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Is MS planning on becoming a service organization?

Yup.

Managed services (read: recurring revenue) is all the rage now. OneCare is only for consumers currently, but don't be surprised if once they get it rolling they whip up a plan for companies as well.

Dell is doing managed services as well, and has frightened my company into no longer selling Dell equipment. We're afraid they're going to try to poach our customers (whose contact info they already have due to the previous equipment sales).

This was partly modded Funny, but I see little funny about this. I rely on financial aid for tuition. I should NOT have to relinquish that to pay for licensing fees and royalties that would diminish my freedom. That's why I got a non-HDCP-equipped, China-made monitor now, and will not pay for HDCP-equipped ones the company(ies) make(s) in the future (I got back much of its cost from my old screen and other things; money is not too much of a prob there). I've lost a lot (but not all) of faith in American tech business. Or something like that.

given that you can get a dell computer with monitor for about $400.

"The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap -- perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars."

You mean like one of these:
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features. aspx/featured_basdt?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Something tells me, between tech support and corporate infrastructure, very little of that cost is the "microsoft tax".

The N-Series is also sold on the Consumer (ie: home user) segment, also. And you can get it off the website, at least on Dimension desktops. Go to Dell.com, choose the Home segment, point at Desktops, then click on Open Source: here: http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.as px/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

While Dell offers an open source machine to consumers already, (http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.a spx/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs) and has for over a year now, many business division customers have internal IT requirments, and submit an image to Dell, who install it on all ordered machines. This can be anything (ie: Unix/Linux, Solaris, MS), and does have limited support by Dell, since it is installed at Dell with their image "by Dell". If you read the notifications at Dell's site, it explicitly states that Dell does not support any OS not installed by Dell. Usually, the CFI's are installed for corporate customers without additional costs, except as necessary for licensing purposes. Anything the end-user installs on their own, could not be supported by Dell, as the end-user will not install the OS, in general, in any sort of standardized way. Dell technical support is not clairvoyant.

Dell offers Open Source machines, and has for over a year. Go to Dell.com, choose home and home office segment, then point at Desktops at the top of the page, and choose Open Source Desktops. This will get you to this page:
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.as px/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

I've mentioned it before, but my company has been buying Dell desktops without an OS installed for a couple of years. Their N-Series desktops come with no MS tax and a copy of FreeDOS in the box.

Novell Linux Desktop 9 (SuSE) with OpenOffice runs on all (12) desktops in our office. Novell does a pretty good job of providing tech support - even for the folks who haven't used Linux before. We still call Dell for any issues with the hardware.

Back when we were running Debian the Dell tech support folks weren't much help, but they seem to have their act together when we run either Red Hat or NLD.

Yes they are!

This is not what we want but it is exactly counter to your claim. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.as px/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

Yes, if you like. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.as px/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn/

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.a spx/desktops_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

End of argument.
Thank you.

I was searching around tonight, and found this:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=sc430r649&s=bsd

It comes standard with Small Buisness Server 2003 (Server/Exchange/ISA) and it is $548 *LESS* then Redhat Enterprise.

Ok, I know that SBS is limited in some ways compaired with the full version of Server 2003 (Things like only a single DC can be running SBS) but thats not something I would expect to see.

You actually can already do it, at least here in Brazil.
Dell offers the n-Series of Desktop computers, without any MS software. It comes with FreeDOS.

Free translation from Dell homepage (originaly in Portuguese):

"The n-Series systems are some of the desktop and workstations selected from the Dell Dimention(TM), Dell OptiPlex(TM) and Dell Precision(TM) series sold without an operation system.

Avaliable for IT professionals wishing to have control over instalation and development of their systems. A copy of the FreeDOS(TM) open source operating system is provided with the n-Series systems, inside its box ready for instalation. Some of the n-Series systems are also avaliable with the Linux operating system".

This comes from this url.

Yeah as far as I know dell has supported a large number of both workstations and servers with linux on them for quite a while, check out here for more details.

Not so fast...Dell already does Linux.

Besides, don't just think personal computers. If the boss says, "We're going to use Linux on all our workstations" that will be it. And someone like Dell wouldn't mind supplying it.

As reported in the January 2006 Linux Journal. Details at http://www.dell.com/nseriesE510

Nothing in life is Free....not even FreeDOS. If you look closely at the fine print next to the operating system selection, it says FreeDOS is included in the price.

I'm speculating this is where the $20 comes from...

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?CS=19&kc=19&oc=DE510SAP

Take a look at this forum before buying

http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/me ssage?board.id=dim_monitor&message.id=46949

For most of 2005 this monitor has had a problem with a squealing noise.
If you are an individual you might try contacting technical support now. I did and found that while businesses were supported, getting in contact by phone was beyond me.

Where is the option to buy a Dell box with a blank drive or some linux distro

Dell n-series

They've got the same system with XP media center for $20 less.. Tell me again how there's no "Microsoft tax". http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?CS=19&kc=19&oc=DE510SAP

This is just not true.
You can order a Dell without an OS. At least in the US.

If you look at their configurator for the 2850, for example, the rackmountable server, you'll see it is discounted $599 over Win Server 2K3 for the No OS option.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=pe2850-max&s=bsd

Granted this an extremely recent phenomenon, but options are appearing in the marketplace:

http://www.sun.com/desktop/index.jsp

http://h10018.www1.hp.com/wwsolutions/linux/certif ications.html

http://linux.dell.com/desktops.shtml

Have you set up a computer with Dell? Recently I was purchasing one for my student government. I had specific things I wanted, and specific ones I did not want. For instance, through my school, Windows XP Professional is $10. So I most definately did not want windows on there. This, however, is something I was told is impossible. From a sales rep, hired to represent the schools interest I heard "I'm sorry sir, we do not ship computers without Microsoft." No lie. You can change specific parts, but when EVERY computer is shipped with a specific OS, that cost is built into every computer regardless of how small it is.

Would I call that a monopoly? No, that's just a crappy partnership that works against its customers (granted, as is the point of such partnerships).

Now, I realize that Dell ships Linux and I'm not sure why I was told the above, but notice what they use. Red Hat Enterprise. Again, you pay an extra fee for the OS, when there are so many free ones out there. Look at the price, $900 for a, granted 3 gHz, 512 MB RAM, 48X CD-ROM (not burner) and only 80 GB hard drive. This is by far a bad deal, probably because they don't purchase RH installs with quite the frequency of Windows, so they pay a lot closer to the real price of $179 (basic) or $299 (Standard).

No Operating System, Microsoft [Included in Price]
No Operating System add $0
No Operating System, Red Hat Linux Configuration add $0

Even when buying a non server n-series "linux" box, they still charge you the same as if you are getting XP:

Dell 380 with XP $899
Dell n380 with 1yr RH support $899

My guess is that they are now allowed to sell alternate OS configurations as long as it's not cheaper than the stock MS configuration. That way, people will still have to pay the MS tax and not snag a discount and then just run a pirated MS OS.

No Operating System, Microsoft [Included in Price]
No Operating System add $0
No Operating System, Red Hat Linux Configuration add $0

Even when buying a non server n-series "linux" box, they still charge you the same as if you are getting XP:

Dell 380 with XP $899
Dell n380 with 1yr RH support $899

My guess is that they are now allowed to sell alternate OS configurations as long as it's not cheaper than the stock MS configuration. That way, people will still have to pay the MS tax and not snag a discount and then just run a pirated MS OS.

Is two clicks too hard? Dell.com -> Small Business -> Desktops and Workstations
Dell Open Source Desktops
"Our most popular models sold without a Microsoft® operating system or with Linux factory installed."

As far as more expensive? You're marginally right. Not a lot of difference, though.
Maybe they end up with more support costs, and the volume licensing Dell pays for Windows is really cheap.

Okay. I'll get one of the Dell n-Series line.

Dell has an entire line of PCs, the n-Series, without Windows. They start at a rock bottom $359 for a low end Celeron and range all the way up to a maxed-out P4.

In any case, there's a solution that doesn't require a new TV: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360vgahdc able/

Plugs right into your TV monitor. Haven't tried it myself. I went for an LCD TV from Dell, nifty, as it doubles as a TV (with a TV tuner), HDTV for gaming, and a computer LCD.

I'm not sure what area you are coming from, but in what I do (astronomy, but I've seen this in other academic depts.) the number of apples have gone way up. Nearly every new laptop is an apple (with the exception of a few thinkpads or dells for the die-hard linux users).

It's not really a question of what area I'm from/in -- it's a question of what Apple's actually selling. Since you mention laptops, let's take a look at them: according to Apple's latest 10-Q report, they had 12% year-on-year growth in laptops. Dell's latest 10-Q shows approximately 40% growth in laptops.

Unfortunately, while I'm ambitious enough to find real numbers for Apple and Dell, trying to figure up Thinkpad sales across the transition from IBM to Lenevo is a bit more than I'm willing to try right now...

I suspect that it will take roughly the same amount of time that the CEO & board-of-directors take to decide wether they want to risk their money mass-manufacturing a computer for people five-kilometers below the poverty line.

There's nothing revolutionary about the MIT system. It could have been built fifteen years ago (albeit using less advanced parts). But, there's no large profit in it, and the "large" part is just as important as the "profit". Frankly, I'm surprised they were able to find anyone willing to use their manufacturing capacity to mass produce these. Quanta's CEO is either unusually progressive for a suit ("You know what, I'm willing to take a bit of a cut in profits for this."), or is getting a substantial subsidy per-unit to offset the lower margins.

Dell is already selling desktops for $299. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs By the time these things get down to $100, what price will it be to buy from Dell or another manufacturer?

Dude, buy a PDA.

Really. Pick one you like (Palm or PocketPC/Windows Mobile/whatever it's called now) and just carry it with you. There are dozens of time-tracking apps for both platforms, as well as others (Symbian, Smartphone, etc.).

New laptop is Inspiron 6000 15.4" widescreen (WUXGA) with 1920x1200 res. Go down to the screen and you'll find some link "help me choose" and it'll show the res on the different screens.

A qualitative laptop review with no images, thanks /. I'll never get that minute of my life back.
This hulking, ugly, outdated and overpriced laptop was trumped before it was fab'd by the Dell XPS Gen 2, which can be had for much much less $$$. Dell has even moved on from that model to the new XPS M170 which is also cheaper and blows this awful laptop completely out of the water.

Are you people joking or just ignorant zealots? The CEO of Intel is absolutely correct. Big surprise, a highly successful businessman knows what he's talking about!

Here's a little tidbit to mull over. Dell is presently the highest volume laptop company in the world. Dell sells their Inspiron B120 laptop for $500 and their Lattitude 610 laptop for $1,000. Which do you think sells more? The much cheaper B120 for $500? No! The best selling laptop that Dell has ever had has been and continues to be the Lattitude 610 at fully twice the price of the B120!

So, why would people spend twice as much if they really want the cheap one? The reason is that while everyone would rather spend less money, they regard features as being more important than cost. They gladly pay twice as much for the more powerful and more featureful unit. The same is true when it comes to the "$100 Laptop". There will be some people that buy it both for the price and for the novelty but, most people would rather, and likely will, buy the $500 Dell because it is significantly more powerful, featureful and useful that the $100 laptop. And even then the more expensive Lattitude 610 will still outsell all others.

The CEO of Intel is informed enough to realize that people that need to hand crank their PC have more pressing and urgent needs than working on a spreadsheet that is restricted to only their computer(read no network) and they have even less need or ability to access the internet. Most people that would need to hand crank a PC do not need a PC at all! When the hippies in Massachusetts and the idots on Slashdot travel a bit and learn that the world is much different than they imagine in their snowbound fantasy world, they will realize that Intel's CEO is absolutely right!

Are you people joking or just ignorant zealots? The CEO of Intel is absolutely correct. Big surprise, a highly successful businessman knows what he's talking about!

Here's a little tidbit to mull over. Dell is presently the highest volume laptop company in the world. Dell sells their Inspiron B120 laptop for $500 and their Lattitude 610 laptop for $1,000. Which do you think sells more? The much cheaper B120 for $500? No! The best selling laptop that Dell has ever had has been and continues to be the Lattitude 610 at fully twice the price of the B120!

So, why would people spend twice as much if they really want the cheap one? The reason is that while everyone would rather spend less money, they regard features as being more important than cost. They gladly pay twice as much for the more powerful and more featureful unit. The same is true when it comes to the "$100 Laptop". There will be some people that buy it both for the price and for the novelty but, most people would rather, and likely will, buy the $500 Dell because it is significantly more powerful, featureful and useful that the $100 laptop. And even then the more expensive Lattitude 610 will still outsell all others.

The CEO of Intel is informed enough to realize that people that need to hand crank their PC have more pressing and urgent needs than working on a spreadsheet that is restricted to only their computer(read no network) and they have even less need or ability to access the internet. Most people that would need to hand crank a PC do not need a PC at all! When the hippies in Massachusetts and the idots on Slashdot travel a bit and learn that the world is much different than they imagine in their snowbound fantasy world, they will realize that Intel's CEO is absolutely right!

So? RHEL is a support contract. I doubt Sun is handing out service contracts for free or even price matching RH.

Perhaps you should start comparing prices, then:

• Sun Support is available in three levels: Basic, Standard, and Premium. The prices are $120/yr, $240/yr, and $360/yr for a single processor-socket system. $360/yr gets you unlimited live phone support 24/7.
• Meanwhile, Red Hat offers a wider variety of support plans, including separate workstation and server plans. The cheapest server plan is $349/yr and the most expensive is $2499/yr. You'd have to get the $2499 plan to get 24/7 phone support.

So, it would appear that Sun's support prices are actually lower rather than beating Red Hat's. In fact, for one of Sun's cheapest server systems, you can get Platinum support for $2304 for three years. Platinum support includes both 24/7 software support and 24/7 two-hour response time on-site hardware support. That's cheaper then one year of Red Hat's software-only 24/7 support.

Sun hardware is getting competitive, which is a good thing but 'dirt cheap'? Put down the crackpipe.

Again, compare prices:

• You can buy a 1U, Opteron server system from Sun for $745.00. It doesn't have a disk, but you can add one for $150, bringing the price to $895.
• Meanwhile, the cheapest rack mount server of any kind you can get from Dell will cost you $999. It does include a disk, but its processor is a Celeron with 256K cache.

So, the Sun server may not be as cheap as building a system out of spare parts lying around in your basement, but it really is pretty cheap compared to the competition in that space.

x86s are the cheapest general purpose computers on the market. With windows, they can be had for 300 dollars. I would call that price fairly irrelevant if you want in on computing.

Aside from that, the WMV codecs are available as binary only packages. Possibly illegal, but again, that comes down to principles.

I've really got to stop defending this point of mine...

OS Platform Stats October 2005:

Windows XP and Win.NET 72% Up 2% from September 05
Linux 3% Up 1% from March 03

This is how the world looks to a web developer. I'll leave it to your imagination where Microsoft stands in the home market.

you can pirate Windows and run it on a cheap PC if you need to

or you can buy a brand new Celeron PC with a 17" CRT, XP Home and Word Perfect from Dell for $250 plus shipping: Basic Desktops

We should be Lenient to Larry - As a member of tech force! Larry has clearly saved people on more than 1 occasion:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx /corp/media/en/tech_force_noemail?c=us&l=en&s=corp

There are companies that truly believe in open source and its philosophy and there are companies like sun. This is a hail-marry effort to stop their impending demise. Their market share has been dwindling for years and it's starting to tank even more, especially with the linux options

I can see where you're coming from, and honestly, it feels a bit like that to me as well. Sun didn't make their fortune on open source (although they have been involved with open software and open standards for quite some time), so I suspect the attitude towards it is mixed.

In fact, I recently went to an OpenSolaris users' group meeting at my local Sun facility, and one of the Sun people did mention that open sourcing Solaris was kind of a hard sell with the management, but that the "a rising tide benefits us all" argument did eventually win out. So, are they true believers? Undoubtedly, many Sun employees are, and surely some are skeptical. But even if 100% of them aren't behind it, you have to give them credit for being willing to try new things.

Now, on to the question of whether this is a Hail Mary. My own opinion is that if it were just this one thing in isolation, that wouldn't be a good sign. But, over the last year, Sun has done lots of things that kick ass. Solaris 10 kicks ass. ZFS, which they've just released, kicks ass[1]. (As the ZFS slides say, "ZFS Objective: End the Suffering", and that refers to the tedium of storage management on ALL platforms.) Sun is already working on projects and starting new projects to address shortcomings with Solaris on the desktop. Though they of course support gcc, the newest version of their own proprietary compiler (and dev environment), Sun Studio 11, is now free as in beer. And it's available for both Solaris and Linux, and pretty clearly generates better code on SPARC and is pretty competitive on x86.

Some of their new Opteron hardware is quite cool and cost competitive with similar Dell systems[2]. And they also have their 8-core, 4-simultaneous-hardware-thread Niagara chips.

The point is, like in years past, it can once again be said that Sun is doing cool stuff. So if you want to go with the football analogies, it could be a Hail Mary, or it could be that halftime has just ended, Sun has just studied the films to see what they need to adjust, and they're back on the field and ready to make something happen.

[1] Check out the (PDF) slides about it, or either of the two demos, or some of the other documentation.

[2] In fact, compare the cheapest 1U Dell server with the cheapest 1U Sun server. The Dell has a Celeron with 256KB cache in a server (!!!), and the Sun has an Opteron with 1MB cache. And the Sun is $745, whereas the Dell is $999. The only negative with the Sun is that it has no disk, but that option is $150, leaving it at $895, still over $100 cheaper than the Dell. Oh yeah, and the Sun hardware is qualified to run RHEL, SUSE Linux, Solaris 10, or Windows.

It's already here ... apart from the thin and light part ... $5000 for a Dell Precision M70. (oh, not cheap either)

But it does kick ass.

Sun

HP

IBM

Dell

The first 3 I know are for real. I don't know much about Dell, but much more prominenet like that you can't have it.

And altough other manufacturers (shame on them) are less helpful (Toshiba...) they may be weaking up to the reality of the marketplace that Linux is becoming. You would need to hack far less since many hardware manufacturers are realising Linux is here to stay. You did not have a resource like Toshiba's a few years ago.

The old pitiful excuse not to use Linux argueing there is no hardware officially certified to run it, should be soundly ignored.

I don't use Sendmail anymore but, I'm sure you can still do it. I use Postfix now and to duplicate my mail traffic I simply use a bash script with tee that sends one copy of the message to the production server and another copy to the archive/test server. Works great and it's dead simple. The Postfix content_filter option pipes to:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/spamc | tee alt-transport | /usr/sbin/sendmail -i "$@"
exit $?

As for performance testing and methodologies I would recommend that you look at this rather old 2001 document from Dell. It goes into great detail on what to do, how to do it and what tools to use. It is an excellent document and it is Sendmail specific.

Some have complained that they're not extremely Linux friendly because, for example, they use ATI cards rather than Nvidia, but I would consider buying one. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.as px/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs