" either and no custom program relies on libssh. And lastly, if this were their reason, they should've said so. But they did not — these two guys' perception was, that: a) OpenSSH is GPLed; b) GPL means "no commercial use".
Both a) and b) are purely false — no "ifs" nor "buts" about it. But that is still the perception...
No, if it comes from Sun (a vendor), it is Ok. No problem...
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Despite the fact that my previous post revolved around the fact that you couldn't buy Mac OS X separately from the hardware!!
No, its an agreement with RedHat (Score:4, Interesting)
It is quite obvious that Dell has a contractual agreement with RedHat that the only Linux that Dell will sell to business customers is RedHat, probably in exchange for RedHat kicking in support for those systems. They legally could NOT sell Ubuntu to this guy as a business, because it would have been a breach of contract with RedHat.
Don't want to pay the Microsoft tax and support Dell in its efforts to support Linux? Great! Buy a RedHat-based Linux workstation instead, then do what you want with it.
Re:System76 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Same thing at my Uni (Score:5, Interesting)
Did they insist on you shutting down a production server to run their stupid diagnostics tool when you called in a bad disk?
They did this to us a few years ago. They kept on refusing to send a replacement disk, insisting on *proof* that the disk was indeed bad. The diagnostics software they wanted us to use required us to shut down the server, which would have been extremely disruptive. Eventually we just said forget it, called back, and got a different rep who eventually finally caved and sent us the disk.
Granted, this was years ago, and their service has since improved, but that was a pretty brain-dead policy to have even back then.
-Z
Just buy from a Linux PC company. (Score:3, Interesting)
For example: http://system76.com/ [system76.com]
Re:System76 (Score:5, Interesting)
I ordered my laptop without checking the screen resolution (a big no-no, I know, but it just didn't occur to me). So when I got it, I was surprised to find that my max resolution was 1280x960.
I called Dell's customer service to ask if I could return it and purchase a laptop with a higher screen resolution (1680x1050, the highest they offer on a 15" laptop). Obviously, I was expecting to pay the difference in price, or get the first purchase refunded and then pay the second purchase price.
The lady I spoke with said she'd see what she could do and call me back.
She called the next morning saying she arranged an unlike exchange - Not only did she get the laptop exchanged for free (So I got a $100 upgrade for free), I was able to keep the first laptop until I recieved the second one so I didn't have to go a week or so without a computer.
So... Not *all* Dell Customer Service stories are horror.