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Why You Can't Buy a Naked PC
ZDOne writes "A piece up on ZDNet looks at the issue of naked PCs. ZDNet UK phoned around all the major PC vendors and not one of them would sell a machine without Windows on it. IT professionals are being forced to adopt Microsoft's operating systems — even if they tell their PC supplier they want a system free of Microsoft software. On the other hand, even if it's almost impossible to buy a PC without an operating system installed, companies like Dell and HP are now committed to supporting Linux as well. 'Murray believes there is a market for Linux in the UK but is also aware of the issues facing any large supplier who wants to make Linux boxes available. "It means diverting production lines and that is a lot of money and so we have to prove the business case," he said. However, he made it clear that he is enthusiastic about the idea and wants to make it work. "We just have to show it is worthwhile," he said.'"
Dell sells the n series with FreeDOS. That's about as close to a naked PC as you can get. They also sell workstation-class systems (the Precision series) with Linux pre-installed, we buy them at work. You can even download drivers that work from their site, as I found out recently with a Precision 690 running WS4. Their sound drivers went in, and after removing the included non-functional driver everything worked great. I can't complain. HP also sells Linux systems, and we have a few.
Aside from those vendors, and numerous others that specialize in Linux, I build my own systems for home use. Not a one of them has ever come with Windows.
GPL: Free as in will
The last few new Dells I've dealt with had a bare minimum of crap installed, Google Desktop was pretty much all there was.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The last few new Dells I've dealt with had a bare minimum of crap installed, Google Desktop was pretty much all there was.
Where they bought through the "Home" or "Business" sections of Dell's site?
Because (and this is no secret, and not limited to Dell) the computers sold to "home" and "student" users are the ones loaded with garbage. The business models are pretty much clean, for obvious reasons. And the deals are usually better, too...
If the text is too small, make it bigger by increasing the font size. Don't compromise the resolution of everything on the system just to make the text bigger.
In an ideal world, you'd be absolutely right. In the current one, not so much. I have an old Dell laptop with a 15.4" screen at 1920x1200, and WinXP really doesn't cope all that well. Changing the DPI setting (the "correct" solution) broke pretty much everything. Keeping the standard-but-wrong DPI and cranking up font sizes used to mostly work except for dialog boxes, which go badly messed up. At some point MS gave up and changed their policy via an update; now, dialog box text is always sized for 96dpi and cannot be enlarged.
Ironically, the only thing that manages layout flawlessly and respects font size prefs is Eclipse's SWT toolkit. MS stuff is absolutely nowhere.
If you look at the first link you posted they have laptops with 128 Megs of RAM. Wee I can install an OS.
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