Turns Out Ubuntu Dell Costs $225 More 361
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."
Vista needs the space (Score:5, Funny)
You simply don't need the extra on linux.
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Re:Vista needs the space (Score:5, Funny)
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For what, exactly? 160gb of hard drive space is good if you're a warez hoarder, and 2gb of ram is good if you're compiling software.
If you're just using it as an internet terminal, then both operating systems are bloated. eg. ubuntu will automatically start cupsd, even if you don't have a printer. If you're obsessed with bloat, then you could spend a week fine-combing gentoo or bsd, or try something like syllable, but ubuntu users want something that will "jus
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Which can be easily disabled from the Services config in Administration menu.
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:4, Interesting)
At risk of fanning the gnome/kde flames on this thread already, you could try kubuntu.. i'm not saying it's better, but it is different. You might be happier.
I've not noticed any of these things in kubuntu, except the movie player thing, and that's likely to be a driver issue. Try configuring the underlying player to use a different rendering target, eg. X11 or opengl instead of Xv.
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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...
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The standard KDE distribution comes with loads of applications you probably won't use, and is a little overwhelming (and of course, bloated). Kubuntu have tidied it up, removed everything you probably don't need, put some alternative applications in which they prefer (eg. konversation as the IRC client instead of whatever the old one was), added lots of patches (eg. automatic flash installation wh
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:5, Informative)
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:
Re:Vista needs the space (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. mhall doesn't deserve to be insulted in that manner.
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Re:Vista needs the space (Score:5, Funny)
Are you still bitter over that one Ubuntu support thread where you acted like a jerk and people didn't magically fix your problem? Holding a grudge for over a year doesn't exactly give you the moral high ground here, you realize.
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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
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See, and this is exactly the kind of BS posturing that I'm talking about, that your every thread on this subject is full of. An ubuntu installation does not require proprietary hardware. For fixing your problem with what you claimed you had available a piece of proprietary software may have been necessary. Would you rather they said "you could fix your problem with a windows CD, but that would require usin
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By 'work' you must mean 'boots up'. I shouldn't be suprised at this, since the main effort of the Linux movement seems to be getting it to function in any way at all with a given set of hardware.
By 'work' I mean it has been my primary OS both at home and at work for almost 2 years. It does everything that I need it to do with minimal fuss. Hardware is a major factor in a good Linux experience, and I've always made sure that mine has good working drivers for Linux (even non-free in the case of my nVidia card).
This one I might have to take blame for myself. To be fair, I Add/Removed several music players while trying to find one that would actually play an MP3. At some point one of them successfully alerted me to its need for an MP3 codec as well as directing me to where I could find it. I suspect that Rhythmbox failed to accomplish that. It was probably one of the many that provided absolutely no indication that any operation had taken place at all after I directed it to play an MP3.
Ubuntu 7.04 has improved this quite a bit, I'm pretty sure that anything that uses gstreamer will now tell you if you need a specific codec, and download and install that codec for you if i
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I'm pretty sure it's just a panel applet, you can probably just right-click it and remove it from the panel. I'll have to check when I get home to be sure (new job won't let me run Linux on my workstation).
Nevermind this, I just checked a Feisty install and there is no remove option on right-click. You can stop if from loading by disabling it in your Session preferences (System->Preferences->Session), and to kill it in your current session, "ps -ef |grep nm-applet" to get the process id to kill. This is a pretty counter-intuitive way of dealing with it, hopefully it will get improved in the next release (network monitor was new in Feisty).
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Actually, I've noticed this too. I have a 24" monitor at 1920x1200, nvidia 7900gt, and the available screen area just seems smaller on Ubuntu + Gnome than with Windows. The icons are a lot bigger, the system fonts are bigger. Not to mention, the fonts just aren't as smooth. If I make them smaller, no amount of antialiasing or "cleartype" fiddling in Gnome (I forget what it's actually called, sub-pixel rendering I think), will fix it. As it is, I'm stuck with fonts with a slight rainbow halo that are too big.
I've noticed that by default icons and fonts are larger on Linux than on Windows. I'm not sure if they just assume you'll be using a higher resolution than you do in Windows (which I do, specifically because the linux fonts are big enough to read at the higher resolution), or if they just want the extra pixels for better detail.
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 gett
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-Never heard of that issue
-It isn't. The installed application for listening to music is Banshee (and it is what pops up when you try to play music files by selecting one and clicking on it, too)
-Sounds like a codec issue, but if it is a problem with the player, try some of the alternatives, or at least installing the version of Totem (the movie player) that uses Xine. Players that could be recommended include VLC and Mplayer.
-If you
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Because it plays video as well as audio. I thinking Microsoft would get a little bent if they called it Media Player.
Most of your other problems sound like a video driver/X11/ Monitor issue. I had some of the same problems.
1. What video card are you using? Do you have the correct drivers selected. If it is an ATI then the historically bad ATI Linux drivers may be the issue.
2. What monitor is selected. This is the one that got me. I
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WoW on Ubuntu takes the same space/memory as WoW on XP/Vista, even if Linux might be able to reliably get away with half the memory of vista while using what a normal user would call a comfortable session manager (i.e. KDE or Gnome, not Console1, Console2, Console3 or TWM...)
And a 300MB div-x file takes 300MB, no matter what OS, etc.
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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.
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Astounding. (Score:5, Funny)
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Let's talk about half-full / half-empty glasses.
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...and an article about software licenses with 75k of legalese comments, and the day will be complete.
Yeah, and then what am I supposed to do with the rest of my day, work? It's only 10:30, man, we've still got 6 and a half hours to fill, and I'm not going to spend those reading legal commentary from people who think the bar exam is something they passed during "greek week" at community college! If this keeps up, I'll start a vi vs. emacs flame war. Consider yourself warned.
Just buy it with Vista (XP would be better) (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why would anyone not buy the Vista version if a quick download and a 30 minute install nets you bargain basement upgrades?
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I will never get used to all the damn registry edits (ok config edits) at the command line level to do things.
I'd love to call Dell and ask, why can't I copy files to \\root?
I used to have more time to play around learning, now I just want it to work the way I expect it to.
Damn aging.
And before you flame me, this post was dumbed down for the sake of a redneck calling into dell.
Yo Grark
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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 don't care if it's an oversight by Dell, or part of a major conspiracy by Microsoft against Linux or whatever. The point is that this gives Microsoft an unfair advan
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.
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If the Windows version is actually cheaper (and this is not just a temporary glitch in Dell's weird pricing system), by all
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if you are even THINKING of wiping out an o/s - it begs the question of WHY even patronize a company that you have to fight with from day-1?
vendors should EARN your business. its NOT the other way around, folks.
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if you are even THINKING of wiping out an o/s - it begs the question of WHY even patronize a company that you have to fight with from day-1?
Because I'm looking for the cheapest tool to do the job, not a cause to fight for. Additionally, as I mentioned - I don't want Ubuntu anyway, so the wipe is going to happen. As such, I don't give a rat's ass whether the OS I just wiped was Windows or Linux. So long as the Linux version exists, and is sold on the same hardware so I know Linux will run on it, give me
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Really, I Loved That Idea (Score:2)
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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
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(note in my last job i actually talked to an Indian person and he said that even if you switch to Indian it doesn't help)
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And the idea isn't necessarily to get a cheap computer. If that is what your looking for, buy an Emachine and do a net install of some distro. The idea behind Dell and linux computers is to have an offi
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When I got my HP laptop it came with MS Vista Ultimate and some "shovel ware", however since I wanted Linux on the Laptop I made a recovery disk and then proceeded to install Fedora 7. (I prefer the "dull bleeding edge" and Fedora 7 fits what I want perfectly). I found that nearly everything works except for the wireless which I don't need at the moment. Even the media co
Fluctuating price (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see a problem here (Score:4, Informative)
Inspiron Notebook 1420 N
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Ubuntu version 7.04
2GB Shared Dual Channel3 DDR2 at 667MHz
Size: 160GB2 SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
Price: $774
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Genuine Windows® Vista Home Basic Edition
Anti-glare, widescreen 14.1 inch display (1280x800)
FREE! 2GB2 Shared Dual Channel3 DDR2 at 667MHz
FREE! 160GB4 SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
24X CD writer/DVD Combo Drive
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card
Price:$819
Re:I don't see a problem here (Score:5, Informative)
DUH! (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been people here on Slashdot posting for a few months that the Open source and now linux laptops are in fact more expensive by around $200.00.
Statistics (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm quite impressed how the (quite obvious) spin was placed on this claim. It's only $275 more if you WANT to upgrade.
Still, i'm definitely disappointed in Dell; i'd have liked that upgrade for free too...(Although Vista would need it to Pagefile usage, whereas Ubuntu would use it for the hoards of FOSS that's available...)
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"Dell can't sell Vista against Ubuntu without throwing in free upgrades?"
Is zealotry just getting lazy these days or what?
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Granted, it's uncommon, but it happens more than you'd imagine.
AKA Microsoft is paying for the upgrade (Score:3)
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You think Microsoft is giving Dell kickbacks worth around $200 to gain an extra sale of an OS probably worth well under $100 at trade rates? Interesting logic you've got there, but I don't recommend management as a career path!
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Don't forget that you pay for those thingies 200 bucks. But that has to mean in turn that whoever sells them to you has to pay less for them, or he's basically a moron in a free market economy world.
Also, with software licenses a license you wouldn't sell is no loss when you give it away. Imagine I wrote software and sell it. You don't care about that software. It's for, let's say, OS/2. And I assume you don't use OS/2 (if you do, imagine it's for something else). So you wouldn't buy
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.
Nothing like a good knee-jerk in the morning... (Score:5, Informative)
So Dell's base 1420 with Ubuntu costs $747 [dell.com] with these specs:
Meanwhile, Dell's Windows equivalent has exact same specs, except for these differences:
And the Windows version costs $869 [dell.com]. So the Ubuntu version is $122 cheaper and has a better WiFi card.
Remind me again... what did you step in?
CORRECTION (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, I transposed numbers on the Ubuntu price -- the machine is $774, not $747, so the difference is $95, not $122.
My apologies. But Dell's Ubuntu system is still cheaper.
Moving price targets (Score:3, Funny)
And, checking the Windows price again, it's dropped $50 from when I checked it before (for a price difference of $45).
I give up. Maybe if I check again in 20 minutes, Dell's Windows systems really will cost less than Ubuntu.
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I take it that you've never had to support the Intel ProSet software in a large business environment. I would never use "Intel" and "better" in the same sentence when describing Intel's wireless NICs. Yes, it's baby-and-the-bathwater time: I hate Intel wireless NICs because their ProSet software is so sucky. We are going to be taking a serious look at the Juniper (used to be Funk) Odyssey Access Client to replace the crappy ProSet soft
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No, I haven't, so I will defer to your expertise in this. I was simply commenting on the apparent feature differences: the Intel card covers 802.11 flavors "a" and "g", while the Dell only supports "g" (according to the specs I pulled from the Dell site).
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.
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The fact is that we were all happy to see that Dell were selling Linux boxes at a reasonable discount. Then we felt betrayed when they offer these "free" upgrades for the windows machines.
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.
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2. OO works on Windows and Linux. I'm not sure how having a Windows laptop automatically adds the cost of Office.
3. Bad habits of the user will remain no matter the tool. I run Windows and Linux and I don't have spyware on either. If I bork a Wind
Of course Windows will make it cheaper in the end (Score:2)
Well, of course Microsoft gives Dell kickbacks. So does Yahoo, so does AOL, so does McAfee or Norton, and so does everyone else who has their software pre-installed on Dell's Windows machines. You think Dell puts all that crapware there out of the kindness of their heart, or because they think its useful? Hell no, they put it there because they are being paid to put it ther
Dell: We sell what you need (Score:2)
Like buying Fairtrade Bananas from Wal*Mart... (Score:2)
Given that MS are probably not going to be $50 worse off because you buy a PC without Windows (I can't believe that Dell don't have some sort of fixed-price license agreement) I'd get the one with Windows on the grounds that if I ever did need to run Windows (often hard to avoid under our Windows-loving Overlords) getting a "full" copy costs 3x as much as a bundled copy.
If, however, you see this as a matter of principle then there are plenty of smaller suppliers/system builders who do price Windows separat
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.
No biggie (Score:3, Informative)
Bought my Dell-Ubuntu Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
In the past, I've tried different distrobutions (SUSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, among others) and have always taken it off my system because some annoying little hardware incompatibility caused me problems. So, while Dell may be charging a little extra for Ubuntu, I think there's something to be said about getting a Linux computer that will "just work" right out of the box.
I also have to mention that I don't feel cheated. I have a great system, 20" Widescreen Flat Panel, 2 GB of RAM, Core 2 Duo (1.X can't remember), the NVIDIA GFX (7300 Lite or something) card, 250 GB SATA HDD, DVD+-RW Dual Layer and another DVD-ROM as well. As some of the other posters had mentioned, this may have not been the "perfect deal" but I only paid about $1000 for the whole system. To me this is a sight better than paying $900 for the same machine using Vista and then having to repurchase Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks; does VS 2005 work on Vista?
Funny enough though, while Vista's having all these compatibility issues with the previous generation's software, I'm using the old Studio 8 suite on Linux under WINE and it's running faster than it did in Windows.
Higher cost? (Score:2)
Cheaping out on an otherwise free memory upgrade doesn't make any sense though, unless they're just trying to hide the
I call schenanagans (Score:3, Informative)
Some anti-MS or pro-Linux person, whichever, was obviously sitting on Dell's website waiting for this to be the case.
Anyone who goes to Dell's site or follows any of the bargain sites (fatwallet, slickdeals, techbargains, etc) knows that Dell deals change on a daily basis. One day you'll be able to buy a PC cheap without a monitor, the next day the purchase will require purchase of a monitor, the next day they'll throw in a RAM upgrade out of nowhere. I know last week there was a deal for a Linux box for around $250 off of Dell's site. They do this to keep people checking back. When someone sees a deal that looks good, they'll eventually make an impulse buy.
This isn't news worthy at all.
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.
Theres something wrong with the tag line (Score:2, Insightful)
Misleading tag.
Three Things To Think About Dell Win Upgrades (Score:3, Funny)
2. Price for upgrade to memory due to how lousy an OS WinVista is - $0
3. Realizing you got more by choosing Ubuntu Linux instead - Priceless
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, I'm skeptical. Like others said, this offer was probably good for about 3 hours. Dell's like Amazon in that respect, although fortunately for them, they haven't accidentally discounted and entire purchase to "free" yet!
Perhaps, but it will backfire (Score:2)
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What's the incentive? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's the incentive? (Score:4, Funny)
It's the Slashdot corollary to the Cartoon Law of Falling Anvils (Law IX) [funnies.paco.to]:
Everything moves faster than Slashdot submissions.
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Re:What's the incentive? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's probably that, and possibly that somebody didn't think to update the pricing for the Linux packages. As someone else mentioned, their prices are highly dynamic, and configuring the exact same system from
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Assuming you take the 10 minutes it takes to do the labor yourself (which is
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Oh! and bonus points if it is Linux friendly... I really would like to have XP+Ubuntu on this machine (without having to buy an external CardBus wireless adaptor).
Unless you're doing gaming, why not just go with Ubuntu and virtualize Windows? You can even make the Windows apps appear seamlessly on the Linux desktop [digg.com] (ie, not in a desktop window).
VMWare Server and VirtualBox are free. I haven't used VirtualBox so I can't comment on it, but VMWare Server's snapshot feature* alone makes this nicer than running Windows native.
* It's rather crippled compared to the snapshot feature in VMWare Workstation, though.
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Given the choices on their various buying portals, it should be no surprise for advertising sa
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60% of Dell customers (minus business) wouldn't pay attention to the OS. Therefore it would cost them customers when people were unhappy with the system they got when they opened up the box
I'd put forward that a signifigant portion of that 60% wouldn't pay attention to the OS after the box was opened either. Sure, it would be different, but they're expecting that. Its a new computer...
If the system is good to go and everything 'just works', I imagine they might not even become 'unhappy' until their first compatibility problem comes along.
AND, since we're talking Intel graphics here, we're not talking about gamers. Nor is the Ubuntu system likely to offer MS Office 2007 as a pre-installati