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Dell Begins Selling Inspiron Mini 9
mocoloco writes "A week after the rumored date, Dell has begun selling their entry into the netbook/subnotebook/UMPC market, the Inspiron Mini 9. The base system for $349 includes Ubuntu 8.04 "with custom Dell interface", 512MB RAM, and a 4GB SSD. There are options with XP, one that includes an 8GB drive and a $40 instant savings, another with a 16GB drive and 1GB RAM that has a $55 instant savings. Curiously the Ubuntu systems are a pre-order at this point, to be shipped within 15 days. Also, no Red option yet."
I'm keeping it real with the EEE.
Dell's a major MS OEM - they're swimming in Windows licenses, and they have all of the necessary infrastructure in place to brew the necessary driver configs required to get a working machine out the door with minimal hassle.
As anyone who's ever installed Linux knows, it's an incredibly rare event when Everything Works On The First Try - in this case, Dell probably had to eat the cost (paying developers,or a basement cube farm tasked with Making It Work, etc) to make sure their brew of Ubuntu works properly and featurefully on the Mini 9.
They (probably) don't need to do that with Windows - so they're passing the cost on to the consumer.
That or they know that the hardc0re *nix users are going to buy the cheapest version and compile their own OS on the thing, so they're selling it with their own flavor of linux for buzzword compliance.
I don't want my native tongue, my language of expression, to die because of american influence.
I'd rather be shot than not allowed the right to speak French. If you love yourself you'd do the same for you language. You wouldn't drop English for Spanish.
The laws are there to protect minorities. French in western canada, english in eastern canada. Because one of the things we all agreed on a long time ago is that nobody gets isolated and effectively wiped out anymore.