I disagree. I feel that if Dell pre-installed Ubuntu, they are certifying that hardware to work with Ubuntu. I have several customers who still use dial-up. I don't want to have to verify that the installed Winmodem isn't compatible with Linux and when the customer is paying me, I don't have hours/days to spend following arcane processes to get it up and running. (I had this issue recently when converting a Vista box to Ubuntu, it sucked.)
I'm willing to pay a little extra for that service so that my customers don't have to pay me for unnecessary work. (Sure, I could take the time and charge them more, but I do want to keep customers.)
Agreed. I just tried doing a front page search and hitting several different options. You really have to know what you are looking for in order to get the Ubuntu box. Even doing a search for "Dimension e520n" on their page returns nothing.
For any of my customers, I will be recommending these desktops, as long as they don't need gaming (and most don't).
Unfortunately, it doesn't work for the latest Tungsten 2E's. I've tried it. Also, I'd rather not have to buy another handwriting software for a device that already (in the past) had a decent handwriting system. Yes, I read about the issue. Why Palm sold off their software division is beyond me. That's like IBM saying, there's no money in software.
Yeah! I get to complain about Graffiti 2 now! How is making two strokes per a traditionally two stroke letter faster than making a stroke? For example, the "t" could be written like a 7 in the letter area in Graffiti, but now it's two strokes. Annoying. The "i" is now two strokes, down and dot. Before, it was just down. How was the "l" differentiated from an "i"? You just write a capital "L". All of my letters and numbers were one stroke motions on the Graffiti. Now, I'm pulling out my on-screen keypad all the time... I hate hunt and peck tapping.
I'm a Palm fanboy, but sheesh, Graffiti2 sucked, and I can't find a Palm PDA-cell phone combo without a keypad (buttons are too small). It looks like the HP iPaq series are an option, are there any others?
How many more e-mail servers will be run by small companies who don't know to secure them and we reap the benefit of more spam flood!
(Sorry, the cynic just broke out of me.)
My father, an attorney, is the exact same way. He finally convinced the firm that his computer was only collecting dust. His secretary, and I when I worked for him, took his taped dictations and printed his e-mail. He is just now starting to do a little web browsing when he schedules his golf outtings. I do not think he has a personal e-mail address... just his business address. Fortunately, his line of work does not dictate knowledge of technology.
I think you may have missed the threads about Ff and people who call them on their trumped numbers. There are at least a few people that raise the validity question of downloads to actual users.
Given that, I have downloaded one copy of Ff onto my USB stick and installed that "one" downloaded copy to several dozens of computers where the users of that computer are actively using Ff over IE. I also actively use Ff on at least 4 PCs, my work PC, my home PC, my laptop (of which is dual booting Ubuntu and WinXP), my wife's PC. Of course, downloaded copies != used copies. Just remember that every installation of Ubuntu also does not equal a downloaded copy of Ff, but it uses Ff as its browser. Perhaps the equation is downloaded copies of Ff used copies of Ff.
Of course, to counter that, there are likely those who install *nix distro that comes with Ff, and then opt to go with Opera or some other webbrowser.
Now I know why the XKCD site is sooo slow. I just discovered it yesterday and was going through the back posts. Little did I know the site had been slashdotted.
You certainly did not take them seriously after the first drill. At least you learned in the first drill what to do. After the first drill (or after several drills) you got the mechanics down of what to do and you no longer took the "drill" seriously.
Unfortunately, you get the shepherd-who-cried-wolf syndrome by the time students get to high school. The alarm would be pulled and everyone sat in their seat and carried on until an announcement came on and said get your butts outside. This was particularly evident when the teacher did not know of an impending fire drill. (Some teachers were better at others in getting students out the door, of course.)
I'm not sure how much the DSL takes up when used with a USB drive, except that they will gladly sell you a 128MB USB drive with its 50MB image on it. I've currently got the 50MB DSL image running in VMWare on a work computer (keeps from having to bug the boss who's not totally convinced on OSS, but gives me, as QA, the leeway to use whatever I need.)
Anyway, if you haven't guessed, DSL's image, fully running, is 50MB.
Better yet, see that door over there? Yeah, that one... the one that has all those scary green and brown things growing out of the ground and the bright yellow round thing in the sky behind it? Go, open that up, step through it and enjoy.
While you have a very good point, I will offer this counter-point. Both are valid for different users.
As a home computer repair technician, I have customers who give me their authority to get them the best, and generally most cost effective, computer I can get them. I have always tried find the tried and true hardware that come with warranties that I don't have to deal with. Again cost effective for them. So, I point them to Dell, eMachines, etc.
Just this past week, I purchased my first PC, a Compaq, with Vista on it. The requirement was the standard, office suite, e-mail and web browsing, it didn't have to be much and the least expensive that I can find and get it done quick. I first went to Dell, because I knew they sold PCs with WinXP and I didn't want to change the environment for the user. But it turned out, the total cost (after shipping... no deals on that, bummer) was the same as hopping on over to the local BB/CompUSA and I could be quick about it... So, Compaq it was with Vista.
As you know, low end systems come with 512MB RAM, the minimum for Vista. After playing with it for a few hours into the wee hours of the night, I thought, if I'm going to have to service this, and the customer is going to have to learn a new environment anyway... Ubuntu it is! Downloaded the iso (an hour while I was out doing something else), burned the disk (15 mins), installed the system (30 minutes), Up and running in less than two hours with a system that isn't crippled and runs fast and has all hardware initialized. Up and running with files transferred = 1.5 hours. Not bad.
Moat encourages young actually has a what I would call a high percentage return. This exact phrase links to an article to some British online magazine for teens.
What about notepad++? It's free, it's extensible, it's GUI based, it works on Windows, *nix, and maybe Macintosh (I don't know, I'm a PC fanboy), and it works great with code, xml, and regular text files.
There is one more cost: management. Sure, there may be a lot of costs associated with printing a publication. The problem is, all other publications have the same, if not more, costs. Yet, they are able to sell at a lot lower costs. More over, many other publications, which may not have as many publications, more advertisement, have a more frequent publishing cycle and actually pay the people who write the articles.
Many of these technical publications take the cake from both sides. They charge the people who write the articles and they charge the people who buy the journal. Their taking it from both sides of the distribution channel.
Get the UBCD or UBCD4Win for some good tools. Particularly, UBCD4Win includes several freeware and open source tools for file recovery. My favorite happens to be testdisk, followed closely by Restoration. (Make sure, if you use the UBCD4Win, you build these tools into ISO. Just follow the directions at the site, it is real easy.)
So, no one is ever going to read this, but who cares... I gotta have my say.
What about all the crapware they put on the computer? I've serviced so many computers with crapware that my customers want taken off (because the 5MB file takes up too much of their 150GB drive) that I can't think that a whole lot of users are buying the games and other stuff on the PCs. Therefore, when people do call up to discuss about their free 60 minute game, Dell is still paying out on a product that isn't and probably won't be paid for. It should also be noted that Dell won't support certain software on its computers.
Back to OOo, I've also had a whole lot of my customers complain profusely when I tell them that that version of Microsoft Office 200x is only a 60 day trial and after that they have to put out $200+ or go with the insanely inferior Microsoft Works. I say... use OOo, and they end up liking it.
However, there's a difference between something that cannot ever be proved, full stop, and something that can't be proved or disproved right now, due to the limitations of our understanding and our equipment.
With your statement you completely misunderstand many religions. In most religions that believe in an after-life; and, even better, those that believe a supreme being will come (again), religious beliefs will be proven at some point in the future.
The interesting thing is, I have received my hard evidence without the need to see the All-Mighty. I can tell you exactly how to reproduce such evidences. Unfortunately, faith is the first action and many people refuse the faith or reject the evidence and can, generally, no longer receive further evidence; or, when they do, they reject that evidence with the first.
The major problem for Dell to NOT preload an OS for the Home/Home Office crowd is that Microsoft would probably try and sue Dell for passively supporting pirating of Windows. Because Microsoft assumes that any computer that is sold is going to have Windows installed on it. (I don't have the link, but I remember an article about M$ wanting the government to levy an OS tax on all computers sold, whether they had an OS on it or not.)
Entry level users need a lot of hand-holding at learning their new computer. Their learning will not consist of back-end computer administration; but, instead, it will be how to use their new word processor (OpenOffice.org), their web browser (Firefox, Opera, whatever), whatever antivirus product might be out there for Linux (careful, if Dell does start selling Linux to the common user, Linux will gain market share and the eyes of the cracker crowd), and how to install games and other apps through some sort of GUI package manager (such as Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu).
Hopefully, Dell will remember to install Shockwave Flash and Java. Like it or not, the common user will need this when visiting sites like http://www.shockwave.com/ or http://games.yahoo.com/ to play their favorite games. And as I recently learned, installing Java on Linux is not the easiest thing to do. The user is not going to want to type wget http://java.sun.com/; apt-get install java java-doc...; and watch the scary text fly by and maybe understand what they see to comprehend any errors that come up.
To get a little off topic, but avoid posting in two different areas: one thing Dell can do is use all Intel parts. The fully integrated Intel motherboards (audio/video/LAN onboard) would be a good thing to use. As I understand it, Intel is writing a lot of drivers for the Linux community.
According to a site I read while researching the parts I needed for my ultimate PC (and try to keep it quiet at the same time), the stock Pentium fan/sink does just as good and is as quiet as any of the specialty fan/sinks out there. (Wooh, I get to save $30-50!)
I've never spent less than an hour with a new OEM computer on the setup.
The main reasons are as follows:
Unpacking from box and plugging in.
Setup of user profile and intro stuff that WinXP takes you through
Close all of the stupid pop-ups I am inundated with from crapware
Removal of crapware (~30-45 minutes and a few reboots)
Installation of Anti-virus (AVG, Avast!, take your pick)
Installation of firewall (ZoneAlarm is my fave)
Installation of The GIMP (and associated programs)
Installation of OpenOffice.org (and, likewise, an utter destruction of MS Works and the eval version of Office)
Installation of Firefox and Thunderbird and associated extensions
Installation of the several games I like to play (Morrowind, many Valve products from Steam, Popcap games now loaded through Steam, NFS:U2, etc.)
Last but not least, update all of the above software. WinXP currently sits at around 160MB of compressed downloads, only then to be installed once the d/l is finished.
Now, given that I do this stuff for a living, and that people will pay me to setup their computers, I don't get that extensive. However, I am at the customer's home doing the setup for over an hour. I also take the time to go over the stuff they need to be aware of (how to use firewall, anti-virus, firefox, etc.) It's a total of a two hour job.
Besides, now with all components essentially sitting on the motherboard (video, sound, NIC), it is fairly easy to troubleshoot issues. Granted, I'm above the "normal" user, but with proper care (and most people putting their own computers together will take care), you can get around "dueling tech support". (Random crashes on games? blame the memory and test it first. It's the easiest. Then test your hard drive, also easy. For video, there are some good tools out there. Check out the Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows It will allow you to include a boot image for UBCD as well.)
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. I feel that if Dell pre-installed Ubuntu, they are certifying that hardware to work with Ubuntu. I have several customers who still use dial-up. I don't want to have to verify that the installed Winmodem isn't compatible with Linux and when the customer is paying me, I don't have hours/days to spend following arcane processes to get it up and running. (I had this issue recently when converting a Vista box to Ubuntu, it sucked.) I'm willing to pay a little extra for that service so that my customers don't have to pay me for unnecessary work. (Sure, I could take the time and charge them more, but I do want to keep customers.)
Agreed. I just tried doing a front page search and hitting several different options. You really have to know what you are looking for in order to get the Ubuntu box. Even doing a search for "Dimension e520n" on their page returns nothing.
For any of my customers, I will be recommending these desktops, as long as they don't need gaming (and most don't).
Unfortunately, it doesn't work for the latest Tungsten 2E's. I've tried it. Also, I'd rather not have to buy another handwriting software for a device that already (in the past) had a decent handwriting system. Yes, I read about the issue. Why Palm sold off their software division is beyond me. That's like IBM saying, there's no money in software.
Yeah! I get to complain about Graffiti 2 now! How is making two strokes per a traditionally two stroke letter faster than making a stroke? For example, the "t" could be written like a 7 in the letter area in Graffiti, but now it's two strokes. Annoying. The "i" is now two strokes, down and dot. Before, it was just down. How was the "l" differentiated from an "i"? You just write a capital "L". All of my letters and numbers were one stroke motions on the Graffiti. Now, I'm pulling out my on-screen keypad all the time... I hate hunt and peck tapping.
I'm a Palm fanboy, but sheesh, Graffiti2 sucked, and I can't find a Palm PDA-cell phone combo without a keypad (buttons are too small). It looks like the HP iPaq series are an option, are there any others?
How many more e-mail servers will be run by small companies who don't know to secure them and we reap the benefit of more spam flood! (Sorry, the cynic just broke out of me.)
My father, an attorney, is the exact same way. He finally convinced the firm that his computer was only collecting dust. His secretary, and I when I worked for him, took his taped dictations and printed his e-mail. He is just now starting to do a little web browsing when he schedules his golf outtings. I do not think he has a personal e-mail address... just his business address. Fortunately, his line of work does not dictate knowledge of technology.
I think you may have missed the threads about Ff and people who call them on their trumped numbers. There are at least a few people that raise the validity question of downloads to actual users.
Given that, I have downloaded one copy of Ff onto my USB stick and installed that "one" downloaded copy to several dozens of computers where the users of that computer are actively using Ff over IE. I also actively use Ff on at least 4 PCs, my work PC, my home PC, my laptop (of which is dual booting Ubuntu and WinXP), my wife's PC. Of course, downloaded copies != used copies. Just remember that every installation of Ubuntu also does not equal a downloaded copy of Ff, but it uses Ff as its browser. Perhaps the equation is downloaded copies of Ff used copies of Ff. Of course, to counter that, there are likely those who install *nix distro that comes with Ff, and then opt to go with Opera or some other webbrowser.
Now I know why the XKCD site is sooo slow. I just discovered it yesterday and was going through the back posts. Little did I know the site had been slashdotted.
You certainly did not take them seriously after the first drill. At least you learned in the first drill what to do. After the first drill (or after several drills) you got the mechanics down of what to do and you no longer took the "drill" seriously.
Unfortunately, you get the shepherd-who-cried-wolf syndrome by the time students get to high school. The alarm would be pulled and everyone sat in their seat and carried on until an announcement came on and said get your butts outside. This was particularly evident when the teacher did not know of an impending fire drill. (Some teachers were better at others in getting students out the door, of course.)
I'm not sure how much the DSL takes up when used with a USB drive, except that they will gladly sell you a 128MB USB drive with its 50MB image on it. I've currently got the 50MB DSL image running in VMWare on a work computer (keeps from having to bug the boss who's not totally convinced on OSS, but gives me, as QA, the leeway to use whatever I need.) Anyway, if you haven't guessed, DSL's image, fully running, is 50MB.
Better yet, see that door over there? Yeah, that one... the one that has all those scary green and brown things growing out of the ground and the bright yellow round thing in the sky behind it? Go, open that up, step through it and enjoy.
While you have a very good point, I will offer this counter-point. Both are valid for different users.
As a home computer repair technician, I have customers who give me their authority to get them the best, and generally most cost effective, computer I can get them. I have always tried find the tried and true hardware that come with warranties that I don't have to deal with. Again cost effective for them. So, I point them to Dell, eMachines, etc.
Just this past week, I purchased my first PC, a Compaq, with Vista on it. The requirement was the standard, office suite, e-mail and web browsing, it didn't have to be much and the least expensive that I can find and get it done quick. I first went to Dell, because I knew they sold PCs with WinXP and I didn't want to change the environment for the user. But it turned out, the total cost (after shipping... no deals on that, bummer) was the same as hopping on over to the local BB/CompUSA and I could be quick about it... So, Compaq it was with Vista.
As you know, low end systems come with 512MB RAM, the minimum for Vista. After playing with it for a few hours into the wee hours of the night, I thought, if I'm going to have to service this, and the customer is going to have to learn a new environment anyway... Ubuntu it is! Downloaded the iso (an hour while I was out doing something else), burned the disk (15 mins), installed the system (30 minutes), Up and running in less than two hours with a system that isn't crippled and runs fast and has all hardware initialized. Up and running with files transferred = 1.5 hours. Not bad.
Does that mean we can purchase BAR now and get the FOO later? I love BAR FOO!
Moat encourages young actually has a what I would call a high percentage return. This exact phrase links to an article to some British online magazine for teens.
What about notepad++? It's free, it's extensible, it's GUI based, it works on Windows, *nix, and maybe Macintosh (I don't know, I'm a PC fanboy), and it works great with code, xml, and regular text files.
Many of these technical publications take the cake from both sides. They charge the people who write the articles and they charge the people who buy the journal. Their taking it from both sides of the distribution channel.
Get the UBCD or UBCD4Win for some good tools. Particularly, UBCD4Win includes several freeware and open source tools for file recovery. My favorite happens to be testdisk, followed closely by Restoration. (Make sure, if you use the UBCD4Win, you build these tools into ISO. Just follow the directions at the site, it is real easy.)
I'm sure some high school or college student has accidentally created triply linked lists sometime in the past 17+ years.
So, no one is ever going to read this, but who cares... I gotta have my say.
What about all the crapware they put on the computer? I've serviced so many computers with crapware that my customers want taken off (because the 5MB file takes up too much of their 150GB drive) that I can't think that a whole lot of users are buying the games and other stuff on the PCs. Therefore, when people do call up to discuss about their free 60 minute game, Dell is still paying out on a product that isn't and probably won't be paid for. It should also be noted that Dell won't support certain software on its computers.
Back to OOo, I've also had a whole lot of my customers complain profusely when I tell them that that version of Microsoft Office 200x is only a 60 day trial and after that they have to put out $200+ or go with the insanely inferior Microsoft Works. I say... use OOo, and they end up liking it.
However, there's a difference between something that cannot ever be proved, full stop, and something that can't be proved or disproved right now, due to the limitations of our understanding and our equipment. With your statement you completely misunderstand many religions. In most religions that believe in an after-life; and, even better, those that believe a supreme being will come (again), religious beliefs will be proven at some point in the future. The interesting thing is, I have received my hard evidence without the need to see the All-Mighty. I can tell you exactly how to reproduce such evidences. Unfortunately, faith is the first action and many people refuse the faith or reject the evidence and can, generally, no longer receive further evidence; or, when they do, they reject that evidence with the first.
The major problem for Dell to NOT preload an OS for the Home/Home Office crowd is that Microsoft would probably try and sue Dell for passively supporting pirating of Windows. Because Microsoft assumes that any computer that is sold is going to have Windows installed on it. (I don't have the link, but I remember an article about M$ wanting the government to levy an OS tax on all computers sold, whether they had an OS on it or not.)
Entry level users need a lot of hand-holding at learning their new computer. Their learning will not consist of back-end computer administration; but, instead, it will be how to use their new word processor (OpenOffice.org), their web browser (Firefox, Opera, whatever), whatever antivirus product might be out there for Linux (careful, if Dell does start selling Linux to the common user, Linux will gain market share and the eyes of the cracker crowd), and how to install games and other apps through some sort of GUI package manager (such as Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu).
...; and watch the scary text fly by and maybe understand what they see to comprehend any errors that come up.
Hopefully, Dell will remember to install Shockwave Flash and Java. Like it or not, the common user will need this when visiting sites like http://www.shockwave.com/ or http://games.yahoo.com/ to play their favorite games. And as I recently learned, installing Java on Linux is not the easiest thing to do. The user is not going to want to type wget http://java.sun.com/; apt-get install java java-doc
To get a little off topic, but avoid posting in two different areas: one thing Dell can do is use all Intel parts. The fully integrated Intel motherboards (audio/video/LAN onboard) would be a good thing to use. As I understand it, Intel is writing a lot of drivers for the Linux community.
According to a site I read while researching the parts I needed for my ultimate PC (and try to keep it quiet at the same time), the stock Pentium fan/sink does just as good and is as quiet as any of the specialty fan/sinks out there. (Wooh, I get to save $30-50!)
The main reasons are as follows:
- Unpacking from box and plugging in.
- Setup of user profile and intro stuff that WinXP takes you through
- Close all of the stupid pop-ups I am inundated with from crapware
- Removal of crapware (~30-45 minutes and a few reboots)
- Installation of Anti-virus (AVG, Avast!, take your pick)
- Installation of firewall (ZoneAlarm is my fave)
- Installation of The GIMP (and associated programs)
- Installation of OpenOffice.org (and, likewise, an utter destruction of MS Works and the eval version of Office)
- Installation of Firefox and Thunderbird and associated extensions
- Installation of the several games I like to play (Morrowind, many Valve products from Steam, Popcap games now loaded through Steam, NFS:U2, etc.)
- Last but not least, update all of the above software. WinXP currently sits at around 160MB of compressed downloads, only then to be installed once the d/l is finished.
Now, given that I do this stuff for a living, and that people will pay me to setup their computers, I don't get that extensive. However, I am at the customer's home doing the setup for over an hour. I also take the time to go over the stuff they need to be aware of (how to use firewall, anti-virus, firefox, etc.) It's a total of a two hour job.Besides, now with all components essentially sitting on the motherboard (video, sound, NIC), it is fairly easy to troubleshoot issues. Granted, I'm above the "normal" user, but with proper care (and most people putting their own computers together will take care), you can get around "dueling tech support". (Random crashes on games? blame the memory and test it first. It's the easiest. Then test your hard drive, also easy. For video, there are some good tools out there. Check out the Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows It will allow you to include a boot image for UBCD as well.)