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Dell Offering "Open" PC
Sans writes "Dell began offering a new desktop Dimension E510n PC this week with no operating system installed. The machine is designed for people who want to run open-source software such as Linux instead of Windows. The PC comes with a blank hard drive and a copy of the FreeDOS operating system, which can be installed by customers."
This is the kind of thing that leads to misleading statistics...News headline: "Dell offers PCs without Windows but demand remains close to zero." Microsoft spokesman "It's obvious to us that most PC buyers want Windows running on their machines yadda yadda yadda..."
Who would buy this machine? A inexperienced home user? They wouldn't be interested in a computer that wouldn't even start up out of the box. Business? Business would buy the equivalent Windows machine for $70 less and replace Windows with Linux (assuming that was the intended use for the FreeDOS machine). Geeks? They'd recycle an old machine or build their own.
If Dell was serious about providing another OS on their hardware, they'd partner with a Linux company (Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Linspire, etc.) and let the Linux company provide the software support.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Dell has been selling machines with FreeDOS for some time. We've bought several (including the machine I'm typing this on) for work. Let me know when they start to ship with AMD chips. That will be news.
Trolling is a art,
Have you considered that it probably does cost $30 to Dell? I remember hearing that dell pays $15 per license for plain XP, so this isn't an unreasonable price.
Microsoft offer tremendous volume discounts to OEMs to ensure they ship their computers with Windows.
this is a good start, too bad they're including FreeDOS disks and not free Ubuntu disks though. But I'd guess that the people who would buy this sort of machine already have access to some distributions.
...quite apart from being "old news", that is.
The number of times I've seen people post on here adamant that they don't want to pay the Microsoft Tax on a new PC, only to see the response so far to this, makes me smile. Complaining that the difference in cost is too small, or that Dell hasn't chosen their favourite Linux distro to put on there, doesn't have an AMD processor, blah blah blah.
It's a PC without a preinstalled forcibly-paid-for copy of Windows. So Dell gets Windows for cheap, you don't see a huge price difference, but all those people who wanted an MS-free PC can now buy one. You can't possibly be upset by that, can you???
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In the past, PC makers that offered non-MS variants were allegedly punished by MS with higher prices, delayed access to info on future MS OSes, etc. That both Dell and HP are offering machines with Linux suggests that the power has shifted, that MS needs HP and Dell more than those big PC makers need MS.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
At least is a start, even if it's not entirely new "news". If they actually promoted this, and gave it a better price drop, people might realize that there is a choice, and that "windows" is not the computer. We can hope. Xandros user
Registered Linux User #404114 [url=http://www.punkoiska.com][img]http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/4379/posbannercf5.g
Clearly AMD can't support the load of having customers therefore we regret to inform you that we will not offer AMD products ... um...
Self-fulfilling prophecy if you ask me.
If you want real choice just find your local vendors and get them to order what you want. You support local business, you get what you want and often you don't pay more [or much more] than the monopoly controlled "wonder box" you get from Dell [et al.]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
if they put in a Nvidia card for the linux users.
Volume pricing on a windows license is about $30. We've covered this before. The price differential should be exactly $30 - it is - Dell is being honest (good for them).
-everphilski-
How can you tell? Well, for starters, you can buy the same system with a hard disk twice the size with a 17" LCD monitor and Windows Media Center Edition for the same price.
More importantly, the 510n comes with an ATI card that will be difficult to get to work properly with X.org (dunno if Xi Graphics is still in business), whereas the 510 uses an Intel chipset that, while not great, will probably work better.
And why not simply install a popular Linux distribution on it from the get go? They could "brand" it simply by adding a package with Dell-logo wallpapers, themes, and icon sets.
Dell's just grubbing for some positive press.
This isn't news (Dell has always had OS options). The real news will be when Apple offers machines with a choice of operating systems. Then we will be able to see how much the cost of the OS tax is on the Mac.
Remember... in slashdot land:
Lack of Microsoft choice = bad
Lack of Apple choice = brilliant
I've noticed the same thing.
:)
While personally I probably won't buy a PC from Dell one way or the other, at least not a desktop, I'm happy to see that they've taken this small step.
I could see this model appealing to people (admittedly, a small market) who are interested in playing with Linux but don't want to assemble their own system, for either technical or personal reasons, e.g. it's not worth their time for the money saved.
Rather than viewing it as a half-step less than Dell should have taken, I'd prefer to view it as a half-step more than they could have. After all, if they hadn't done this, we never would have noticed. It just would have been business as usual.
To me personally, I hope that it will encourage other models to be sold like this as well, particularly from other vendors (IBM/Lenovo, do you hear me?). This is mostly because I'm more in the market for a notebook right now than another desktop, and I prefer IBM to Dell, but I'm still not going to slam Dell for doing the right thing, even in a small way. That just seems counterproductive.
But then again, this is Slashdot -- counterproductivity is the name of the game.
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When you think about it, we all know that the typical Linux installation is far less resource intensive than Windows, so why don't they sell it on their lesser hardware? I really think it's just pandering to a particular crowd that said, "hey, I want this." Now they say, "look, we have it and you're not buying." Well, of course not, I don't want to pay $1k for a workstation, I wanted a $500 desktop with Linux on it.
I also want to see the price drop if I get a machine without Windows. Microsoft thinks Windows XP is worth $100. Why is it that if I buy an OS free machine the price changes $0?
But where does Dell guarantee that it will even run Linux with 100% of the hardware working?
Maybe *that* is why they don't bundle Ubuntu or Fedora with it...?
I'd rather go with something like Sun's Ultra 20, which comes with Solaris pre-installed and is certified to run Solaris, Linux (RedHat), and Windows.
As for the license difference, I'll point out how he's off the mark in a reply to him.
What eats resources is the X11 windowing system. {Though object-oriented, interpreted languages -- such as the JavaScript embedded into web browsers -- probably don't help much either.} It used to be that KDE was horribly bloated, but GNOME is no longer a lightweight alternative. Of course there are less resource-intensive desktops {my favourite, which I will be using in my own distro, is WindowMaker} but most people are expecting a Windows XP clone. Hence, KDE or a heavily-customised GNOME.
I'm sure that you could create a display server optimised for applications running locally on a desktop machine with a single monitor {most people's configuration} and it probably would be less resource-intensive. But would it really be worth it? Who is the intended market? The people that are running older hardware generally know what they are doing. There are still a few '486 and first-generation Pentium boxes in every co-lo; and they churn out web pages and e-mails that are viewed on machines with ten times the RAM and twenty times the processor speed.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Another bonus is that when you by from the small business side the prices are somewhat lower
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I'll stick to building my own PC's. Been doing it since I was a teenager, and I have no desire to buy a big name PC. Plus, I don't trust what they put in there. I've seen the inside of several low/mid range Dells, Gateways, Compaqs, etc. With the exception of the very new Compaqs (from HP), most of them use cheapo generic parts, inadequate cooling, etc. Sans-OS or not, they don't interest me. I like to know exactly what I put in there. Also I don't have to send my PC's off to some "authorized repair center" where some PFY will likely erase the hard drive and reinstall everything to "fix" it.
Just my two cents.
Seriously.
Everytime I've tried to do a 'naked' install on a 'brand-name' low-cost system, I end up with driver problems, either with Windows or Linux.
Something is *always* futzy. You *always* end up downloading strange roll-up drivers from the manufacturer, and they never seem to work properly. Basic things like suspend/resume end up being flaky unless you can figure out the exact set of drivers your system has been certified 'workable' with; this is true even down to the revision!
Sony, Dell, HP, Compaq, the lot of them. In the low-end market, these machines feel like crap.
I thought the purpose of buying a system with a pre-install was so that you didn't have to go throught that hassle?
Mind you, I haven't had near as many problems with the higher end stuff.
It's been awhile since I've purchased one of these, however, so I can't be sure.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
In sales meetings with Dell enterprise reps, when they present product roadmaps, there is always some young turk who wants to impress the boss with how cutting edge he is. He's the one who asks "Well, are you going to offer these with the new AMD chip? It has SEVENTEEN superpoop pipelines and HyperMondo logic AND it measures your pupil dialation and then makes coffee if it senses that you're too tired to read one more page of slashdot. Well, are you going to offer it?"
For as long as I've been going to these meetings, the answer from Dell has been the same: "We'll offer AMD when they can support our production volume and comply with our JIT order process." For five years now they've been saying the same thing. Dell got the message- they don't care about the GHz battle. They don't care how many superpoop pipelines the chip has. They don't care about whether or not it implements the latest instruction set tweaks.
All Dell cares about is that when they place an order, the order gets filled, immediately, no questions asked- which is important, becuase Dell assembly plants sit on less than 24 hours of inventory for any given part. AMD doesn't have the fab capacity or logistics systems to meet that demand criteria, and Intel does. End of story.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
The last time I tried to take one of their desktop machines apart.. Well.. I couldn't.. Half of the case was locked in by some hidden mechanism and the motherboard appeared to be epoxyed onto the surface of the frame. Not to mention that the only reason the other side even came off in the first place was because it was at one point very forcably removed. I wish they'd also make these things servicable by users. Talk about vendor lock in..
When I bought a Dell this year, I requested dual booting so I could have Windows and Linux. -Yes sometimes Windows is better to use. I'm a realist on the OS not a fanatic. I dont like Windows anymore than the next intelligent person, but they have such a hammerlock on so much out there that sometimes it is more efficatious to use them, like for mmorgs.- Anyhow, Dell said they did not support dual booting. The machine came with a Windows xp, and a lot junk an AOL hookup, MacAfee virus protec, etc.. It would really be nice if Dell would support some meaningful things like dual booting.
Which would be the biggest fucking mistake of your life. Half of the people working their phone support don't speak english well enough to take down your name and the other half will give you the run around until you wind up with one who doesn't.
And you had better hope you don't have a fucking defective item, because good luck getting that shit replaced. I bought an LCD from them in July and it took three weeks calling them every day to get them to finally offer me an exchange, and by then I was so sick of it that I just returned it for a refund. A refund that still hasn't shown up.
So fuck dell. Who cares if they ship Linux or not? I'd rather have a piece of shit gateway from 1995 than anything from dell.
whoa whoa whoa, ease back there. I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking the silly chip marketing garbage that we all have to put up with. Just because I'm typing this on a machine that's running a P3600MHz on a 440BX chipset doesn't mean I'm a luddite or a troll. And yes, I have an Athlon 900MHz box right next to it. Yes, I agree that Intel and MS are both evil and that Dell is propping up both of their illegal monopolies.
The problem is that Dell doesn't have a social conscience. What they do have is a very successful business model, built in part on top of very rigorous control of their supply chain. It would be downright irresponsible of Dell to jeopardize that business by making a decision based on some trendy marketing gimmick- whether that gimmick is called "HyperThreading" or "Predictive Poopchute Execution." Yes, I'm being glib with my choice of terms, but the point is that when an enterprise is making a long-term technology decision, the detailed implementation of that technology is often transparent to the ultimate decision-makers. Dell knows this and has accepted that sometimes technical superiority plays second fiddle to production capacity.
As a for-example, consider a large business deciding to buy ERP software- do they buy Oracle or do they buy SAP? Let's look at this from 3 levels- end user, technology architecture, and CIO. The end-users don't care whether the code runs on IBM, Dell, or HP- and they shouldn't need to care. The hardware layer is ideally transparent to them. All the end-user should care about is whether the application does the job they need it to do without getting in the way of actual work.
Zoom out to a different level: the architecture guys probably care a lot about whether it's IBM or Dell, but they probably don't worry too much about what chip is inside that box as long as the box has the cojones to support the load of running the application. All they care about is if the application goes down becuase there are too many concurrent users, or someone at the colo kicks the plug out, or someone ouside the datacenter digs up the cable with a backhoe. As long as ther are no bugs in the chips, the actual chips inside the boxes running the application are transparent to them.
Now, zoom way out to the CIO level: the CIO cares about overall cost, and he cares about perception of success. The CIO's job is to make sure that the technology STAYS transparent to the end users. Now, he knows that if there are delays in implementation or roll-out, his team will take the blame and probably bear the cost. So his biggest concern after the initial choice is made is keeping the project running on schedule, to avoid the perception of delay and cost overruns due to techology complications. Assuming for the moment that SAP and Oracle are equally easy to roll-out, inservice, and admin, and equally easy for the end-users to use, the CIO's biggest concern is picking a server vendor who delivers products on schedule without any hiccups. He knows that HP is all fucked up from a corporate perspective, and they need 5+ weeks lead time on new boxes, and they're having delivery problems, so he's not picking HP. That leaves Dell and IBM as serious contenders.
He doesn't give a shit about Hyperthreading or Intel vs. AMD because it doesn't impact his decision at all... that is, unless he picks Dell, and Dell pushes boxes with AMD, and then AMD has supply problems and Dell can't ship his boxes on time... Dell knows from experience that the CIO won't blame AMD, he'll blame Dell. It only takes one story about a project that's 6 months late and $5 million overbudget because of the missed Dell delivery timelines, and all those CIO's out there go back to IBM as a default choice.
That's why Dell can't run with AMD in ANY of their boxes- Dell is still trying to prove to John Q.CIO that they're a serious player in the enterprise space. There is still a widely-held perception that Dell computers are, as a whole, a bunch of s
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.