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FYI: From Dell's hungarian website:

OptiPlexTM GX270
Please call a Dell Local Distributor to order

There you have it. He can get Dell products, but can't order online.

Hungary web site for DELL

Who is this guy kidding?

This Dell site says this "Please call a Dell Local Distributor to order" on each model AFAICT. Have a look yourself.

That doesn't help much since he said we wanted to order on the WWW.

Funny, but I thought amazon, dell and IBM all had hungarian branches.

Looks like the poster hasn't even looked for non-USian versions of the sites he mentions. I'm English, and I never look at amazon.com - amazon.co.uk is what you need for UK deliveries. amazon.co.hu was my first guess for the hungarian version, and Bingo...

"EU taxes?"

"Hightened security on shipping?"

"Cost to verify overseas c'cards?"

"Cost of refused delivery?"

"Cost of RMAs?"

"Import duties?"

"English only packaging?"

On Dell's Hungary web site when you drill down to specific products, you see the instruction to "Please call a Dell Local Distributor to order". It looks like they simply have a different distribution mechanism in Hungary because of different reasons.

"EU taxes?"

"Hightened security on shipping?"

"Cost to verify overseas c'cards?"

"Cost of refused delivery?"

"Cost of RMAs?"

"Import duties?"

"English only packaging?"

On Dell's Hungary web site when you drill down to specific products, you see the instruction to "Please call a Dell Local Distributor to order". It looks like they simply have a different distribution mechanism in Hungary because of different reasons.

...IBM, Apple and Dell operate web stores that sell almost their entire range of kit, they only ship to the USA....

IBM, Apple, and Dell are hardly small businesses, and I think the original question of "why don't they ship international?" is still valid. I also do not buy "(small) companies can't be bothered to grow that kind of capability..."

What capabilities are necessary to grow? Purchaser still pays shipping, and you create seperate national and international warranty/exchange programs. The national program is the standard warranty, international terms can be whatever you deem, eg:

"Warranty only good in the US."

"International purchasers are liable to shipping costs for returned/exchanged items..."

et cetera. It doesn't seem like much capability growth to me. Perhaps I'm missing something.

To answer the original question of "why won't they ship international" has more of a simple direct response. The poster of the original article was looking at the wrong places to buy. As stated in his original post, companies usually have a local (national, within the US) website, and an international one. If you ask the American division of Dell to sell you a computer, they will not (and should refer you to the correct division of the company that handles purchases for the location of the purchaser). Sadly many of those within a national division are unaware of their own corporations international offices.

For example, IBM (International Business Machines) allows you to select the country of your location on their webpage. To solve the authors ordering difficulties, he should visit IBM's Hungarian Website.

If he wishes to buy direct from Dell, he should see Dell's Hungarian Website.

Lastly, he said he couldn't buy Apple. I am not finding an Apple Hungarian website, but from Apple's main page I see they do have a european website, and also a site for neighboring Austria. I think if he inquired with Apple's european offices, as oppossed to inquiring the American, he could find how to have products shipped to him in Hungary.

This is not a troll, but I don't think the author of the original article has much merit to claim he cannot buy products internationally. I think he's a guy originally from Maine who doesn't speak Hungarian so he can't order of off the Hungarian website.

I think the companies listed in his example have uninformed or undertrained representatives who do not even know to refer a customer such as the original author to the Hungarian/European offices instead of simply telling him "we don't sell to anyone who isn't in the United States".

So, in closing, it's easy for companies to operate internationally, there isn't much of a "process growth" involved. Our original article poster doesn't really have a problem, he just doesn't know where to go to order his equipment. When he inquired at the wrong place to see if he could purchase, whomever he communicated with was unaware of where to direct an international customer and misinformed him that international customers are not desired.

Your best bet is to look for a localized site so that it's not only easier for you to return the product but also save on postage.

Why is this such a big deal, when Dell has been selling a laptop for under $800 for a while in one offer or another. Like this one.

I understand that this laptop mentioned doesnt require active cooling, but as it seems everyone is focusing on wow an $800 linux laptop I went to go see what $800 could buy you at dell..


2ghz celeron 20gb hd 256mb ram 14" screen... for $749

While i haven't ever owned one of these i've not had a problem getting linux on dell laptops in the past. If you are looking for an inexpensive laptop to run linux it seems to me you could do a lot better than a very underpowered core processor such as the via.

I've been shopping for a new PDA and it seems that the Dell Axim X5 at $200 beats anything else on the market for features and price. With Palm, for example, you'd have to pay close to $400 for a PDA with color, MP3, SD, CF, etc. and I just can't see spending that much on something that I use for maybe 2 hours a day.

Actually, if you would read the link I posted, and the sentence I mentioned below that where I added a CD-RW and a 120GB hard drive, I did configure a similar system for $919.

So you what the whole enchilada, eh?

Dell Dimension 4600
Pentium 4 2.66GHz
512MB RAM
200GB hard drive
4x DVD+RW/CD-RW
16x DVD-ROM
128MB ATI Radeon 9800 (which is higher-end than the video card in the $3000 Mac, and MUCH nicer than the one in this Mac)
XP Home

$1448 (And that's still including the free 15" flat-panel monitor. To those who said this monitor is worth "$50", please tell me where I can buy a 15" flat-panel that is even half as nice as this one for $50.)

Now, if you want to say that Macs are worth twice the price, that's fine. I don't necessarily agree, but that's a value judgement (opinion). But to argue that the systems aren't comparable -- not only are they comparable, but the PC is 2-3x cheaper with a monitor. This particular one also has a larger hard drive and a better video card, and it's still averaging half the cost of a Mac.

On a purely cost basis, the PC wins, hands down. Is the Mac worth twice as much? That's up to individual buyers to decide. I'm just pointing out the facts.

Just thought I'd point out that there's a bit more difference here than meets the eye.

Dell Dimension 4600
Pentium 4 2.66GHz
512MB RAM
40GB hard drive
48x CD-ROM
XP Home

$749. Ships today. Oh, and that comes with a free 15" flat-panel monitor. (Link)

Configured with a CD-RW and a 120GB hard drive, the above system is $919.

Apple Power Macintosh G5
1.8GHz (I'll be fair and not pick the dual 2GHz model)
512MB RAM
160GB hard drive
Superdrive

$2399. Not shipping until September. (By then, the above Dell will be $500 or less.) No monitor included.

Even if the G5 has better performance (and honestly, I still haven't seen reliable benchmarks with the dual 2.0GHz facing a P4/3.2GHz with Hyperthreading on), it still can't compete on price.

No matter how cool Mac OS X is... no matter how awesome these new G5s will be... if they are three times the cost of a PC, buyers will have a hard time justifiying it. In this economy, Apple will be hard-pressed to sell those $2300-$3000 desktops when people can get an equivalent-or-just-slightly-slower Dell for $800... including a flat-panel monitor.

dell dell are selling a lexmark Color Jetprinter Z35 for £33 ($50?), that's cheaper than both a full colour and full black and white cartridge, but often now these ultra-cheap printers ship with a half-full cartridge to make people buy more. Ewan

1400x900????? WTF? I have a 15" laptop with a much more useful screen: 210,000 useful little pixels better. And it cost less.

I understand that steve jobs has vision issues and likes his pixels big, but the NEC guys can't all be like that - or at least have accepted vision correction.

Dell has the right idea: 1920x1200 pixels in a 15.1" display. Now that's useful. Pixels.... mmmm pixels. All I want is pixels. More pixels.

By far the most stunning image reproduction I've ever seen, in any format (including large format transparencies) is the 9 megapixel IBM glass (like this)

mmmmm.... more pixels.

It'd be OK for my laptop, but I wouldn't want it in my home.

check out the Dell inspiron 8500.

It has an 15.4 widescreen display with 1920x1200 resolution..

awsome!

Dell Inspiron 8500 with 1920x1200

Cheap laptops are far cheaper than high-end Palms capable of 802.11b, and you could buy two of those for the price of aforementioned Palm, and have them in each room or something like that.

Just as a note, you can pick up a Dell Axim X5 Windows CE PDA with 802.11b for about $450 CANADIAN ($300 American?). I wouldnt call that expensive at all.

Dell has their SX270 although twice the volume still pretty neat. The power supply is external but 150W

Dell SX270

You don't say what your backup plans are, but a 20/40GB DDS4 tape drive is going to set you back a pretty penny. And don't forget the tapes. You can go with a Travan drive for about half the price, but the tapes are more expensive...and IMO they're crap.

You also don't say how large the websites will be, or what type of email you'll be doing (POP? IMAP? Web?) but you may want to think about how much diskspace you'll need. I'd think 36GB is plenty (5MBx250 for email (~1.25GB )+ 100MBx100 for websites (~10GB) + 30% = ~15GB.)

If you're really expecting to upgrade, you could get a dual CPU capable motherboard, but just get 1 CPU for now. Or, just plan on adding a second database server for the web sites later.

I'd estimate a 2.0+GHz P4 server, with 1GB RAM, DDS4 TBU, with 2x36GB SCSI drives in HW RAID-1 would run about $2,000 from Dell. Skimp on the CPU (down to a Celeron 1.5+GHz) and you can probably get around $1500 or so. You'd probably get a discount for non profit status. Oh, and don't forget a UPS.

<sigh> If anything, leaving HT disabled most likely helped the Dell. (For those who don't feel like clicking: The link points to a report published by Dell showing that disabling HT noticably boosts SPEC scores.

Hmmm... I seem to have been posting this a lot today. Disabling Hyper Threading can make the SPEC scores look better.

As for disabling Hyper Threading, this may have been an optimization in the VeriTest SPEC benchmarking.

If anything, this probably worked to the Dell's advantage.

- The Mac was using a memory cheat.

This may be a fair point, but it's not yet clear; Given the guy's track record on other issues, I'm not giving him the benefit of the doubt, here.

- On the Dell they disabled some Pentium optimizations.

The disabled optimizations were the SSE2 instructions. Considering that Altivec was disabled on the G5, this doesn't seem particularly unfair.

In the case of Hyperthreading, the Xeon may have been optimized for these tests...

BTW, disabling Hyperthreading may have actually improved the SPEC scores for the Xeon.

If this report published by Dell is any indication, HT actually hurts performance on the SPEC benchmarks.

From the conclusion of the report:

Incorporated into Intel Xeon processors, Hyper-Threading technology can provide great benefits to server applications. Unfortunately, it can also degrade system performance in certain scenarios such as those simulated by the compute-intensive SPEC CPU2000 and Linpack benchmarks.

At the very least, it's not clear that disabling HT was a deliberate attempt to hurt the P4 or Xeon's performance.

Actually, Apple may have given the P4 an advantage by disabling Hypterthreading... Read it here from the mouth of Dell...

firstly i wasnt a great salesman. but for the average user what the hell do they gain from a 2 or 3G system that they dont get on a $1500 system ?

they can "easilly manage digital video, pictures and audio files while doing all the usual mundane tasks (e-mail with spam protection, web browsing with pop-up blocking)" with a standard windows or linux PC. as far as "they don't want to fuck around with driver, config, and library files every damn time they try to do something new" .... that kinda goes hand in hand with doing something new. but the average computer USER doesnt do much new. hence why the almost always run whatever OS is on the system til they get a new one ......

making a profit is not a big deal, redhat does that. what the point the article was trying to make is simple "how long til more people use linux than mac OSX on a desktop". the answer is soon since linux runs on most hardware old and new and mac doesnt.

remember mac's market share has not grown in the past year. linux's has.

BTW ..... Dell
how is that a shoddy budget PC ? add on the in home service for another $300 and your still under my aforementioned $1500 price.

and on what planet do you not have to fuck with drivers ?

Show us a dual-processor Opteron/Itanium system from a major computer manufacturer and we'll be happy to benchmark them for you...

You mean like HP or Dell? Yeah, I can see why it would be hard to find those, eh?

I wonder whether it is black or white which causes the pixels to "fade."

Dell Support Forums - give this a try, I found it in the General Software section.

I'm also not to worried about program compatibility, as we home brew all out own software (or 98% of it) - much to the displeasure of our IT department. The thing I'm looking forward to is the improved WiFi support - we have a hard time keeping these able to talk to the server.

"Beautiful" latop

IBM makes more money than Apple selling PC hardware. They allowed Dell, Compaq etc. to "distribute a cheap knockoff" of their design.

Sure - Clones entered the market where the IBM previously was alone and IBM's share did what?

I'll give you a hint - click here.

-T

Virtually all desktop computers, +/- maybe 5%, run Windows. Ergo, Windows must be best, right ?

Having something that everybody will use as an optional expansion card is dumb.

Once again, you've got a pretty weird idea of "everybody". Right now, "everybody" uses USB and *maybe* FW400 for the small number of devices that support only it. Perhaps what you really mean is "everybody in some tiny market segment".

The only thing that's fibre channel is the host interface. The drive-side interface can be anything from ATA to SSA to FC to ESCON.

Uh huh. Priced some suitable converters lately ? Not everyone can justify laying out ten grand for an XRAID when all they want is some nice fast local storage for their workstation.

Based on what? A silly Slashdot troll's idea of good and bad? No thanks. I think I'll stick to (1) the industry standard, and (2) what I know from firsthand experience works.

Which industry are you in where the "standard" way of attaching a bunch of disk to a workstation is Fibre Channel ?

In a laptop. Wow. That's... yup. I had to double check. That's by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Good for you. One of the stupidest things I've ever heard is your assertion that "everybody" is using the "industry standard" and attaching storage to their desktop workstations via FC.

Widescreen LCDs. Firewire 800. Builtin Wireless

I still haven't seen a link to that PC motherboard ("mainboard," pff) with built-in FireWire 800, either.

Why the obsession with "built-in" ?

Where's the Mac with "built-in" SCSI ?

Where's the Mac with "built-in" ATA RAID ?

Silly troll.

Ah, the irony. A hypocrite who thinks an "an articulated 17" digital LCD" is a core feature, higher DPI is bad and FC is the "industry standard" method of connecting disk space to workstations calling *me* a troll.

Virtually all desktop computers, +/- maybe 5%, run Windows. Ergo, Windows must be best, right ?

Having something that everybody will use as an optional expansion card is dumb.

Once again, you've got a pretty weird idea of "everybody". Right now, "everybody" uses USB and *maybe* FW400 for the small number of devices that support only it. Perhaps what you really mean is "everybody in some tiny market segment".

The only thing that's fibre channel is the host interface. The drive-side interface can be anything from ATA to SSA to FC to ESCON.

Uh huh. Priced some suitable converters lately ? Not everyone can justify laying out ten grand for an XRAID when all they want is some nice fast local storage for their workstation.

Based on what? A silly Slashdot troll's idea of good and bad? No thanks. I think I'll stick to (1) the industry standard, and (2) what I know from firsthand experience works.

Which industry are you in where the "standard" way of attaching a bunch of disk to a workstation is Fibre Channel ?

In a laptop. Wow. That's... yup. I had to double check. That's by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Good for you. One of the stupidest things I've ever heard is your assertion that "everybody" is using the "industry standard" and attaching storage to their desktop workstations via FC.

Widescreen LCDs. Firewire 800. Builtin Wireless

I still haven't seen a link to that PC motherboard ("mainboard," pff) with built-in FireWire 800, either.

Why the obsession with "built-in" ?

Where's the Mac with "built-in" SCSI ?

Where's the Mac with "built-in" ATA RAID ?

Silly troll.

Ah, the irony. A hypocrite who thinks an "an articulated 17" digital LCD" is a core feature, higher DPI is bad and FC is the "industry standard" method of connecting disk space to workstations calling *me* a troll.

If you're ambitious enough to enter everything into your PDA, all the power to ya'. Otherwise, I found it handy for boring classes to be able to read the news (basically like bringing an electronic magazine to class). You may think it sounds funny and that only flunkies would do such a thing, but I gaurentee there will be courses you show up for the sole reason to either receive or hand in assignments. The rest of the time is just filler. If you do get a PDA, make sure you get 802.11 support with it.

I think the only device you really need is a good computer. Laptops are nice because you can take them to group sessions, but not necessary. A desktop will give you more features for a lower price. I would get a desktop and save my money to get a newer one in two years when it's obsolete. Most public campuses here in the Midwest seem to be Microsoft campuses, so you might as well get a Windows machine and buy/steal Office from your University right away (unless you're an Art/Music student, you'll want to check with your department as you'll likely find more value in a Macintosh).

If you get a laptop, get a wireless NIC with it! Printer isn't absolutely necessary because you'll have access to printers on campus or possibly at work, depending where you work. You'll probably want a decent sized hard drive for P2P. An LCD monitor is hella-sweet in the dorms.

Here's a tip: Don't buy a piece of crap, overpriced, used computer from "a friend your dad knows" or from schmuck in the newspaper. Dell and HP Compaq always have new machines for around $300-$400, and if you look around, they often have new machines in the low $300's, which leaves more room to add the features you really need/want. If you're really looking to pinch pennies, buy a machine from Dell with the things they offer cheap (like video cards and DVD burners) and buy the stuff they sell expensively from an alternate source (like Memory or CD readers). Make sure you get name brand memory, though, as Dell's can be a bit finicky with cheap memory. I've had good luck with Kingston ValueRAM in my Dells.

And let's not forget about the Golden rule of the dorms - he who owns a DVD burner and the right software makes the friends. ;) Dell often has a deal where you can get a DVD burner for $99.

I recommend a decent size TV too (~25") and a DVD burner that can read all types of media, because I know my roommates and I spent a lot of time playing video games and watching TV...unless you're a girl...then just get some rollerblades and some hot pants or something from Wet Seal or whatev.

Let's recap - a good computer (I prefer a desktop), a good TV, and a beer fridge. Any further questions? Oh yeah, and some helpful, off-topic advice:

1. College is not primarily for education. It's merely a system our society has created to determine who is willing to jump through more hoops than the others.
2. Don't be bummed that you didn't get the GPA you got in high school. There is a good chance you will either a) fail a course, or b) drop it before you fail it. And you will probably take at least a course or two over.
3. It doesn't really matter what you major in. Don't let it stress you out. Just study what you're good at. They're pretty much all the same anyway...
4. Most importantly: NOT EVERYONE IS MEANT TO GO TO A UNIVERSITY. If you can't handle it, don't worry. Try something else. It doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means it's not for you. Some people have PhD's, but that doesn't mean anyone below them is stupid. Different strokes for different folks. Remember that, especially when you get all depressed about some bad grade(s) you get.

but realistically a $1000 laptop would be a pretty useless machine by most standards

$799 for a 2 Ghz celeron w/ CD-RW, 128 megs RAM, 20 gig HDD, and XP home From Dell

They are cheaper and faster than ever now, and that is far from useless!! :)

If you buy Office with your computer, it's like $100. If you wait and find out you need it later, it's $400-$500 in the stores. And we all wonder why Dell suddenly became quiet about supporting Linux.

Also, with the latest bug pack from Microsoft, Word gets integrated into just about everything as the default text-entry interface whether you own Word or not. It's all just going to be one big program pretty soon.

Argh. A Machead spreading Mac FUD? WTF? Go to www.dell.com and build a comparable machine for yourself. Compare feature for feature and performance point for performance point. When will folks get over this "macs cost more" myth???

You're saying that as if it's free or something. Check out a typical midrange Dell desktop. Base price with WordPerfect = $1239. Cheap MS Office adds $150. MS Office Pro adds $350.

How many potential pirates or Open Office users are going to add $150 or $350 to the price of their new computer so they can get a bundled copy of Microsoft Office? Not many. That's why Microsoft realizes that the most that they can get in this situation is to promote customer lock-in with a freebie.

This isn't really an issue for most Linux users, because most Linux users are dirty communist hippies anyway.

Real, patriotic Americans, stimulate the economy by purchasing new Dell PCs, which come pre-loaded with a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows XP Professional.

Socialism, Communism, and Linux are for backwards European countries and for jealous nations like Canada--a country that silently ignores the fact that 90% of its population live within 250 miles of its border with the United States.

Funny.... I've had reliable keyword recognition since way back in '95 via my P133 and IBM via voice on OS/2 and the Mwave dsp addon board. Keyword isn't that big of a deal (relatively that is) if your selected vocabulary is relatively small. Keyword voice recognition is an almost solved problem and is used often from automated phone systems with amazing accuracy given poor signal quality. The automated collect call system's come to mind as a simple example. I have seen more complicated systems in work which are currently in research and some of the toolkits are open sourced if I'm not mistaken (would have to check to be sure)

As for difficulty.... that's not difficult at all seeing that the goal of the project is to ultimately provide that functionality.

from they're website
"IS-136, IS-95, GSM
A complete cell phone implementation"

All some interested party has to do is take they're freely available cell phone friendly code when it comes up make some modifications so that the signal is piped through a keyword recognizer instead of the speakers and poof... Its not as hard as you claim when sooo many people are willing to give you what you need.

"It would cost a lot more than $14K to do this over 100 channels."

As for cost, first of all I was using fictitious numbers as I stated... but seeing that you've brought up cost as unrealistic... I'll bring more realistic number and now overestimate. First, the paper associated with the article states that a dual 2Ghz machine could handle upto 32 GMS channels.. so.. lets see... lets say it costs $100 (which is probably being conservative) in Radio shack hardware to make the hardware to support 1 channel seeing that they say it only requires fairly inexpensive hardware... that's 3200 for 32 channels. Now add an overpriced Dell dual CPU server @ 3,444. now to get 96 channels it would cost you $19,932. Now, the average person could dig up a dual machine for less than 2000 with similar spec (minus scsi)... so realistically.... It be more like $15,600 which isn't that far off from my original $14k fictitious guess.

"Now targeted scanning could be a problem, but then maybe I can get my freaking cellular provider to turn on basic GSM encryption (phone supports it but none of the cell sites in the US do AFAIK)."

Unfortunately encryption won't end up being much of a stopping stone. It however will probably be the hardest part to deal with. There's a couple of ways that could be thwarted. 1. with so many distributed system for encryption breaking, a brute force could be used, not elegant... but hey... it works... 2. social engineering could be used to gain access to the information... Its certainly not the first time that a provider's phone password has popped up on the net. 3. if the original purpose of the system trickles down to the cellphone/pda... then you could simply walk up to your service provider and ask them to set it up, and voila you know have the encryption key.

I could keep circumventing different ideas all night.... And that's what's scary... cell phone scanners currently exist but are really pricey. Adding the cost of one sc

Well, I'm not sure how the integrated audio on a Dell Dimension 2350 compares to the IIGS, but if it matters that much, you can just buy a Soundblaster Audigy for $66 bucks and put it in yourself, or buy a Dimension 4550 for $900 with a Soundblaster Live! 5.1 or $1000 with a Soundblaster Audigy, either of which are lightyears beyond 1986 Apple audio technology.

Cheers.

OR - you can pay (lets be optimistic) $500 for a relatively nice Dell computer nowadays ($499 to be exact, so I don't know how you were being *optomistic*) that requires hours of setup time (just entering in personal information),

Okay. What ARE YOU doing?! It takes what, 10 minutes to set up windows when you start it up, and, what, like 5 minutes tops to set up your dailup/ethernet/broadband and email? Then, transfer files from old computer - I don't know, but transferring 20 Gb of porn is not "standard setup". Most people here at /. could set up a dell out of box in under 30 minutes - 1 hour tops. Back to you, Sean

most likely months to get as used to the original software, and the issue of having to update windows on a regular basis.

Wow, and I know your IIGS was just as functional as a $500 Dell, and that old word processor can do *everything* wordperfect can.

There's something to be said for taking the dive and upgrading occasionally. Most people *are* satisfied with what they currently have until they find out exactly how much better what they *can* have actually is.

Hmm. I *may* have *overused* the *asterix* in this post. I'll work on that.

The reason why Dell is on top is they know what they are doing and put the best into their computers. I knew ATI's were the king of the hill when Dell started putting them into their boxes instead of Nvidia.

Check out this gaming machine:
http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/topics/segtopic_dimx ps.htm

Brian

Here is a link to a decent paper comparing the topology of SAN's to conventional tape/LAN based backup solutions:

"hat they keep the 5 gig and drop the price down to $200."

Or, if you're willing to spend $215, you can get a 20 gig Jukebox. I'd have one on it's way here right now if it used Firewire instead of USB 2.0. Oh well.

Dell is currently number 1 seller of personal computer systems in the world, and so far there have been no plans for Dell to produce any Apple notebooks or desktops. Oh, and by the way, for $700 I can get a 2 GHz, 14.1 inch screen machine with integrated network and stuff. For $700 you can probably buy half an Apple machine, and that's on eBay.

Redid the link.

I forgot about the dreaded space in the middle of the url 'feature'.