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Dell's Open PC Costs More Than Windows Box
fist_187 writes "In this article at The Register, they show thath Dell's Open PC costs more than a PC shipped with Windows XP. That's right, getting a PC with a blank hard drive costs more than the same hardware running Windows XP." From the article: "As it turns out, Dell's sales staffers have a secret web page for the product that you can't find with normal search tactics. A kind lass we'll call 'M' pointed us here. On this site, Dell presents a couple different versions of the mysterious E510n. The lowest-end system starts at $774 and is exactly like the boxes above - including the free flat panel - except it has 512MB of memory. For some reason, Dell told reporters that the box starts at $849 - yet another one of the odd sales tactics surrounding this "open source" kit. [Following the publication of our story, Dell raised the price of the PC back up to $849. See the sales pages below for the original $774 price comparisons.]"
Computers with Windows XP are stuffed to the roof with trialware and services that kick back the cost. Those with empty hard drives are, well, empty. What's so hard to grasp here?
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
No, it's been that way for a while. The FreeDOS boxes have always (as long as I remember) been more expensive than an equivalent box with XP.
I don't know what kind of deal they have with Microsoft to make that happen, but I suspect it is more than just the AOL and McAfee add-ons that they can bundle with XP.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
A lot of IT departments have neither the staff nor the patience to build each PC on their own. Considering the tiny profit to be made off PC building, it's much more sensible to focus on projects, rollouts, etc. Tack on the fact that most IT folks don't want to spend hours trying to RMA failed mobos from random vendors, and Dell/IBM/whoever else make a lot of sense in the long run.
Still, that doesn't mean we enjoy dealing with their tech support folks. What idiots!
Building your own is great, but when you're freelancing as a consultant, and you have clients, you don't want to worry about what you build, and that's where Dell and others come in. Plus it's easy to sell people on Dell machines, at home or at offices, since alot of them already use them at work. Every time you say 'I can build one FOR you..' they get this strange look and their eyes usually glaze over. For some reason, they accept the fact that you can fix pc's but not build them.
You are wrong in both assumptions you are making, the implicit one that people running linux don't buy pre-made boxes (as a freelance sys admin I know that many Dell Optiplexes and even Diminsions are running as servers) and the other unspoken assumption, that the lower volume on this model somehow cuts into efficiencies of scale. This hardware is identical to it's "sister models" with the exception of an adhesive backed sticker with the model number and serivce tag on it. It's not like they built a whole assembly line for this model -- this model exists as separate from other models purely as an abstraction in some database of part numbers.
I buy ~250k/year of Dell PCs. We do not have the time, staffing or patience to sort through myriad component problems. They are all Dell Optiplex and Latitude machines with three year warranties and Complete Care. If it breaks, it's Dell's problem. We just don't have time for anything else. If some shop has the time to screw with this stuff, they have too many IT staff and are pissing away money for nothing.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
The only reason left these days to build your own is if you want specific components, or you just want the experience. Economic reasons to build your own died when Walmart and other big-box stores started offering PCs for $299.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Hmm, Google does screw around with this stuff. Perhaps they have too many IT staff (although it is their business). Whether or not they piss away money can be debated when their profits triple next, or they go bust, whichever comes soonest.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
When I started up my brand new Dell laptop I immediately booted to CD-ROM and installed Linux.
I never agreed to the Windows EULA. You have to be careful when it first starts up because any key will make it accept. So if it comes up you have to shut the power off then start it back up and get to the boot menu before it comes up again.
I wouldn't ever consider building a PC for a client these days. Why build for someone as a consultant? You're just asking for trouble. Machines have fairly high failure rates no matter what brand or components you use. I'd rather point people to Dell so that when something breaks, I'm covered. =) Besides, with PC prices the way they are, how much can you save your clients anyway? Especially once you factor in the cost of your time.
and 3) having a computer that's actually coherent.
3.6GHz P4 is (not so) neat, but when coupled with integrated graphics, 256Mb of shitty RAM and the worst mobo of the market it becomes quite... uselesss.
Better get a much lower clock and have the other components match the processor's level of performance.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
No, it is specifically allowed by copyright law, it's the normal use of software.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
May I direct you to Exclusive rights in copyrighted works. I quote: "(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;"
May I direct you to Limitations on exclusive rights: Effect of transfer of particular copy or phonorecord. I quote: "a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 (3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord."
In other words, while the owner of the copyright can license for rental, if they sell the copy instead of merely renting it, then the right of first sale says they no longer have control over the where/what/when of that copy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Wow.
It seems you need to hire an operations manager.
You could be saving a little bit of up front cost to just piss away tens of thousands of dollars a month because you can't justify the cost of labor. Sure if you had the time, I'd warrant that you would have peformed a true cost-benifit analysis of maintianing the machines in-house. But by you're own words "We just don't have time for anything else."
Sad truth is, you probably don't have time to properly account for the the time and money you waste by coordinating with Dell, and I'll wager that your company (by it's size in computer demand) is large enough that it's already utilizing resources just to track and coordinate the problem machines.
Sure, it might only cost you a percent or two of profit, and changing could be the wrong decision (depending on the data you collect), but even a COMPUTER SCIENTIST knows that basic business classes provide ample opportunity for justifying decisions with real resons (cost / savings) than the cop-out, "We just don't have time for anything else."