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Dell Refuses to Sell Ubuntu to Business
An anonymous reader writes "I had a surreal experience with Dell today.
My boss asked me to order a new computer for our small, non-profit business. Wanting to support Dell in their decision to sell computers with Ubuntu installed, I decided to order one.
First, I talked to a small business representative, who informed me that I could not order one of the Ubuntu-based computers through the small business department. I had to go through the "home and home office" department.
I called the Home office department. I asked the representative if I could buy one of the ubuntu computers for my company. She said (and I quote), "these Dell computers are designed for personal use only, as long as you use it for personal use, you can purchase one."
So I lied and said I would....
Next, I tried to buy it on our business credit card. They would have none of that. She told me that I had to buy it through a personal card. Now, as a non-profit, our business does not pay sales tax (10% in Tennessee). Had I bought it with my own card, I would have had to pay tax (~$90), which my company would not have reimbursed me for. So.....no Dell today."
...take your business, literally, elsewhere?
Why not purchase as an employee gift. I would not buy from Dell myself but if I did that is what I would do.
"Its Mary's 30th year with the organization, we want to do something special for her."
The GPL, for those that truely understand.
Dell has been selling systems through the business end with FreeDos for a while now. Purchase one of those and install Ubuntu yourself. It really isn't that hard and you can actually customize the install to what components you actually need. Or you could purchase one and install any free distro you want.
I can list the millions of reasons why they only want to sell it as "personal use". Remember, Dell (and any other PC company) is still a business designed to make money and if they cannot please everyone all of the time, oh well.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
They probably have a system in place that allows only businesses to buy business PCs, irrespective of whether its running Linux or not. And they probably see Ubuntu as only being appropriate for personal work, hence ..
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence. Doesn't make this any less annoying though !
Businesses AREN'T SUPPOSED to have opinions on the likes of SOFTWARE! Only GEEKS do that...
~~~hsl~~~
Dell segments its business based on how customers are perceived to use their systems. This is why a consumer can't purchase a Latitude notebook, yet Small Business customers can. Support is also divided along these lines for the most part. You can purchase Gold Support "highly recommended" on business machines but not so on the consumer machines. Ubuntu Linux, as far as I can tell, is being offered as a consumer grade operating system at this time.
I would wager if you talked to the Small Business sales rep again you could still purchase an nSeries system with FreeDOS on it or you can purchase a Precision Workstation with Red Hat Linux. Simply go to www.dell.com/nseries.
As it would appear that they sell LINUX computers so that they can get positive mindshare from the Slashdot types, but they don't want to make it TOO available to people like businesses so that they don't get Micro$soft too angry when they go to re-negotiate their OEM agreement.
What this basically means is that LINUX is no further ahead at the end of the day.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Umm, and you didn't hang up and call them back and get another salesperson who doesn't give a crap?
Thats the tactic I use. You always run into stubborn people in the service industry, but 9 times out of 10, the next person you reach won't care either way and will process your transaction just fine.
I was interested in supporting Dell and it's Ubuntu decision. I'm not traditionally an Ubunutu user. I've SuSE/openSuse on my 3 year old Dell laptop since I got it years (didn't have any hardware compatibility issues and auto-detected everything important) and otherwise use CentOS and Debian but thought it would be worth buying one just to ease hardware selection since laptop hardware changes so much.
I looked at the specs for the Ubuntu laptop. 6 pounds! Holy crap, no way in hell I'm lugging that around. My current Dell laptop is under 3lbs. I brought up the page for Dells smallest laptop and wanted to compare the hardware to their Ubuntu one. I buy under government/higher-ed. Guess what...no mention of Ubuntu as an OS option in that category. Looks like it's only available in the Home section.
Ho hum, back to the old fashioned way. Checked for wifi support before I bought the littlest one, paid the MS tax, and kept my fingers crossed.
Dell's Ubuntu option is a nice idea, but restricting it to a single Laptop isn't all that engaging.
It's not about that. Dell makes "Business computers" they have whole lines of "business" computers, very specific models; Optiplex, Precision, PowerEdge. They come with a limited number of OS choices...which includes Redhat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise.
You can't buy Ubuntu on one of those, and you can't buy windows xp either. Clearly Dell views Ubuntu as "not ready for the server" and is unwilling to put it on a server class machine. You can still buy the machine with no OS, and add Ubuntu yourself.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No, consumers in general are dumb. If they weren't, they would be customers.
Thus I feel vaguely insulted every time someone calls me a consumer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why is it somehow bad to call out a company for a stupid business decision?
I mean, I don't have to buy for them, but I sure as hell don't have to hold back my "they're stupid monkey fucking gutter slut" comments, either.
Plus, it's nice to know for the rest of us. It's nice to know what businesses to avoid if the situation ever comes up.
It's pretty pathetic that you complain about the right to free speech. American Consumers are dumb? I'd say the idiot who bitches about free speech is dumb. But hey, far be it from me to stop you. Even retards are allowed to get their say in. Freedom of speech and all.
That would be why they offer redhat support and SuSE support as well.
The full list of supported linux can be found here. Just because one guy wants to buy one machine that doesn't come with Ubuntu, everyone is up in arms. Dell never claimed that they were going to offer it on every machine. They're damn careful what they offer for business machines in general, and you can always get a business class machine with no OS.
Buncha fricking sheep. Dell's making a good effort on linux.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
http://system76.com/ Great laptops, reasonable prices, Ubuntu ships on the beasts. What more could you ask for?
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
This habit of jerking customers around is why they're going to follow Gateway down the drain. Good for HP and Apple, sucks for Dell's customers and shareholders.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Nice Try. But Dell's not just selling you Ubuntu, its also selling you the computer on which you're running it. And they *can* place additional restrictions on the hardware."
No they can't. It has nothing to do with the gpl, and everything to do with consumer protection laws (even business purchases are covered in many jurisdictions by the implied warranty of fitness for use). Unless the hardware comes with a per-seat or per-user license, which is not the case here, they cannot tell you how to use it. All they can do is refuse warranty support if its been abused. That is their SOLE option/recourse.
Buy the damn thing and get a refund on the Windows license. The instructions have been posted on the net, including here on slashdot, often enough ... (and tag another $100 onto your claim, for wasted time, since they refused to sell you one without a Windows license, and take them to small claims court for the extra $100).
I know, the subject is simply not true. But this the perception out there nonetheless...
My recent surreal experience went like that (talking to sysadmins in a giant financial company, with thousands of Unix-servers):
How do you like that?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That sounds like a match made in hell. You get to enjoy all the disadvantages of Linux *and* all the disadvantages of Windows at the same time. Your Windows services and kernel are still exposed to malware, you have all the DRM fun of the Windows world, and you have more overhead when running the UNIX applications you bought the computer for.
... Is Dell trying to avoid supporting these machines in a corporate environment? That's half-assed support, and Dell should be held accountable for it. Either stand behind your product, with the disclaimer that Linux-based may not work for everyone, or don't sell the damn things at all ...
Dell is doing exactly what you recommend, they do not want to offer half-assed support to businesses so they do not sell it to businesses. Keep in mind that Dell has completely different support teams for home and business. The business side will take a much longer time to train up on Linux than the home side, more variations and usage patterns. Also keep in mind that the economics/profitability of Linux is entirely different for home vs business. Home is probably more likely to just go with a canned configuration, business more likely to customize the Linux installation. Ubuntu should have been a clue that this was home centric.
>Due to an extremely silly incident involving a support contract a server running an Oracle instance, I've avoided DeLL for years
Did they insist on you shutting down a production server to run their stupid diagnostics tool when you called in a bad disk?
They did this to us a few years ago. They kept on refusing to send a replacement disk, insisting on *proof* that the disk was indeed bad. The diagnostics software they wanted us to use required us to shut down the server, which would have been extremely disruptive. Eventually we just said forget it, called back, and got a different rep who eventually finally caved and sent us the disk.
Granted, this was years ago, and their service has since improved, but that was a pretty brain-dead policy to have even back then.
-Z
Well, we're talking about the US here. Yes, there are antitrust laws but nobody even cares to enforce them especially when it comes to Microsoft. Remember the antitrust lawsuits in the US? Microsoft came off with not even a wag of the finger.
Yes they are pulling these stunts every single day. Go to any medium-to-enterprise sized business that has more than one SQL Server. Ah, you thought they really paid that 35000 license per server? Well, yes, unless they agree not to use Linux or MySQL.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
1) The build the cost of OSX into the price of the machine.
2) Apple PC's use the same hard drives as Dell, IBM, HP, and home built computers
3) Businesses that standardize on Windows don't want Apple PC's. They don't want to dual boot user workstations, and they don't want to deal with the extra complexity. They also don't want to pay those prices for the name Apple, like consumers do. The Apple notebooks aren't as overpriced as the Mac Pro, but they aren't an inexpensive option.
4) Dell's business support is pretty good.
5) He wants to buy a machine, with a free OS, without the big fuss. A Mac + BootCamp + Ubuntu + unsupported = Not What He Wants.
Macintoshes aren't always the solution. Get over it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I think the reason dell does this is fairly obvious. Small business sales at dell have different service policies than home sales. For example they get US tech support rather than tech support outsourced to India. They have different on-site repair policies. The computer selection is different too. And of course they probably have greater risks in case of negligence with businesses. So they presumably want to dry run the linux model in the consumer market before investing in the infrastructure to support it in business. e.g. easier to temporarily hire an outsource crew that can do Linux support than to retrain your US staff.
Now as for why not accept the business credit card on the consumer web site. Well that has nothing to do with this being a linux machine. That's just their policy in general. I'm sure they'd love to make an exception for linux machines, except that the market is so tiny why bother to have policy exceptions. People would exploit them and pretty soon you'd have businesses buying the $399 consumer entry-level dells rather than the business class machines then turning around and getting angry when they get outsourced tech support.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.