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This is a Bad Idea TM. A machine to "just surf the Web" sounds great in concept but in reality does not cut the mustard. Look at the Web these days. People want to watch video, read big PDFs, and do it all with "teh snappy," in other words fast page renders.

And rare is the employee who can get work done exclusively on the Web. Most will want one of: Word, Excel, PowerPoint. And for sake of compatibility they'll want versions that can read docs created by the most recent version without pain.

With a new Dell starting at $299, why would one invest in

*Employee training to use the new centralized/Webified OS and workflow
*Licenses for the client OS
*License OS for the server
*Buy hardware for the server

All to keep poking along on the same old hardware? Are corporations really this short sided? A new copmuter is less than a tenth of one month's pay for someone making just $30,000 per year.

Meh. Dell started offering computers with builtin batteries this months ago. And they even include a monitor.

Cool, the PS3 supports 1080p... the obvious irony being that only Bill Gates can afford an HDTV display device that can handle 1080p. Actually, no. I'm about to buy one - the Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW. I'll use it with my computer, but it's no coincidence that its resolution is 1920x1080.

$1000 for a video card when Dell is selling entire desktop systems for $299 now.

Apple cannot make the money back through game purchases the way console makers can, this is why they can't cram three 3+GHz CPUs into a $500 personal computer along with a 40+Gig 7200 RPM hard drive.

Dell does it all the time and they are not selling a games to subsidze. Here is an example. Not exactly gaming because the have crappy video cards but they come with 17 LCDs..

This is like most every other /. hardware story.

"Ooooh, look! Ultra cheap computer!" It's only missing X, Y, and Z. And once you buy what you need to make it useful for yourself, you'd have been better off just buying what you needed in the first place.

As much as I despise Walmart, they have been doing a hell of a job undermining the artifically high notebook prices that were completely universal until they stepped-in. If you want a cheap laptop, you should actually buy one From Walmart, or From Dell, and actually get what you need, rather than buying some tablet PC, and trying (unsuccessfully) to upgrade it to what you need.

For $230, you can get a new Dell 2.4GHz Celeron box on sale with a refurbished monitor.

You either found a really short-term special offer or you are full of sh*t. The machine you mention is in fact $298 and NOT $230. Even if you go refurbished the price is $259. You also have to pay for shipping. So you have not refuted the price point argument entirely.

If you buy the cheapest Dell new they have a special offer for that price (normally $375) and include a printer (the crappy re-badged Lexmark inkjet poor-excuse-for-a-printer--and you do still have to pay the inflated price of $25 to get the cable to actually USE it). In any case, these Dell machines do not include the display. In any case they are not competitive on price alone against these Indian machines. They might get closer if they ditched WinXP for Linux but even then it would still be a bit more.

There are a few more things to consider as well--The Dell is a clunky desktop machine which uses much more power than the portable Indian machines. The Indian machines have LCD displays, touch-screen options, flexible keyboards, etc. They appear to be simpler and more rugged, and they support localisation for several Indian languages. Not sure Dell has an offering to match for its Indian customers.

http://www.dell.com/outlet

The cheapest "Alternative OS" desktop from Dell is $319 and that includes no monitor. Would you like to prove your claim?

• 4 GB storage
• 18 hours battery life

• 64MB SDRAM/64MB Flash memory
• 8 hours 43 minutes battery life

• 20GB storage
• 12 hours battery life

Not to be anti-apple, but if you look at the other side of things, for less then the price of an IPOD (walmart current) you can get a dell Axim X50 http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productde tails.aspx/axim_x50_416?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs You can play MP3, WMA, and probably many other formats with third party programs. The only downfall is that you would have to buy memory cards, so it's not ideal if you want to take your whole 30GB music collection with you. However, if you have a wireless network you can play music straight off of a file server (SAMBA or windows) and easily transfer music files back and forth to get updated songs each day. I know i've been pro-pda recently, but I use mine for everything, including a music player with a 1 GB flash card.

2003 has kernel-level webserver acceleration and offloads a lot of the processing
there, the same was as the Tux webserver (also RedHat?) beat the shit out of
Apache. It's essentially zero-copy-networking with zero-copy-webserving too.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx /power/en/ps1q01_redhat?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

There may be some truth in it, therefore. Aren't there some patches these days to
hook Apache directly into the Linux kernel too, since Tux is obselete? I doubt
they ship with RedHat's stock system though even if they exist.

SAN Solutions via EMC/Dell package http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.a spx/fibre?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz In my opinion is best for the buck ROI CX300, 15 146G drives, with Snapview, Powerpath, Navisphere, with Gold Support on all software and hardware components - $55,000. Extremely scalable. Database cluster performance improvement by far over 50% as compared to NAS or DAS. What ever package on top starting from middleware hardware for embarrassingly parallel cluster farms to MogileFS to MSCS will be pretty happy, assuming your database/app is optimized etc... And than you should run VMware ACE.

I would like to rat out various folks who offered me counterfeit copies of your "windows" product: these, and these, and these, and these, and .....

Stick it to 'em. And good luck!

Try Dell again.

Look here:

http://www.dell.com/nseries

Dell

2.8ghz 512Ddr2
ATi x300 128 video
17" LCD
$972

Or you can wait for a sale/coupon and get same computer for $700 with a 19" lcd. Or upgrade to $24" lcd for $750(with coupon).

Not sure where you got the £200 figure for a new Dell from, however.

Ummm, xe currency conversion And Dell A new Dell starts under USD $400 depending on the season. At present the base PC with monitor and printer is $299 + $100 shipping +$30 tax... so today £225.00. Sometimes shipping is free, sometimes it's not. Sometimes rebates sometimes not.

Late last December however, I caved in and bought a 2.0GHz Semperon with accompanying motherboard and RAM. ... something like £150 all together

My point exactly. The text book slashdot fanboy (pardon the term) is far more likely to spend £150 on an upgrade than £225 on a new base machine. So getting someone like Dell to sponsor a slashdot fanboy show (pardon the term) would be silly. But someone like intel, AMD, HP, or Asus would be more likely to sponsor a show who's audience fits into their demographic. Like your self they spend money, just not on pre-packaged solutions.

DotNet does not work as advertised (EG: have you seen any commercial apps in it?)

- Dell's Website
- MIT's iLab and ShuttleTrak services
- T-Mobile's customer portal
- Infragistics website and software solutions
- Any one of the items listed in Microsoft's .NET connected directory

Or perhaps you would like to look at the massive amount of work that has gone into emulating the .NET framework with the Mono project? No, .NET is completely unsuccessful (BTW, I wrote and run an ecommerce application for my company of employ on .NET that does over $20k/day in business. Sounds like production quality to me.)

"The "Radeon 9650" is the highest upgrade option .. also an old card. There are no options for current graphics cards."

True, but you can sell the stock card (quite a few earlier G5 users would glady take it off your hands) and just purchase an X800, but you aren't going to get $499 for that 9650. So, while Apple doesn't offer it as an option, it certainly is still an option to be had if wanted/needed.

"So where is the dual-core??".

We'll have them, just not quite yet. My Dual 2.5 is plenty fast.

Why wouldnt you. CD to CD or DVD to DVD copying is much easier with 2 drives. Why not give the user options??

It's called Firewire/USB 2. You can add one if you wish.

"Alot of people care. I personally don't want a 4+ foot tall computer ... this isn't the 70's"

I didn't like the size either. But, I aboslutely love the internal case design, and like the previous poster stated it sits under my desk as well and therefore have no problem with the size whatsoever.

"AMore network cards, better Audio cards, Raid controllers ... things that power users who buy PowerMacs typically need.."

Well, there's your three slots.

"You shouldn't have to buy extra RAM on a $3000 machine"

Doesn't the new dual core Dell start at $3000, and with only 512MB RAM?

Actually, if you order it before end of day today (2005-04-27), you can get the Dell 20" 16:10 for $486. That's a tough price to beat.

DellPhones?

Kinda like the DellPod as I like to call it.

Intel dual core systems are shipping. You can buy them at Dell.News Story.

Well when you have a company that ships its own lame MP3 player instead of one people might actually want to buy (and I'm not even saying that would have to be an iPod!), then you realize that not all choices they make are really in thier long-term best interests - though Dell thinks they are I'm sure.

I guess when your company revenue for the past year was $49.2 billion Dell.com why bother to offer anything other than Intel? Especially when Intel wouldnt take too kindly to it. Plus who would want to get rid of those "wonderful" intel Integrated Graphics Devices....

We're Sorry We're unable to process your request. Please check back with us soon to customize this product, or click below to continue shopping Plus the customer service rep was clueless.... http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/nodata.aspx ?cs=19&kc=6V411&oc=XPS5PC&x=10&y=11

Anyways: I found a similar offer. 328,49 Euro , but that's without a monitor. Add, a 17" flatpanel and we're at the price of 661,19 Euro. A Mac mini indeed. Still, the question is more: does this Dell offer as much value as a Mac mini? That's something one can only tell when one knows what the end-user wants.

Personally, I would like neither machine: 256Meg RAM doesn't cut it. One needs at least 512Meg for WinXP and also for OS X.

Let's take the Euro Dell offer: Upping the RAM to 512Meg is +60,00 Euro. I also need a DVD/CD-RW Combo in order to make it equivalent to the Mac Mini (+50,00 Euro), I also need Firewire (+29,00REuro) for Mac Mini equivalence, and finally internal modem (+10,00 Euro) for mac Mini equivalence. After adding VAT, the configuration for the Dell becomes: 841,48 Euro.

Of course, the Mac Mini, needs to get some stuff too. Let's be fair and shop as much as possible in the Apple store (Europe) as I did for Dell. Upping the RAM +80,00 Euro, Mouse and Keyboard [Wired version] +56,00 Euro. Including VAT this comes up to: 647,00 Euro. We need a monitor. I can't get a 17" LCD monitor at Apple, so I need to shop somewhere else: A store 10 minutes away from here, has a 17" LCD for 205.95 Euro . Total for Mac Mini config: 852,95 Euro.

The Mac is a grand total of 11,44 Euro more expensive. You know as well as I do that I could have skimmed on the keyboard/mouse and buy something cheaper. What does this mean: Apple does compete with Dell in the very-low-price range.

Still, it's a sweet deal to get a machine as cheap as the Dell if you've got parts lying around. Slap a good OS on it (OpenBSD for example) and we get it rolling as a good server. Especially that OpenBSD will be perfectly happy with the base 256Meg RAM ;-)

Dell has a sale over the weekend for $349
DimensionTM 3000 Desktop
FREE 17" Flat Panel Monitor PLUS FREE Hard Drive
Upgrade and FREE Printer!
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor (2.80GHz, 533 FSB)

at
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features. aspx/outrageous_desktops?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

I am soooo freaking tempted... there is also a 479 with a 19" lcd... mmmmmm.

It makes you wonder that if dell puts out those machines at that price, why cant we see cheaper prices for slower machines. For sure Dell is still making money at 349 for a full system.

Damn I was looking to upgrade my box buying a mother board and a amd64 and that is already at almost US$ 300...

It is nice that gpl-violations.org is enforcing the GPL when small companies have decided to blow off it's requirements. But shouldn't it apply equally regardless of the size of the company? Why does large companies get to redistribute GPL applications while stripping off providing a copy of the GPL?

"well, AFAIK, Dell only ships Windows right?"

Wrong

Dell Brazil currently sells the same 3000 for BRL 1700 ($660). Is this BRL1700 before or after the 60% inport tax?

Like this one or this one? It's not that much of a stretch to get a cheap box, even with the disgustingly expensive Windows on it.

It may be easier to pay extra for a warranty that lets you keep the failed hard drive. Dell has one. Others probably do too. Or considering how cheap hard drives are, just buy a few spare drives for the whole office and don't RMA the failed drives. The risk there is if you get a batch of bum drives. It happened at my office. Every single Maxtor drive from one order of Dells failed in less than a year. It was just bad sectors so we could still wipe them.

Truth be told, I am by no means a true programmer or power user anymore, it is not my vocation anymore, I got burned out by it. But I do know user speed, when you click on something how long it takes to complete the task. And I might want to run a web server, to replace my dual cpu PIII one day. Tomcat + JSP + too many users logged in at the same time to a web application = one very slow machine.

I would be interested in your opinion about something. Comparing the following two machines, can you tell me how the MAC would compare with speed? I don't do video editing, and that seems to be the niche that MAC's have.

Here are the machines:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=pe1800sapp&s=bsd

The first machine has two Intel 2.8ghz Xeon processors with 1meg Cache, 1 gigabyte of RAM, 80 gig hard drive. It is $1060.

Or:

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtm l?product_id=0182141

Apple Mac G5 with only 1 processor, 1.8 Ghz and only 512k L2 cache. It comes with 256 megs and a 80 gig hard drive. It is $1499. It is worth noting it has a 64 meg video card, the Dell has integrated video, but a card can be added. And the Apple has DVD-RW, the Dell has just a CD-Rom. There is also another Apple, a dual G5 with the same specs but it is $1999 (I take it that G5 processor is worth $500).

Which is the better machine? Which one is quicker? Even if I wanted to do video editing (which I don't, but who knows, one day I might).

Could you please provide a link to where you found a $200.00 dell.

They have a new sale every 4-5 days or so. The ~$200 PC was there, but not at this second. It will be back again.

Keep checking this page until the price gets to a sweet spot. Right now they swapped out the $200 price range for a processor upgrade (from celron 2.4ghz to P4 2.8ghz). That might not be worth the $100 in price difference. I dunno. I just know I have seen this machine in the $200 range, the SC series:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/servers?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

I went back to do a double take, and found this too, although I never looked at their home pc's, I stick with their servers. I know the quality of the servers, but not of the home desktop (2400), although it comes with Windows and has a 17" monitor for $299.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features. aspx/low_price_dimen?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

The trick with Dell is to check their small buisness website often. They sneak deals in there for 3 or 4 or 5 days, then switch offers. One week you might have a deal $200-$250, the next week you might miss that $100 rebate but get a processor upgrade, the next week they might take away the processor upgrade and double the RAM and hard drive storage. It changes all the time. I've seen some crazy offers there, AND free shipping. If you get lucky, you'll get the $200 with a second bonus like a processor upgrade.

Could you please provide a link to where you found a $200.00 dell.

They have a new sale every 4-5 days or so. The ~$200 PC was there, but not at this second. It will be back again.

Keep checking this page until the price gets to a sweet spot. Right now they swapped out the $200 price range for a processor upgrade (from celron 2.4ghz to P4 2.8ghz). That might not be worth the $100 in price difference. I dunno. I just know I have seen this machine in the $200 range, the SC series:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/servers?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

I went back to do a double take, and found this too, although I never looked at their home pc's, I stick with their servers. I know the quality of the servers, but not of the home desktop (2400), although it comes with Windows and has a 17" monitor for $299.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features. aspx/low_price_dimen?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

The trick with Dell is to check their small buisness website often. They sneak deals in there for 3 or 4 or 5 days, then switch offers. One week you might have a deal $200-$250, the next week you might miss that $100 rebate but get a processor upgrade, the next week they might take away the processor upgrade and double the RAM and hard drive storage. It changes all the time. I've seen some crazy offers there, AND free shipping. If you get lucky, you'll get the $200 with a second bonus like a processor upgrade.

Take any Dell system, and I bet that I can make a system that's exactly the same for cheaper

Dimension 4700 Desktop
$529 After Rebate

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 520 w/HT Technology (2.80GHz, 800FSB)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
256MB DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (1x256M)
19 inch E193FP Analog Flat Panel (LCD)
40GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
48x CD-RW Drive
Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet
1 Year On-site Economy Plan

To make it a little better..
80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $20]
128MB PCI Express(TM) x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon(TM) X300 SE [add $60]
Realistically I would also add at least another 256 memory and a DVD burner but Dell charges too much for those. Heck, I just picked up 2 PC3200 512's at Newegg for $75 ($60 AR) last week.

So $609 with a 1 year ON SITE warranty and free shipping.

PS, Don't forget about that 19in LCD it comes with ;)

Consumer laptops? No. At least to my knowledge, Dell only supports corporate *nix.
"Dell does not officially support running Linux on Dell laptops."
Here.

I've been using Ubuntu/x86_64 with the Kubuntu KDE distribution for the past four weeks. It's nice to have a decent installer and a system that works almost out of the box (past configuring the system for small personal preferences).
As much as I like this, there are other things that make it difficult for me to use it:

1. Wacom is not supported out of the box, and the Wacom driver module packages are incomplete (the build rules don't copy anything but wacom.ko). It'd be great to be able to install Ubuntu or Kubuntu and have the Wacom tablet work as advertised on the Linux-Wacom Driver Project page.

2. I got errors booting Grub with / and /boot on a raid1 device. On every bootup. Perhaps Ubuntu could support grub+raid1+root+boot in the future; see here for details. I was unsuccessful at getting LILO to boot, too. Maybe it's a hardware thing [1].

3. On Ubuntu/x86-64 win32 video codecs run only under a chroot'd 32-bit environment. Ubuntu could make this task easier/more seamless (for example, I want to see videos with Kaffeine or Xine, but AIUI they have to be run in a chroot environment.. that's not very seamless..)

4. It'd be great to have the installer automatically install the commercial NVidia drivers. They're currently an optional package.

5. Also great would be the inclusion of Jeff Garzik's SATA thermal sensor patches for libATA, available here.
With this patch, hddtemp works on SATA drives.

6. Ubuntu doesn't seem to have installation-time setup of the "sensors" package (i.e., run sensors-detect and install the modules as needed automatically).

7. Missing packages. Kubuntu was missing (last I checked a few days ago) the Python bindings for KDE. For that matter, there are packages that don't exist for x86_64 systems, like Psyco, Flash and the Adobe Reader.

I've since switched to Alioth's Debian/x86_64, but would happily switch back when Kubuntu-x86_64 matures, as Alioth does not seem to have 64-bit KDE 3.4.0 packages (could be wrong though).

references:

1. My motherboard is a MSI NEO K8T FIS2R with an Athlon64/3200+.

- Roey

Um, no. I had a D600. It had a smartcard. (I never used it, but it was there.) The product spec PDF might help.

I have been using Ubuntu Linux (Hoary Hedgehog) on my laptop for the past month without any problems. I have a Dell Inspiron 510m. All hardware detected and working... which was better than Windows XP, as I had to hunt for drivers... :-)

If you hadn't noticed already, Ubuntu 5.04 has just been released, and should you lot stop /.ing it, I will be able to apt-get dist-upgrade and be a happy user. :-)

Uh, it's not a 19" LCD, last time I checked
When was the last time you checked? I do not know who modded you up or where you get your information but that 19in flat panel included in that deal is model E193FP and that IS an LCD disply, here is the link . I doubt Dell uses the same model number for different monitors so I doubt you ever checked at all. Of course it is a moot point now as that deal for that computer is dead now. They rotate deals all the time so it will be back in a week or two.

You can try to prove your price point with a hypothetical situation but you are under NO obligation to buy the upgrades directly from Dell. The parent is a white box person as are many others so I assume there are people familir of where to get your upgrades aside from Dell for a much cheaper price. Bottom line, if you don't like the deal, don't buy it. Maybe you should really listen and look instead of trying to blindly defend what you think might be right. Trying to make the price higher then it really is or spreading bogus information is helping no one here.

Which hypothetical Dell are you refering to? The closest I've seen on their site comes with a 17 in FP and starts at $999

Here is a Dell with a 19in LCD for $449 after rebate with free shipping. You would need to add more memory, a larger HD and a better video card (they offer a ATI Radeon X300 SE for $60 more) but you could get all of that and more elsewhere and have a decent performer for well under your $999/1298 quote.

I am an all white box person myself but I suggest the Dell route to everyone else. As a bonus, I do not have to provide free lifetime support to them.

Sytem Includes:

• 3ghz Intel Pentium 4
• 512mb RAM
• 80gb 7200 RPM HD
• CD-RW
• 19 inch Ultrasharp digital LCD

I'm using a 17 inch Dell Ultrasharp, and find that it does as good a job as I need. I have an old ADI Microscan 4V that I use for production work, but wish I could use this Dell more often. I share that box, so can't get to use it 24/7. I note that Dell charges $349.00 today for this monitor, I paid much more for it a year or so ago when I bought it with the Dell system. Have not noticed any dead pixels. The colors look very good to me.

Another awesome monitor! I order one last month after reading a great review. Great price $600 CND shipped to my door.

Told some friends about it, next thing I know they have a bulk order for 10 into Dell. $470 CND, each! =p

Again, it was *not automagically* installed (nor was all this trolling or flamebaiting); see another reply that lays out what happened.

It has been a few years since I price matched, but every time I did, it seemed like the pattern of macs being twice as much held true. I'll do a couple price matches, new and used.

Since you mentioned Dell, I will start with their PC's. Just clicking on desktops, I see a sale, Celron 2.4 Ghz machine with 256 megs, 40 gig hard drive, and 17" monitor is $299. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd. Looking at laptops, they have a 14" Celron M 1.3ghz laptop with 256megs and a 30 gig hard drive with what appears to be a free printer, for $549. Those are their deals, sales.

Looking at new macs, I find the following are their lowest priced options. The cheapest mac mini is $599 (G4 1.4ghz, 256megs, 80 gig hard drive, cd-rw), the cheapest emac is $799 (G4 1.25 with Velocity Engine, 40 gig hard drive, what appears to be an integrated 17" monitor). http://microcenter.com/search_results_e.phtml?coor dinate_group=F1AX&page=1&search_id=5f3a71072149b6e 75a39f1f05873a7d7&per_page=&sort_price_direction=A SC&sort_by=product.retail The cheapest "traditional" destop is a Power Mac G5 1.8 ghz with 256 megs, 80 gig drive and dvd-rw for $1499.00. http://microcenter.com/search_results_e.phtml?coor dinate_group=F1BX&page=1&search_id=d10aa8d0b3c7536 e2100bbe953281f70&per_page=&sort_price_direction=A SC&sort_by=product.retail

I don't want to be unfair. You mentioned quality, so I figured I would pricematch a brand many consider to be high end. Looking at the Sony Vaio Desktop P4 2.8ghz with HyperThreading (guessing that is like the velocity engine, although I don't know what either term means, probably slick marketing). The Sony comes with 512 megs, 160 gig hard drive, dvd+-rw, for $756 on sale from $999. http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Sony-VAIO-Desktop-P C-PCV-RS610-/sem/rpsm/oid/94849/rpem/ccd/productDe tail.do

Looking at used computers, I went to ebay and I see G4 desktops selling used for around $350. These are G4 400 mhz machines with 128 megs and a standard dvd player. I did not even look for PC's because I know a 500+ mhz PIII can be had for under $100. So, what am I getting for the extra money?

I want to try a Mac, I really would. I saw on ebay G3's around 300 mhz for $150, but I don't know how good a 300 mhz machine would be. Even for just testing. Is a G3 still usable? Or does all the new software require G4's?

So to compare, cheapest new Dell $299, cheapest mac mini $599. Mid-range Sony Vaio $749, midrange Mac G5 $1499. Dell laptop 1.3ghz $549, Mac laptop 1.0 ghz G4 $899. And in every instance, the PC had a faster processor.

Do tell us, why can't you buy a Dell computer without Windows? Have you ever even bought a Dell business computer? You can't buy a Dell Home Computer with Linux. If you took a moment and went into the Small Business section, or any business section, you would find that nearly all of their Precision workstations and all of their PowerEdge servers can be purchased without Windows.

Dell Business computers come with your choice of Windows XP Pro, Windows 2003 Server, Novell/SUSE Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux preinstalled. For Linux systems, Dell Technical Support requires you to maintain a (fairly inexpensive) support contract with both Dell and Red Hat or Novell, respectively. If you maintain the subscriptions then, as a small-to-medium business, you get better technical support than you ever could with Windows. If you don't need tech support then you don't have to pay for it, of course.

Have a look around the Dell Linux website sometime.

TCO is entirely debatable and I think it misses the point of what you get for your money. But, here is one example of initial cost using real, verifiable numbers.

For a 20 user Windows system from Dell you need 1 server license ($1299), 20 Client Access Licenses ($90 X 20 = $1800), and 20 Workstation licenses ($379 X 20= $7580). You still need to buy Office for $700 a pop ($700 X 20 = $14,000). And you still need all the other essential business software that isn't included with Windows.

For the same 20-user Dell system running Linux you pay for a 1 year support contract for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server ($349). Optionally, you can renew that contract yearly ($349/yr). Dell RHEL workstations appear to come with the first year of RHN access for free. Beyond that you can renew yearly if you choose to do so ($99/yr X 20 = $1980). These systems come preloaded with a fairly complete office suite, full compliment of non-crippled network services, numerous popular programming and runtime environments, and almost anything else you need to immediately start working.

Hardware costs for both systems are about $14,500. Which means that Windows licensing costs almost as much as the hardware itself. Microsoft Office alone costs as much as all of your hardware combined.

Do tell us, why can't you buy a Dell computer without Windows? Have you ever even bought a Dell business computer? You can't buy a Dell Home Computer with Linux. If you took a moment and went into the Small Business section, or any business section, you would find that nearly all of their Precision workstations and all of their PowerEdge servers can be purchased without Windows.

Dell Business computers come with your choice of Windows XP Pro, Windows 2003 Server, Novell/SUSE Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux preinstalled. For Linux systems, Dell Technical Support requires you to maintain a (fairly inexpensive) support contract with both Dell and Red Hat or Novell, respectively. If you maintain the subscriptions then, as a small-to-medium business, you get better technical support than you ever could with Windows. If you don't need tech support then you don't have to pay for it, of course.

Have a look around the Dell Linux website sometime.

TCO is entirely debatable and I think it misses the point of what you get for your money. But, here is one example of initial cost using real, verifiable numbers.

For a 20 user Windows system from Dell you need 1 server license ($1299), 20 Client Access Licenses ($90 X 20 = $1800), and 20 Workstation licenses ($379 X 20= $7580). You still need to buy Office for $700 a pop ($700 X 20 = $14,000). And you still need all the other essential business software that isn't included with Windows.

For the same 20-user Dell system running Linux you pay for a 1 year support contract for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server ($349). Optionally, you can renew that contract yearly ($349/yr). Dell RHEL workstations appear to come with the first year of RHN access for free. Beyond that you can renew yearly if you choose to do so ($99/yr X 20 = $1980). These systems come preloaded with a fairly complete office suite, full compliment of non-crippled network services, numerous popular programming and runtime environments, and almost anything else you need to immediately start working.

Hardware costs for both systems are about $14,500. Which means that Windows licensing costs almost as much as the hardware itself. Microsoft Office alone costs as much as all of your hardware combined.

Do tell us, why can't you buy a Dell computer without Windows? Have you ever even bought a Dell business computer? You can't buy a Dell Home Computer with Linux. If you took a moment and went into the Small Business section, or any business section, you would find that nearly all of their Precision workstations and all of their PowerEdge servers can be purchased without Windows.

Dell Business computers come with your choice of Windows XP Pro, Windows 2003 Server, Novell/SUSE Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux preinstalled. For Linux systems, Dell Technical Support requires you to maintain a (fairly inexpensive) support contract with both Dell and Red Hat or Novell, respectively. If you maintain the subscriptions then, as a small-to-medium business, you get better technical support than you ever could with Windows. If you don't need tech support then you don't have to pay for it, of course.

Have a look around the Dell Linux website sometime.

TCO is entirely debatable and I think it misses the point of what you get for your money. But, here is one example of initial cost using real, verifiable numbers.

For a 20 user Windows system from Dell you need 1 server license ($1299), 20 Client Access Licenses ($90 X 20 = $1800), and 20 Workstation licenses ($379 X 20= $7580). You still need to buy Office for $700 a pop ($700 X 20 = $14,000). And you still need all the other essential business software that isn't included with Windows.

For the same 20-user Dell system running Linux you pay for a 1 year support contract for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server ($349). Optionally, you can renew that contract yearly ($349/yr). Dell RHEL workstations appear to come with the first year of RHN access for free. Beyond that you can renew yearly if you choose to do so ($99/yr X 20 = $1980). These systems come preloaded with a fairly complete office suite, full compliment of non-crippled network services, numerous popular programming and runtime environments, and almost anything else you need to immediately start working.

Hardware costs for both systems are about $14,500. Which means that Windows licensing costs almost as much as the hardware itself. Microsoft Office alone costs as much as all of your hardware combined.