Turns Out Ubuntu Dell Costs $225 More

An anonymous reader writes "One week ago this community discussed the apparent price advantage of Ubuntu Dell over Vista. The article linked to a Dell IdeaStorm page with the status: 'Implemented.' Today the status has changed on that page to 'Reneged: Ubuntu Dell is $225 More Than Windows Dell.' The full price of a Ubuntu Inspiron 1420N is indeed $50 cheaper than the identical hardware configuration with Vista — except that a $275 free upgrade to 2GB memory and a 160-GB hard drive is available for Windows only."

Comments

Fluctuating price

[MoonFog]

Seems like it's hard to determine the exact difference. From a post in the linked article:

The price has been updated and the Ubuntu system is now $25 cheaper, thought the RAM Upgrade to 2GB will expire tomorrow. The price discrepancies, and promotions, fluctuate too much..."

And from a blog linked to from the linked article:

Update 07/11/07: The given components and prices on the 1420 Notebook have been updated. The price difference is now $25, in favor of the Ubuntu system. Note that the RAM Upgrade expires tomorrow for the 1420N. Among frequent price and component discrepancies, price fluctuations, and Windows favored promotions, Im not sure if Dell is serious about selling open-source [as Dell calls them] systems, rather than generating publicity. Considering that expected sales are at 1% of total systems shipped, and Microsoft could break Dell in half by increasing Windows License costs or decreasing co-marketing funds, I have no choice but to assume the latter.

Re:What's the incentive?

[Shados]

Dell's promotions and stuff is err..."dynamic", to say the least. You can find the same system at like 5 different price depending where you look. So its no surprise that stuff like that would happen.

I don't see a problem here

[Sunkist]

Other than stating the upgrades to windows are FREE! You still save $45. What I am missing?

Inspiron Notebook 1420 N
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Ubuntu version 7.04
2GB Shared Dual Channel3 DDR2 at 667MHz
Size: 160GB2 SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)

Price: $774

Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Genuine Windows® Vista Home Basic Edition
Anti-glare, widescreen 14.1 inch display (1280x800)
FREE! 2GB2 Shared Dual Channel3 DDR2 at 667MHz
FREE! 160GB4 SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
24X CD writer/DVD Combo Drive
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card

Price:$819

Re:I don't see a problem here

[MoonFog]

Those were the prices quoted in the original Slashdot story that was about Ubuntu computers being $50 cheaper. A post further down talks about configuring it and it "now" is $225 more (free hardware upgrades etc) and then ANOTHER post even further down mentions that it's back to being $25 cheaper.. I'm getting a headache just trying to follow this.

Nothing like a good knee-jerk in the morning...

[Dekortage]

So Dell's base 1420 with Ubuntu costs $747 with these specs:

• Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
• Ubuntu version 7.04
• Anti-glare, widescreen 14.1 inch display (1280x800)
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
• 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
• 160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
• 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
• Intel® 3945 802.11a/g Mini-card
• No Camera
• 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
• Integrated High Definition Audio

Meanwhile, Dell's Windows equivalent has exact same specs, except for these differences:

• Genuine Windows® Vista Home Basic Edition instead of Ubuntu
• Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card instead of the Intel 802.11a/g card

And the Windows version costs $869. So the Ubuntu version is $122 cheaper and has a better WiFi card.

Remind me again... what did you step in?

CORRECTION

[Dekortage]

Sorry, I transposed numbers on the Ubuntu price -- the machine is $774, not $747, so the difference is $95, not $122.

My apologies. But Dell's Ubuntu system is still cheaper.

Re:Vista needs the space

[mhall119]

And yet Ubuntu doesn't 'just work'. As a Ubuntu user since 6.05, I have to say that for me it does 'just work'.

Why is the bottom panel on my desktop missing about 20% of the time? I have to log out and log back in. Usually it comes back, sometimes it takes 2 logins. I have never had this problem, but it seems your gnome setup has some problems (I'm assuming it's not just your screen resolution not displaying the bottom of the screen).

Why is the application built into Ubuntu to play music named "Movie Player"? It's not, I've never seen Rythmbox (Ubuntu's music player) called "Movie Player". The "Movie Player" (Totem, I think) can play MP3s, but that isn't what it setup as default for music files.

Why do I just get a black square when playing a movie with Movie Player? If I move the window I see the movie playing, but the black box comes back as soon as I drop the window. It sounds like your video card driver hasn't properly implemented video playback in X11.

Why, when I explicity specify I want 2 workspace, does the second workspace disappear and I'm left with one for half of my logins? Even when I do get 2 the second one has no panels at all 75% of the time. Again, I've never had this problem. It seems you have something seriously broken in Gnome. Try creating a new user account and logging in with that and don't change anything with Gnome when you do. If the new account has the same problems, the Gnome install is hosed, re-install it. If the new account is fine, then it's something you did in your account that is causing the problems.

Why can't I Add/Remove certain software from Add/Remove? Why does it even show up on the list with a checkbox if all it is going to is tell me to run Synaptic? I've heard this complaint before, and honestly it sounds like some stupid configuration. I can't say that I've ever actually used Add/Remove, I prefer synaptic for everything, but this seems a legitimate bug.

Why is the Software Update notification so annoying? I know Linux generally makes poor use of screen space, but why is the popup so huge? Why isn't it transparent like every other popup on a modern desktop? Uh, huge? It's tiny for me. What is your screen resolution? Are you running 640x480? Because that might be causing some of your other Gnome display problems. And transparent? The notifications I get on Windows XP aren't transparent. Are you using Compiz or Beryl? Those could cause some of your other problems if your video card can't handle them.

Say I unpack an archive to the desktop and it specifies a directory structure for the files. How come the folder icon is hidden underneath the icon for a drive I mounted a few minutes before? Again, never had this problem. Could be caused by extremely small screen size as I mentioned above.

Why can't the built in Bittorrent client download more than one torrent at a time? Why does it tell me "Error 98" or some other obscure junk if I try? I never had this problem with the default Bittorrent client, but I'll admit that I installed Azureus because I like it better.

I don't want a network connection icon to show up in the system tray, I'm on a machine that is wired all the time, I know it is on a network, I put it there. So take if off, what's so hard about that?

Why are desktop icons so huge? 5000 icon sets, all of them bigger than a breadbox. Icon sets come with different sizes for each icon for different applications. Are you using the biggest size when you don't need it, or again is your screen resolution so low that even 32x32 looks huge?

This is a partial list. Work on these and I will provide another. Worked on, got any more?

Bought my Dell-Ubuntu Desktop

[World.Pop(MPAA)]

Being relatively a noob to Linux I decided to purchase a desktop with Ubuntu from Dell and have nothing but great things to say about it. I usually build my own computers, which is an easy process for me using Windows because it's easy to guarantee combatibility with the OS. But now with Vista out, my fears of losing all my purchased apps, plus a desire not to get locked into another cost ineffective software solution lead me to trying Ubuntu.

In the past, I've tried different distrobutions (SUSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, among others) and have always taken it off my system because some annoying little hardware incompatibility caused me problems. So, while Dell may be charging a little extra for Ubuntu, I think there's something to be said about getting a Linux computer that will "just work" right out of the box.

I also have to mention that I don't feel cheated. I have a great system, 20" Widescreen Flat Panel, 2 GB of RAM, Core 2 Duo (1.X can't remember), the NVIDIA GFX (7300 Lite or something) card, 250 GB SATA HDD, DVD+-RW Dual Layer and another DVD-ROM as well. As some of the other posters had mentioned, this may have not been the "perfect deal" but I only paid about $1000 for the whole system. To me this is a sight better than paying $900 for the same machine using Vista and then having to repurchase Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks; does VS 2005 work on Vista?

Funny enough though, while Vista's having all these compatibility issues with the previous generation's software, I'm using the old Studio 8 suite on Linux under WINE and it's running faster than it did in Windows.