Slashdot Mirror

This is what $1,000 gets you at dell. With no discounts for buying 1000 at a time which I'd imagine are large:

i5 650 @ 3.2GHz
Win 7 home 64bit
20" monitor
8GB DDR3
nVIDIA GeForce G310 512MB
1TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable
Standard KB and mouse
2 year Warranty

http://www.dell.com/us/p/studio-xps-8100/pd?oc=dxdonp1&model_id=studio-xps-8100

I have no idea why you'd need that much for an office machine TBH. I'd probably go with $400 machines and grab a 3 year warranty. Also, I'd likely skimp on drive size since most places will not let you save much stuff on the PC at all making 1TB hilarious overkill... maybe 40Gigs will be used.

Dell reported in 2008 that "Our global reliability data shows that SSD drives are equal to or better than traditional hard disk drives we've shipped."

Dell has NOT dropped Ubuntu-Dell-PCs!
Look here: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Oh no, dell has not dropped ubuntu support, $624 basic price for the inspiron 15 with ubuntu 9.10 !!!!!! (w/o windows) and $400 for the same laptop with windows. They are really making it attractive to buy an ubuntu laptop.

Like this one? http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-m17x/pd?refid=laptop-alienware-m17x&~ck=mn

Dell has NOT dropped Ubuntu-Dell-PCs! Look here: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Dell has NOT dropped Ubuntu

The story is BS. PC Pro has zero credibility.

http://dell.com/ubuntu
They even have a page extolling the virtues of Ubuntu with a snazzy short url.

Dell is still shipping PCs with Ubuntu preloaded. You can find them here.

latitude e6510
15.6" FHD Wide View Anti-Glare LED Display (1920 x 1080)

i've been looking for a laptop for months now

apparently not looking very hard.

show me anything under 20in with more than 1k vertical?

Okay...

Any other requests? I can also transform ordinary tap water into an exquisite crystalline matrix using nothing more than common household items and/or wintertime!

For another $100 Dell's has a built in card reader and input selector with three more types of input options (so you can plug in your old game consoles ;)

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Displays/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-8277

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Do your research for this feature and rotate your monitor 90 degrees.

I did get it to where it looks good, but it took a lot of swearing. And I'd started with a scan of the original (best copy available -- it was an existing print logo to be used on their website). Had to do a lot of finagling with the tint to get it to where what the eye *sees* on a monitor is the intended shade of brown. On examining it at the pixel level, the reason became clear -- there ain't no such shade as 'brown' in the CRT spectrum.

There's no such shade as "brown" on the real spectrum. As a graphics designer, I thought you'd understand that.

Every color other than red, green, or blue will always be a mixture on all monitors at the "pixel" level. Your monitor isn't somehow lying to you, or cheating you out of a real color, it's mixing colors using additive blending, just like it happens in with light in real life as well.

If it looks the "same" at a distance, than for all practical purposes, it is the same. Putting your nose up to the glass and claiming that it's all "pixelated" - and hence somehow fake - is just stupid.

For professional work, why don't you get a wide-gamut monitor like the some of the new Dell monitors? They have a narrower color gamut than the human eye, but wider than sRGB, Adobe RGB, and CMYK.

And unlike your stone-age CRT, an LCD doesn't flicker, has a higher resolution, the pixels are perfectly square, the edge looks just as perfect as the center, and their color calibration drifts less with time. And if you get a matching video card, you can also get 30-bit color (10+10+10), which gives you 1024 shades of each color channel instead of the usual 256. It makes a significant difference when editing images with a lot of shadow detail.

Matches the Dell Streak case too.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=317-4056&cs=19&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=50390&lid=1305792

Our friends over at The Register are covering the HPC conference ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/hardware/hpc_blog/ ) going on in New Orleansl. The Nvida Fermi/Tesla GPU products seem to be taking a bigger and bigger chunk of the old high end market. Companies like IBM and Cray are using them in their own products since the cost per flop ratio is so favorable. Anyone can play around with parallel processing now thanks to the Nvidia CUDA api. If you have a GeForce chip then you pretty much have everyting you need.

Now if I could just talk my wife into letting me buy one of these. http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/hpcc/cray-cx1iws-dell.aspx

I dare you to find a laptop with a GF9800

What?

Did you forget your meds this morning.

$100 is the price for a 9800 equivalent in a desktop (sorry, I made the mistake of assuming you were smart enough to figure that out on your own).

If you have trouble meeting the Civ V minimum specifications, you will have trouble affording the game.

that costs only $100 more than the equivalent system with integrated graphics. I double and triple dare you.

Here you go and these are Australian prices, which due to the Indian-Pacific Price Dilation Field are significantly higher then US prices despite the AUD fetching 0.95 USD today. Look between option two and three, same proc, different GPU, A$115 in it. Also that's a geforce 310, a bit more advanced then an old 9800.

Now sod off and take your trolling meds.

Even better, this:

http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/pedge_m1000e/pd.aspx?refid=pedge_m1000e&s=biz&cs=555

4 of those maxed out gives you near the same capacity. 16 slots * 12 cores per slot * 4 enclosures = 768 cores

Big machines, not toys.

Yours In Moscow,
Kilgore T.

what? the part where you cant even remove their logo at all so you basically advertise for them regardless unless you get a case?

Right, unlike Dell, HP, Lenovo Lenovo, Acer (Acer . . . .

Sample of one? http://hplies.com/ http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01087277 http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377 http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/Direct2Dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx

And this is why we have sellers such as

• ZaReason—request just about any Linux distro you want, even if it's not in the drop-down field (my fave—the only OEM I've found selling systems with KDE and Xfce based distros in addition to GNOME ones)
• System76—all Ubuntu
• Dell—they finally have a desktop with Ubuntu 10.04, and there's some 9.04 & 9.10 laptops

Very large RISC Unix servers may still be the way to go for DB servers, due to the I/O required, but for app servers you can scale out at very low cost with JEE clustering. x86 servers are now down to $20K or so for 48 cores (4 sockets x 12 core AMD CPU) - e.g. http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/poweredge-r815/pd.aspx?refid=poweredge-r815&cs=555&s=biz - enabling very high volumes.

Enterprise application vendors are seeing a lot of demand for Linux/x86 support from their customers, for this reason.

We have that where I live in Ontario (the idea of charging upfront taxes that equal the cost of disposing of the item).

The only problem is that some places abuse it to double dip (Waterloo Region, Ontario -- Fourth largest city area in the province). Even though people already pay an environmental tax to purchase a TV that is supposed to cover throwing it out, residents have to pay again to dump it.

(I'd link to it on the official stewardship site, but they screwed things up terribly, to the point where the latest set of eco fees on asthma inhalers [seriously!] were repealed, but this list is as good as any for what still exists)
http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/topics/reftopic.aspx/gen/en/alberta_edr?c=ca&l=en#ont_edr

(And here's the fees you pay to throw away the items you already paid fees on to throw away)
http://www.region.waterloo.on.ca/web/region.nsf/97dfc347666efede85256e590071a3d4/312623eb1574fb6285256efb005879a3!OpenDocument

Guess what most people do? Yeah, that's right, they illegally dump the things. Instead of the items ending up sorted at the landfill so "hazardous" items are held separately, they are mixed in with dumpsters at stores and apartment buildings. The garbage from those is then sent to the landfill and added, unsorted. Lucky I live in an area where you can mix the trash, but I'm moving somewhere that I can't. So I'm throwing away all my perfectly working electronics that I can't easily illegally dump and replacing them with ones I can (eg: LCD monitor instead of a CRT, projector instead of a full size TV, etc). ;-) I may as well join in on the party, why not?!

I really wish Canada made taxation without representation illegal already. I wouldn't mind paying one tax, but two is just not right.

I can't buy a Linux PC from Apple, period. Helps if you read every word in the sentence.

- any Apple machine is a personal computer, what's your point? Do you want to buy with Windows tax or not? Also you can buy GNU/Linux machines from various vendors, here is Dell with Red Hat, and when I go to select models on Dell site I can choose to buy them with no OS and the price is decreased normally by at least 70USD.

I don't know where you're finding this place where the price goes down if you choose no OS, but on the link you provided, the only options are Windows OSes. That's right, even on the "Dell with Red Hat" page you just linked as evidence you can still only buy with Windows. Claims that Ubuntu PCs are cheaper have also been debunked by a bit of investigation. This is because when you buy Ubuntu you're still paying for a Windows non-license, which Microsoft forces OEMs to pay.

And Dell is is one of the largest, I didn't bother with other large suppliers, but there are plenty who'll sell you just Linux machines and you can buy empty boxes, or should I Google it for you?

That's not the point. My point is that Microsoft still has the market power, without government intervention, to force manufacturers to pay it even for selling a competitor's product. This is the opposite of competition. With government intervention (i.e. if the Justice Department had finished the job of pursuing the antitrust case it had already basically won) there would be open competition in the market for desktop OSes, instead of the anemic semi-competition that there is now.

You've got to be fucking kidding me. You just Godwined an argument about whether monopolies are caused by government

- no I didn't. The truth is simple: IBM enjoyed many privileges from many governments, it wouldn't be where it is, one of the largest companies in the world without that...

Which has very little to do with the Nazis, but you brought them up anyway to make IBM look bad. This is basically the definition of Godwining. Look it up.

Your Dad buys the OEM Windows system bundle.

Fail. The person you quoted perfectly addressed the hyperbolic complaint that a 67 year old could not install a Linux distribution on a random collection of hardware by pointing out that doing the same with any version of Windows would be equally hit-and-miss. (I contend that it would actually be more hit-and-miss. Slackware 13.* worked on my hardware out of the box. Windows 7 didn't, I had to download drivers for my network card from within Linux. I couldn't find drivers for my old Creative Soundblaster 1024 soundcard at all, so I ended up replacing it.)

The fact that one can buy Windows pre-installed on a machine is almost completely irrelevant because there are (or were, at least) a number of companies selling Linux pre-installed on tried and tested hardware. The fact that there aren't as many of them has as much to do with hardware compatibility as it has to do with currency fluctuations in central Europe in the post-war period. I submit that it has more to do with people's familiarity with Windows and their fear of change coupled with the legacy of Microsoft's monopolistic history, i.e. overwhelming dominance of the desktop OS market and the popular mis-conception that they and Apple are the only shows in town.

I keep hearing people claim reliability issues when SSD articles come along to slashdot.

I have never seen a citation, so I went looking for them via Google but could only find citations attesting to the high reliability of these devices.

Dell's Lionel Menchaca stated in 2008, when it was reported by Avian Securities that Dell was having SSD reliability issues, "Our global reliability data shows that SSD drives [that we shipped] are equal to or better than traditional hard disk drives we've shipped." He further notes that Avian Securities never contacted them and that their numbers were a complete fabrication.

At this point I consider any claims that SSD's are less reliable to simply be a myth derived from dishonest reporting.

Furthermore, there are published studies detailing how unreliable traditional magnetic platter drives are.

Do they have write limits? Yes. Can other parts of the device fail? Yes. Are they more expensive than economy platters? Yes. Is there real world data showing that they are less reliable as claimed? Apparently not.

they have not sold a copy of xp in years. anyone that thinks they are "buying" xp is actualy buying vista or windows 7 and back loading XP stupid

Really? What part of this gives any indication that it comes with anything other than stock XP SP3, as opposed to a Win7 license that's pre-downgraded? Note that most (all?) Dell corporate machines with XP explicitly state that you're really buying Win7, so it's kind of telling that this machine does not say so.

Ok, we have established that Linux and Mainframe platforms don't "blow" with J2EE application servers, right? Your claim is focussed:

"all J2EE servers BLOW on windows"

Here is a white paper detailing a migration from SUN SPARC using Solaris and WebLogic to Dell running Windows 2000. Notice the performance improvement, and the author doesn't detail any problems with WebLogic on the Dell Windows platform.

http://ftp.dell.com/app/2q01-Jaf.pdf

Like I said, just give me some (small) supporting evidence (a bug report, a rumour, whatever). Crashing, installation, or performance issues welcome. Anything.

I agree. I like how you just assume that because I believe in regulation I must also believe in subsidies. You also seem to have a flaw in your sarcasm detection chip.

- yeah, yeah, I see your sarcasm, but it's only partially sarcasm. Every joke is part joke.

ANY government regulation is a subsidy somehow and a tax somehow.

Why that you ask? Because my tiny company has to hire 7 people just to make sure we are in line with all the regulations, that are really set up to combat misdeeds of large companies, who are large because they enjoy government protections and help already. So government creates monsters and then it tries to control them to no avail, those monsters have economies of scale to deal with such nuisances at almost no additional cost, while tiny operations have to budget a pretty large amount in percentage terms to deal with these regulations, that don't even make any sense for tiny companies, because tiny companies could never have caused the kinds of problems these regulations are aimed to stop. Government creates monster companies and then creates monster regulations. Monster companies don't care, but monster regulations keep competition out very well. Small players who have managed to survive through the crazy regulations probably were in business before the regulations came to power, so they already had SOME income and could hire enough people to deal with the regulations, but no new companies in this sector can be setup anymore by small players. Sure, new companies can start in this, but only if the founders are already independently wealthy and can afford a million bucks a year right from the start just to comply with regulations.

So any government intervention is a tax, a burden, a subsidy somehow. Subsidy to industry of lawyers and accountants, extra tax on producers and burden to all, producers and customers.

You've got to be fucking kidding me. You just Godwined an argument about whether monopolies are caused by government

- no I didn't. The truth is simple: IBM enjoyed many privileges from many governments, it wouldn't be where it is, one of the largest companies in the world without that. They were a monopoly on and off in various sectors for that reason, they certainly enjoyed and enjoy an unparalleled number of government contracts in a number of markets. It is a big enough company to be a monopoly due to government help in some things, while not being a monopoly in others. It's a great way to start your business through them, if you are an exclusive provider of some service/product through them.

As to copyrights and patents, those are hurting competition in all industries and it's all governments' corruption, since the government creates and maintains those laws to help out their preferred corporations, and again, government must not be in businesses.

I can't buy a Linux PC from Apple, period. Helps if you read every word in the sentence.

- any Apple machine is a personal computer, what's your point? Do you want to buy with Windows tax or not? Also you can buy GNU/Linux machines from various vendors, here is Dell with Red Hat, and when I go to select models on Dell site I can choose to buy them with no OS and the price is decreased normally by at least 70USD. And Dell is is one of the largest, I didn't bother with other large suppliers, but there are plenty who'll sell you just Linux machines and you can buy empty boxes, or should I Google it for you?

Why is it the only form of policy you're familiar with is subsidies? Is net neutrality a subsidy? I don't think so. Is making a law that says, "you cannot hold your customers for ransom" a subsidy? This is what the thread is about, for chrissakes!

- Net Neutrality IS a subsidy AND a tax IF it applies to those providers, who create their own infrastructure without govern

Dell sells them online. I am sure the will ship to Fort Wayne.

Handheld devices are generally things that a buyer wants to hold in his hand before whipping out the credit card. Because neither any local store nor any of my AFK friends has an N900 for me to try, I don't know whether I would find its ergonomics usable. According to Dell's terms of sale, Dell charges a 15% restocking fee if I buy a product, find it unusable for any reason other than a defect, and return it. I will still be out of pocket the restocking fee, shipping, and return shipping.

Really? Dell sells them online. I am sure the will ship to Fort Wayne. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Phones_with_Carrier_Plan/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A3076016

Poor Cousins? Rarely seen in Enterprise? How do you explain this? For those too lazy to click, it's Dell's PowerEdge Rack servers. Nice mix of Intel and AMD CPUs.

Hey come on now, this is Slashdot -- not Factdot. What're ya tryin' to pull here anyway?

Poor Cousins? Rarely seen in Enterprise? How do you explain this? For those too lazy to click, it's Dell's PowerEdge Rack servers. Nice mix of Intel and AMD CPUs.

Mac OS = 1 company
Linux = A few companies ( I count three)
Windows = Very many companies

If that's a valid comparison, so is the smartphone OS one.

Well, it's not many, but they do offer some Ubuntu systems.

That is not true. Granted, they don't have many but they do offer ... three... but that includes a desktop system with Ubuntu 10.04. Which was released pretty recently. Which means they are still actively doing stuff with Ubuntu over there at Dell.

I was using a Latitude C840 thermal assembly, taken from a unit on the junk heap, for reference and I guess that I just couldn't stop all the old hatred flowing back...

A relic from the days when Intel was selling P4"m" as a suitable laptop processor, and laptop cooling systems were still relatively crude. In this case, the actual passive unit isn't bad(it actually has a certain aesthetic charm); but the two 30ish millimeter fans(one to buzz, one to whine) that labored to suck dust through the thing were horrors in their day.

A few days ago, I chatted online to Dell to inquire about buying a laptop with Ubuntu. Here are the full details of the chat. Seems they do not want to supply machines with Linux even though they advertise this. This is in breach of trading standards laws at least in the UK where I am based. Despite saying that they sell Ubuntu machines over the phone they do not: called them too and the agent I spoke to (somewhere in India) did not have a clue. It seems that MS have exerted pressure on Dell and Dell have succumbed. Session ID: 2277756 12:34:03 I am interested in a laptop but with Linux on it. Which models are available with Linux please? 12:34:53 You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat 12:34:53 Connected with raghava reddy varala 12:35:03 Agent Thank you for contacting Dell sales chat. This is Raghav, your Sales Advisor. Please give me a moment while I review your query. 12:38:13 Agent Hello 12:38:18 Agent How are you doing today? 12:38:43 Agent I am afraid we do not have any laptops with Linux operating system 12:40:50 Customer http://search.euro.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=uk&l=en&cs=&k=linux&cat=all&x=0&y=0 12:41:34 Customer According to your website you do. And I did buy one a couple of years ago, it was an XPS M1330 with Ubuntu on it. 12:41:59 Agent yes it is mentioned on the web site 12:42:04 Agent but we do not have any 12:43:59 Customer What a pity! Windoze is a nightmare, will have to look for another make. OR, do you refund the Windows tax before we go the small claims court or afterwards? 12:47:39 Agent We do not have such options 12:57:01 Customer OK then. Will go for HP. cheers 12:58:57 Agent ok 13:02:32 Agent Is there anything else that I may assist you with today? 13:03:08 System The session has ended!

So I should definitely choose Windows if I want this trojan, right?

FreeDOS and Linux systems

In that result, you see a Vostro v13 Ubuntu, a Latitude 2110, etc.

Yes, if you want a laptop with Ubuntu preloaded, you need to buy from the small business section. It's basically always been that way. You're more likely to find the hardware you want in the small business section anyhow. How many of us actually want glossy screens, for example?

That article only concerns the UK site. See http://www.dell.com/ubuntu

The Vostro v13, at least, still can be bought with Linux pre-installed on Dell's website http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/vostro-v13?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=mn

Note, too, that the Ubuntu one is $449 while the lowest priced Windows one is $558. The only difference in hardware is the Windows one has a web cam (oh la-la). That being said, I ordered mine with Linux and it has a web cam anyway.

If they really do drop Linux I'll drop them as well. Linux pre-installed was a primary reason I chose Dell.

(By the way, the Vostro v13 is totally sweet. Plenty fast enough for me, great looking, light, and small without being stupid netbook small. Highly recommended. No, I don't work for Dell.)

http://www.dell.com/ubuntu is still functional in the US.

This $299 T110 from Dell will be much faster and use less power than the G5. http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/poweredge-t110?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

I followed all the links in the story and worked my way to the dell forums: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/t/19339458.aspx The "warning" was posted by 'Dell - Matt M'...not a Dell employee.

Dell should be OK for servers.

A few years ago in a prev company, I found that IBM's x336 servers were better designed and of better quality than the "equivalent" Dells. And they weren't really that much more expensive. The Dells weren't crap, they just weren't as good. Cheaper, less reliable and layout not so good. Noisier too.

But I think the Dell servers have improved in design - they look comparable now:

IBM: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/pm/rg/n/xso03094usen/XSO03094USEN.PDF
Dell: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-r610-tech-guidebook.pdf

great QA

The article was created based on a Dell forum post, which suggests its a revision/replacement board, and that Dell found it, rather than someone outside. Getting parts that are compatible but not fully debugged happens, Apple,HP, and Asus have done it too.

"I just got a telephone call from a service scheduler informing me that the replacement R410 motherboard I received several weeks ago contains spyware in its embedded systems management firmware" peternli on July 20 2010 8:54 AM

"The service phone call you received was in fact legitimate. As part of Dell's quality process, we have identified a potential issue with our service mother board stock, like the one you received for your PowerEdge R410", DELL-Matt replied on Jul 20 2010 10:31 AM link
--

Imagine having to sit on discussion forums all day typing corporate bum-fluff©

A few of their SERVICE stock for a single motherboard showed signs of malware code on the embedded server management firmware. Dell reacted quickly and appropriately. You can read the forum posting that started this all here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/t/19339458.aspx

Of course this is disturbing, but it's quite a leap to say a 'hardware trojan' is 'shipping with Dell Servers'. Once again, a good example why you should never blindly trust "anonymous posters' on Slashdot... RTFA yourself.

But that Dell page does not tell the whole truth.

It advertises "Windows® . Life without WallsTM . Dell recommends Windows 7." but then goes on to have a screenshot of Windows XP.

And if you go to the Euro Dell site and try to look for Ubuntu systems
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/segments/gen/client/en/ubuntu_landing?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs
you find all the ones offered are only Windows 7.

So it advertises two operating systems (XP and Ubuntu) which it does not supply.