Slashdot Mirror
Wal-Mart Sells PCs Preloaded With Sun's Linux
badboy3062 writes "Wal-Mart this week started selling Microtel PCs preloaded with Sun's Java Desktop System. Prices start at under $300 for a system without a floppy drive or monitor. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software, says this move is just another step in its plan to gain new audiences for its technologies."
Why would you buy a Walmart PC with Linux on it for $300 and then go out and buy Windows for $150+ when you could just go buy a Dell with Windows XP preloaded on it for under $400? Unless you're planning on a five-finger discount on the Windows license it'd be more to buy a Linux box and put a non-OEM copy of Windows on it.
"Sun has delivered the first viable Microsoft Windows alternative. The Java desktop system is a more affordable, secure desktop, designed to thrive in a Windows-centric world and run thousands of Java technology-based applications."
It goes on and on, including mentioning that it comes with StarOffice, it can exchange files with MS Office, it isn't prone to viruses, etc. They really are doing a good job at selling this to the average person and letting them know that there is a pretty viable option to Windows (other than mac of course)
The Java Desktop is a subscriber product did Wal~Mart get a discount due to expected volume or does the end user have to pay an annual maintenance fee for updates. IIRC it was $50-$100 per year depending on if you got it during the big sale (possibly still in progress). Having to pay that sort of maintenece costs would seem to push users toward Mandrake.
I'm actually curious because I had the same idea, but didn't investigate it far enough to see if SUN was willing to cut OEM customers a break. It would be nice to advertise a SUN operating system that everyone is hearing so much about rather than the scary (to small customers) Linux.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
So, does this mean that wal*mart is going to start stocking software for linux as well? Or just the cool windows games as usual?
-- The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thi
This is a genius price, and wal-mart's massive distribution capabilities could easily push the desktop market dramatically in the direction of linux. How large is wal-mart? Let me give an example. There's the story of the local piemaker who won a contract with wal-mart to sell his pies. Wal-mart ordered 10,000 TRUCKLOADS of pies! If they can do that kinda volume on the linux machines, Microsoft's in for a ride. Fortune 500: Microsoft = #46, Walmart = #1. Walmart wins!
In other news, see my artist interview at fulcrum gallery.
stuff |
Wal-mart selling another distro of linux on "their" PC's. That's kinda nifty, but it does make one ask the question:
Could this mean they'll get a clue and make their music store compatible with the computing systems they sell?
(Perhaps maybe around the time when we see Mac OS X run natively on a Microtel PC).
Wal-Mart also sells a good-quality, extremely easy-to-hack DVD player with digital sound output and S-Video out... for $30.
I don't get all this hatred of Wal-Mart. Sure, some of what they sell is cheap crap, but for the most part they seem to be pretty much the same as any discount retail chain. (And though it pains me to say so as a Minnesotan, their prices are usually better than Target's.)
Is it the stigma of it being a chain that grew out of the rural midwest and South? Is it the result of people buying into the "OMG, they're killing the small-towns" nonsense? What's the problem? Seriously.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I've heard really good things about Sun's Java Desktop Linux. If it's based on SuSE (9.0 is so !@#$ sweet it's not even funny), it's gotta be good. I've considered purchasing the $50 discount copy, but I still wonder what their server strategy is. I actually prefer linux on the server to solaris for a lot of reasons, as I don't do anything high level enough to require a sparc. I want an end to end solution, and Sun is making it difficult.
Basically, I like the idea of using the same distribution for the server and my desktop. I can install SuSE on everything from my desktop to the Dell blade servers that I install, and it just works. This is very appealing, since I can become familiar with the environment by using it on my desktop in addition to the server.
When I went to price out one of Sun's new AMD systems, I was somewhat disappointed. First of all, the website does not give the level of detail that Dell's does. I want to know everything about the system from ram speed, to hd speed, to bus speed, etc. Then, I want much more ability to configure scsi, ide, raid levels, etc. On top of that, it was pretty expensive. You can get a dual xeon dell with 2GB of ram, 15K rpm scsi for about $1,000 less than a bare bones sun with an amd chip. For what it's worth, IBM is much worse in this regard when pricing any of their systems online. I think they're even more expensive and the website sucks way more.
Then, you have the option basically for solaris x86 (32 bit) or supplying your own SuSE 64 bit (community edition, whatever that means), or RedHat enterprise.
My conclusion is that Sun is still not going after the low end. I don't know if they just can't get the economies of scale or what, but don't sell an entry level server and pretend that you're going to offer a "premium" entry level server when the website is worse, you have fewer config options, and the price is way more than can be justified.
That said, I hope they read this stuff and adapt. How hard can it be to provide an entry level server when plenty of white box places do it even cheaper than Dell??? I can't even imagine what you get for the premium price tag.
Still, I would love the idea if they gave me a Java Server system with Linux on the bottom of the stack with Java completely installed, configured, and supported, and the option for the Java Enterprise system on top of it. What's with their affinity for Solaris, especially on the low end servers? Even if it's better in some regards, it's not as familiar, performs worse, is difficult to get app support for, etc. Give me the real deal please, which for me is Linux.
I think Sun is serious about becoming the biggest Linux vendor, as they suggested a year ago with their china deal where McNealy said "This, I believe, makes us instantaneously the number one Linux desktop play in the planet."
If they're going for volume, you can't beat Wal*Mart and China.
-
This sounds great at first glance but my gut feeling is that most of these units sold will be reformatted with Windows. That's the ugly truth methinks.
Actually I think you may be wrong. I had the misfortune (ok to be fair at least it was a job and kept me fed) of working at Wal-mart for a year and a half. For much of that time I was in Electronics, and even after I was moved to checkouts the Electronics people were known to call me or bring customers up for me to answer their computer questions. Frankly the vast majority of these people (all your average joe non-techy person) could have cared less what OS they had as long as it WORKED. If the Sun Desktop works well and does the things Average Joe Consumer wants (which are web surfing, E-mail and possibly chat mainly) then the customers likely won't even notice it's not Windows on their computer.And to be honest (not trying to be mean) most of those Average Joe Consumers couldn't reformat a system and put Windows on it if their lives and the life of their first-born child depended on it. Whatever it comes with will be what it stays with.
Now it will be interesting to see if they pack in restore CDs for them, HP in particular is really bad about forgetting them, even with only a 15 day time-period for in-store returns we took back so many HPs for exchange because of missing restore CDs it wasn't funny. I believe we had more computers stacked in claims than on the sales floor most of the time.
One amusing tidbit I had\ve to mention, wonder how long it'll be before Wal-mart realizes it'll be really easy to take a stylized sun and put their smiley face in the middle.
By your logic, Because walmart always wins ( and believe me I agree 100%), ANY PRODUCT they sell will defeat their competing products. Ok, Walmart sells coke, therefore Walmart will crush pepsi. Walmart also sells Pepsi, therefore Walmart will crush Coke. So who wins? Sams Choice Cola.
Walmart likes to help its vendors... at first. They worked exclusively with Tide to see if they could reducce their operating costs. Great, Tide now operated more efficently as a compnay. Then Walmart introduced Great Value Liquid Clothes detergent (compare with Tide!). Walmart might be working with Sun, but noting that they are essentially just selling a free OS, Its just a mater of time before Walmart introduces the even lower cost Great Value Linux . It will happen, believe you me.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.