Pre-Installed Linux Tops Dell Customer Requests

dhart writes "Within only a few days of Dell opening a new customer feedback website, they discovered that the feature most requested (by an almost 2-to-1 margin!) is an option on all new Dell PCs: pre-installed Linux. (And the number 3 request is pre-installed Open Office.) I believe they'll have a harder time now with the tired old mantra 'There's no customer demand for Linux.'"

Comments

Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I believe they'll have a harder time now with the tired old mantra 'There's no customer demand for Linux.'"

It's not so much that there isn't customer demand for LINUX, it's that there isn't a whole lot of customer demand for individual Linux flavors A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. It's too much of a PITA to worry about qualifying all that different hardware with all the different distros and then worrying about dealing with Red Hat, Novell and all the different suppliers of what's basically a free OS.

Now, if they had a service like "I'll send you the Linux distro I want, please preinstall it on the next 500 computers you ship me," that could be big.

Requests != demand

[StikyPad]

I believe they'll have a harder time now with the tired old mantra 'There's no customer demand for Linux.'"

Assuming, of course, that this wasn't a campaign launched by F/OSS zealots. For some reason, vocal minorities are often confused with silent majorities. I'll put more faith in this alleged consumer demand when Linux boxes start outselling all other systems by a 2-to-1 margin. In fact, I'd be amazed if they even sold at a 1:2 margin. It would be a pleasant surprise, but a surprise nonetheless.

Shill?

[Gothmolly]

So 100 motivated geeks spammed their website and made it look as if there's huge customer demand. Duh. That's like those CNN or MoveOn.org polls - only the motivated even go there.

A better metric would be to have an OS choice list on their config page, with a "sorry we don't support Linux option" displayed once people click it.

Winds of Change.

[twitter]

... expect Dell to be the last major OEM not shipping Linux.

You think? I'm not sure anymore. Just a few weeks ago Michael Dell stood up with Vint Cerf and admitted 1 in 4 M$ computers is part of a botnet. Now his company is publicizing customer demand for Linux. If he was interested in toeing the M$ party line, he would have suppressed the results. The odds are Dell is moving away from being a M$ vassal.

2007 is the year of Linux. Vista sucks, is not selling and the revolt is on. It's about time!

Great Story:

[encoderer]

On a late night public radio call-in show (put out by American Public Media), they had a story about the overseas call centers. It was a great story. They played clips of the training classes where they teach these indians to lie about what they did on the 4th of july or what they ate for Thanksgiving. It was sickening.

But then they interview this "industry representitive" who basically said what we all have been: The American people are not satisfied with the level of service they get from Indian call centers, and that many companies are closing them.

I momentarily though "wow, thank god, that's a trend that can't be over too soon."

Then he pulls out the punchline: Many of the closed Indian operations are being moved to the Phillipines, because people have less of a negative impression when the phillipino accent is played back to them.

I swear to god it's like the RIAA is running the call center industry.

I was SCREAMING at the radio that the only reason Filipino accents don't score as badly as Indian accents are that Americans haven't called tech support yet and had to deal with under-trained Filipinos nearly as much as they've had to deal with under-trained Indians.

So yes, that's their bright idea. So if Dell does accept the "Close your indian call centers" suggest, don't expect much of an improvement. Maybe we should be a little more specific and suggest that they move their call centers only to NATO countries, and preferably the US, Canada or the UK.

Re:Great Story:

[koreaman]

Do you know any Filipinos, and more importantly, do you speak English with them on a regular basis?

I know a teenage Filipina girl. Although she does have a noticable accent, her English is impeccable and easily understood. She's not a special case, this is normal for Filipinos. The Phillippines exhibit a situation of diglossia in which English is used for educational and government as well as other formal purposes. What this means is that everything from government proceedings to television reporting is conducted in the English language. In addition, English is the only language spoken in many schools, and textbooks are exclusively written in the language. According to the Filipina I know, any use of her local language in her school incurs a fine.

Thus, Filipinos, especially educated ones, can be expected to have a good command of English. This, coupled with the fact that their accent is quite easily understandable, would make them, on average and from a linguistic point of view, much better technical support representatives than their Indian counterparts.

Mod parent... Well, *you* decide...

[KingSkippus]

I won't tell you how to mod the parent, but I can throw my 2 cent's worth of experience in.

It is 100% true that English isn't a second language in the Philippines, it's a primary language. I work in a 24x7 datacenter, and a year or so ago, a new support center was opened in the Philippines to handle our night shift. I thought they were going to let a bunch of people go, but it turned out, they were expanding our operations, not replacing them. (Thank goodness!)

I was very skeptical that this would work. I had many of the same fears. Would we be able to understand their accent? Would they be undertrained an incompetent? Would there be any culture clashes?

The answers, to my surprise, were: They have no discernible accent—none. They're very smart and easily keep up with our local folks, and have often gone far above and beyond the call of duty to help us out. And yes, they are very familiar with our culture and ways of doing things. In fact, a nice bonus about the Filipino support center is that a lot of our night shift calls were coming from Asia-Pacific countries (since, duh, they were open at that time of night), and a lot of those clients feel much more comfortable dealing with our Filipino support center than our American night shift folks.

By now, you're probably thinking, "Right, you're just a management goober," but I assure you, I'm not. In fact, I was certain that I was going to lose my job due to Filipino outsourcing, but that never happened, since we weren't really outsourcing. And after working with them for a while at our shift turnover and seeing the quality of the work they did for us, I can honestly say that hiring our Filipino friends has turned out to be one of the few times management actually did something right at my company, and it's been a win-win situation for everyone.

I'm not saying that every Filipino person is smart and capable and a perfect joy to work with. Just like dealing with all people, your mileage may vary. But I can say that anyone who thinks that good customer service can't be provided by support centers in the Philippines is either stupid or doesn't know enough Filipino people, if any at all.

Re:Their system configurator

[jlarocco]

So you're saying that Dell should only be allowed to ship their servers with 100% Linux compatible parts? Presumably you're one of the people who also complained when they were a 100% Microsoft lock-in.

I didn't say that at all, and I think most people got my point. If they're selling a machine to be used with Linux, then logic would imply that those machines should actually work with Linux.

You said it yourself in the comment: "the OS most people want to use" (emphasis mine). I note you specifically didn't say all people. Which means there there are people out there who may not want their hardware requirements dictated by an OS they're not even going to install.

Slow down, and read what I said. The whole thing, with the parentheses. I explicitly pointed out that the people buying *these* machines, specifically the "No OS, Linux" machines, want the machines to run Linux. I wasn't refering to Dell machines in general. If Dell is selling the machine without an OS, specifically so that people can put Linux on it, then yes, I think Dell should make at least a little effort to make sure it comes with Linux compatible hardware. Otherwise, what's the point?