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I assume you're joking

I would have guessed that US-UK relations have taken a turn for the worse due to Dell customer support.

Dell's UK site for the laptop says "Windows 7 or Windows 8 – Choose the operating system that suits you".

They sell the refurbs via dell outlet. I bought a rather nice XPS from dell outlet a few years ago (with a big discount). It's still going strong, so I assume they fix them before sending them out again.....

Not on http://www.dell.co.uk/ - this is the EU we are talking about not America - different sites you know.

The tragedy is that if you try to "Shop for Ubuntu laptops" from the Dell Ubuntu page that the example from the TFA is linked to - every single option is Microsoft Windows!!! There are NO Ubuntu products for sale! You can't even deselect the operating system.

I bought Dell Nseries laptops for my business in the UK 2 years ago when they were on sale at Dell, mostly XPS M1330N and 1525N - we have no upgrade option at all and cannot replace with Dell. Everytime I ring a Dell account manager, they just say "Windows 7" like some sort of demented zombie and they cannot make any guarantees about whether the chipset will work with Linux. They also send us all the "Dell recommends Windows 7" business marketing - we have never bought a Microsoft product from Dell.

Despite that, we have been very happy with the N-series, especially the XPS M1330N laptops. They are still current and really the only replacements are for those dunked in coffee or left on trains etc.

DELL - ARE YOU LISTENING? THIS IS A PISSTAKE.

And those that do buy the gaming PC's are stupid anyway.

I know seven intelligent people who did buy a Dell XPS laptop (Personally, I don't ever use Dell) instead of custom building some tower system. They aren't even gamers but from what I've seen, they haven't had troubles at all with them and the hardware is top notch.

(Hey, if you can waste time arguing on the internet, you can spend the time to spec the parts and build it yourself for a fraction of the price.)

Here has been my reason for buying from a company rather than custom building:

If one component fails and fries the rest of the system, I'm covered. If that happens on a custom built system, I'm not covered and will have to cough up the money for every part but the part that fried - note that the components used would be exactly the same components anyone custom building would buy.

Considering the fact that I can pretty much customize every part I ever wanted now and last time I did this, the price difference was £15 between home made and custom built (ordered from a company) with a two year warranty...

I'm just not seeing this great advantage, sorry.

As an 'expert' system administrator (albeit unpaid) I have four servers. One is running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, one is running Microsoft Window Server 2003, one is running Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Server), and the other is running Apple OS X Server (10.4).

I can tell you now that when I first started my company, although I was a major advocate of Linux, I soon found that I did not have the time to maintain a then Gentoo or custom LFS distribution, Debian was far too heavy to pick up, and Slackware felt a little dated. So I took a look at Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, liked what I saw, and bought a Dell PowerEdge 400SC with an OEM install.

At first Small Business Server was a breath of fresh air. It was easy to maintain, with a full complement of features, having been bundled with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, and Window Sharepoint Services. I actually enjoyed - yes, enjoyed - using it.

Until backup stated to fail. Until my tape drive disappeared. Until the sharepoint website database got corrupted. Until exchange monitoring failed. Until the POP connector started to thrash the CPU. Until the Windows Update website failed to check for updates.

These things happened. I'm not saying that they wouldn't happed with another system, but that is not the point, since they happened to me, and that caused me grief, and time, and money to resolve. I ended up trying to build a new system based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, since I already had Microsoft specific data (files and tables), but this proved even more difficult to maintain.

I struggled for eighteen months, and then decided to build an Ubuntu 5.10 server. I use Ubuntu on one of my laptop, and had gently learnt the apt- way, and liked it. I set up a server with similar features to the Small Business Server, using Postfix, MySQL, and Plone, and even went some ways to transferring my sharepoint data. It works. It hasn't failed yet.

I bet the guys who took part in the survey only set up a server, installed some applications, and patched it. I bet they didn't try running a business for 18-months, just to see what it was really like.

I must say that we recently purchased an Apple PowerMac, and were so impressed we are now looking at completely switching, hence the OS X Server. It is a dream to install and configure, but we are going to run it for several months until we are satisfied that it can do the job.

The suspend issue (volume applet crashing) is a bug which Dell shouldn't have let slip, whilst the Synaptics issue is easily solvable with third party tools and has a specification here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GnomeTouchpadManager .

Yes those are problems, but seriously, the number of people who think that such things are what's holding back the fabled Linux Desktop are delusional. Firstly they should look into chaos theory, there's no way everything can be controlled and still end up with a useful system. Secondly, Windows has masses of problems, like, for instance, no DVD support. The side by side comparisons of Windows vs. Ubuntu vs. OSX are only useful as eyeball attractors for adverts, the real problem in the way of the Year of the Linux Desktop is that of positive feedback loops. People use Windows because people develop for Windows because people use Windows, people use Windows so they can use Microsoft Office because the people they know use Microsoft Office, etc. Free Software systems make a point of NOT locking their users in, thus users' choice is usually between either a Free Software system like Ubuntu which sacrifices some locked-down functionality of other systems, or using a non-free system (basically, Windows) which has some functionality Microsoft restricts from their competitors along with all of the Free Software functionality happily made available by the Free Software community (OpenDocument-compatible office suites, Ogg codecs, etc.).

This makes standards adoption the most important issue to tackle, in my opinion. If files are made available in open formats via standard protocols then the locked-down functionality of systems is minimised, and thus the choice becomes more level. Hopefully a feedback loop can be established for standards, but the whole idea of standardisation means that such a loop can be sabotaged, basically since Microsoft can easily support Ogg formats in Windows Media Player and OpenDocument in Microsoft Office, but by keeping Windows Media and proprietary Office formats (including OOXML) around they once again have the upper hand, everything that Free Software supports can be matched, but Windows Media and Office formats by their very nature can't be competed with.

I believe what you say, and I appreciate your efforts that helped bring the CIID directive crashing to a halt over two years ago! :)

However you said that the Toshiba laptop that you purchased came with Windows (unless I misunderstood your post). That means that some of your money went back to Microsoft. :(

BTW, the machines are now available if you go to http://dell.co.uk/ubuntu. They don't seem to be available from anywhere on Dell's main site, but that was to be expected and follows the precedent set by their US site (dell.com).

The links on that page didn't work a few hours ago, but they are fine now. I assume that it takes a few hour for any kind of update to be applied to all of Dell's horribly complicated and confusing site. Of course, it seems to be too much to hope for Dell to update the web site before announcing that the Ubuntu systems are available... it's too late now since this whole story is full of comments saying that the links are broken. :)

http://www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu
http://www.dell.fr/ubuntu
http://www.dell.de/ubuntu

Hidden in the press release and not obvious on the main UK site is a text link to www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu

Following this link takes you to the "Dell with Ubuntu" homepage, but clicking on "Choose Desktop" or "Choose Notebook" results in a 404.

Excellent work there Dell.

We get a very mixed message. Searching Dell's UK site for 'Ubuntu' brings up this page, but if you go through all the options on the online store, Linux isn't there.

It's not more expensive hardware.

Go to http://www.apple.com/uk/ and look at the spec and price of a mid range Mac Book. Then go to http://www.dell.co.uk/ and spec up a Dell Inspiron laptop with the same specs as that Mac Book and you'll find they actually come out with the Dell being a few quid more than the Mac (Spec 2Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1 Gb 667Mhz memory, bluetooth, wifi, shiny 1280 x 800 screen, integral graphics, Vista Ultimate) for the same functionality.

And that excludes the fact that OS-X is more memory and processor efficient than Vista on the same hardware so you actually need a faster processor and memory on the Windows machine. If you do the same exercise with a desktop machine and an iMac (2.13 Ghz Core Duo 2, 1Ghz Memory, etc. I can't find a Dell with a high enough spec graphics card and they don't support wifi and bluetooth on the model I picked), the iMac is even cheaper (about £100). The hardware cost no longer holds true when buying a computer from a reliable manufacture.

Generally when people say Macs are expensive they're thinking of the old days when they were prohibitively so. And when they argue its still true its because they're comparing a PC put together at home from components and forget about the cost of the software. When I looked through the feature sets of Vista I decided the only one I would want to have is Ultimate since its the only one that has everything I need. (I currently run XP Pro on my PC at home). Ultimate costs £300!

As an 'expert' system administrator (albeit unpaid) I have four servers. One is running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, one is running Microsoft Window Server 2003, one is running Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Server), and the other is running Apple OS X Server (10.4).

I can tell you now that when I first started my company, although I was a major advocate of Linux, I soon found that I did not have the time to maintain a then Gentoo or custom LFS distribution, Debian was far too heavy to pick up, and Slackware felt a little dated. So I took a look at Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, liked what I saw, and bought a Dell PowerEdge 400SC with an OEM install.

At first Small Business Server was a breath of fresh air. It was easy to maintain, with a full complement of features, having been bundled with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, and Window Sharepoint Services. I actually enjoyed - yes, enjoyed - using it.

Until backup stated to fail. Until my tape drive disappeared. Until the sharepoint website database got corrupted. Until exchange monitoring failed. Until the POP connector started to thrash the CPU. Until the Windows Update website failed to check for updates.

These things happened. I'm not saying that they wouldn't happed with another system, but that is not the point, since they happened to me, and that caused me grief, and time, and money to resolve. I ended up trying to build a new system based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, since I already had Microsoft specific data (files and tables), but this proved even more difficult to maintain.

I struggled for eighteen months, and then decided to build an Ubuntu 5.10 server. I use Ubuntu on one of my laptop, and had gently learnt the apt- way, and liked it. I set up a server with similar features to the Small Business Server, using Postfix, MySQL, and Plone, and even went some ways to transferring my sharepoint data. It works. It hasn't failed yet.

I bet the guys who took part in the survey only set up a server, installed some applications, and patched it. I bet they didn't try running a business for 18-months, just to see what it was really like.

I must say that we recently purchased an Apple PowerMac, and were so impressed we are now looking at completely switching, hence the OS X Server. It is a dream to install and configure, but we are going to run it for several months until we are satisfied that it can do the job.

I am in the US so this is a US-centric response but may be the same in the UK. Here the XBOX is called (and only called) a "video game system". That what is being sold/purchased at the register. If you wanted a computer, maybe you should have checked out the PlayStation 2 Computer Entertainment System or an offering from Dell.co.uk.

Again, this is clearly how this would play out in the US, but YMMV if they are calling the XBOX something else there.