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Dell Pre-Installing Firefox in UK
seizer writes "Blake Ross, creator of Firefox, has confirmed on his blog that Dell are now shipping Firefox on all desktop and laptop machines in the UK. While rumours had been floating around before this, and UK buyers had been reporting that 1.0.6 came pre-installed, this is the first official confirmation of Dell's decision. Is the US next?"
Definately good news, but if it's not the default browser the impact will likely be limited. Most people will use whatever's the default.
If Dell is going to buck Microsoft and install Firefox, perhaps the day is coming when they will openly and consistently offer Linux on their desktop machines as an alternative to Windows. But we will see. Something tells me MS isn't going to take this lying down.
-Is it installed like the rest of their nagware? (e.g. buried in the menus)
-Is it the default browser?
-Will it remain the default browser?
-Is there an icon on the desktop? (still will probably not switch the trained to click the "e" people.)
In one way it's very good news.
I don't think it changes much though once IE7 is available. The IE7 hype for a feature set that Mozilla browsers already have will be deafening.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The UK is the second greatest market for both Slashdot and Dell, so reporting this only makes sense.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
I set up a bunch of new Dell laptops and set Firefox to be the default browser.
Much to my chagrin, McAfee (which is pre-installed) has a self-update is almost entirely ActiveX/javascript dependent. It loads about 10 pages in succession, which is rather strange. Even though it "fell down went boom" about 80% of the time in IE because McAfee's servers were continuously overloaded or down (thus resulting IE error pages which you can't continue from- you have to hit 'update' again and wait another 5-10 minutes.)
The incompetence in the decision to use complex ActiveX/javascript bouncing off 10 different pages and a couple webservers...just to check for effing definition updates...is astounding. Do they really not have anyone capable of writing a decent simple Windows 2k/XP program?
Please help metamoderate.
They've got the same system with XP media center for $20 less.. Tell me again how there's no "Microsoft tax". http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?CS=19&kc=19&oc=DE510SAP
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
If so, I don't think it'll make much difference to the number of firefox users, as most large firms I know, who buy from Dell, have IE only web sites and intranets. It will however boost the statistics for Firefox, viz. number of installations.
It's quite funny. Your type seem to cry "anti-competitive practice!" and "monopoly!" when Microsoft chooses to include a product of great quality in their operating system suite, however, look at you now. "I doubt they remove IE on the system". Heh. It's alright when theoretical anti-competitive practice favours Firefox, but not Internet Explorer?
That's because Firefox isn't leveraging an existing monopoly in one area to gain ground for another (usually inferior) product. That's anti-competitive behavior. For example, if Firefox firmly controlled 95% of the browser market, and told OEMs "We won't allow you to install our product if you install another browser, and unless you bundle Thunderbird with it", that would be anti-competitive monopolistic behavior. If the OEM simply decides not to include what they consider to be inferior but competing products of their own accord, that's the free market in action.
If MS simply bundled apps with Windows and OEMs left the other products out, I would be quite happy with that. I'm glad they've finally decided to give anti-virus another go for a number of reasons. It's when they tell OEMs, "If you want Windows, you can't install X" that they really need to be backhanded.
A good alternative might be for Dell or (more likely) a third party (for profit or otherwise) to release 'brand specific' Linux distro installation ISOs. Rather than running a standard install script, you download the ISO for your particular model of new big-brand machine and the installer simply writes a disk image onto the hard drive which already has all the appropriate drivers and config settings for the standard hardware. The only question is whether it's worth the effort when most installers are pretty good at figuring it out for themselves now anyway.