Dell loves Ubuntu.

[techs]

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/...l-charges-ubuntu-vista

Dell charges more for Ubuntu than Vista

By INQUIRER Newsdesk

Open sorcery

DELL HAPPILY ANNOUNCED a new Ubuntu-powered system a couple of days ago.

The penguin posse was delighted, of course, until it found that the once-direct only seller seems to be charging more for machines sporting the open source OS than for those sporting Vista.

As far as we can tell, on Dell's cumbersome UK website the price of the cheapest Inspiron 1525 with Vista home premium is £359.

The same specification machine with Ubuntu is £379.

There is a cheaper version of the Ubuntu system but it has a lower specification.

Here are some URLs for you to fiddle with:

UbuntuUbuntu

VistaVista

No wonder Dell loves Ubuntu.



Ha Ha! You pay more for free software.

 

[mugs]

I kind of wish my Compaq laptop came with Ubuntu instead of Vista, and I'd have paid more for it. :Q I put Ubuntu on myself, but couldn't get the wireless card to work. Went back to XP instead.

 

[Deeko]

lol...so they're making some pretty sweet bank on those systems then.

I wonder how much Windows charges Dell for Vista on their machines.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

When you configure the Ubuntu machine the same as the Vista machine it's even more. £394 vs £359. You can thank all the subsidies Dell doesn't get for the Ubuntu machine.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: techs
Ha Ha! You pay more for free software.

Do they (Dell) have to support it? Then it's not free.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Originally posted by: mugs
I kind of wish my Compaq laptop came with Ubuntu instead of Vista, and I'd have paid more for it. :Q I put Ubuntu on myself, but couldn't get the wireless card to work. Went back to XP instead.

yup.. if dell can produce a laptop that is fully functional from the get go and has support.. i'd rather look at and use ubuntu too

 

[Xavier434]

I can't wait till the once die hard "OS should be free" people start complaining that they are not getting their slice of the pie when it comes to these profits.

 

[Skunkwourk]

Originally posted by: Xavier434
I can't wait till the once die hard "OS should be free" people start complaining that they are not getting their slice of the pie when it comes to these profits.

Well I would complain too if they were making a profit off of it. Id rather get the money for development costs if money was being paid for it at all.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: m0mentary

Originally posted by: Xavier434
I can't wait till the once die hard "OS should be free" people start complaining that they are not getting their slice of the pie when it comes to these profits.

Well I would complain too if they were making a profit off of it. Id rather get the money for development costs if money was being paid for it at all.

Me too, but that is 100% hypocritical when it comes to the original beliefs about whether or not an OS should be free. Hell, the devs of Ubantu allowing it to be sold by Dell alone goes against this concept.

Either way, I don't care. Maybe they finally realized that letting go of some of the old beliefs is the only way they will stand a shot at competing with Windows anytime in the future. I say good for them for thinking and acting outside of the box.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

The Vista machine will cost the consumer more in the long run.

 

[frostedflakes]

Lol, higher price is probably in anticipation of greater support needs, newbies who configure Ubuntu without even realizing that it's Linux and isn't at all like Windows. Or maybe to discourage newbies from configuring Ubuntu, your average consumer will probably go for the cheaper config, the only people who would bother spending more are those who want Linux and know how to use it.

But yeah I doubt Dell is really milking the free OS, though. I doubt Vista licenses cost them more than $5-10 a pop, so there probably isn't a big difference in terms of cost to build a system between Vista and Ubuntu. They're probably looking at the long term, i.e. tech support, driver/software development, etc.

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser
The Vista machine will cost the consumer more in the long run.

Oh? Do explain.

 

[Skunkwourk]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Lol, higher price is probably in anticipation of greater support needs, newbies who configure Ubuntu without even realizing that it's Linux and isn't at all like Windows. Or maybe to discourage newbies from configuring Ubuntu, your average consumer will probably go for the cheaper config, the only people who would bother spending more are those who want Linux and know how to use it.

But yeah I doubt Dell is really milking the free OS, though. I doubt Vista licenses cost them more than $5-10 a pop, so there probably isn't a big difference in terms of cost to build a system between Vista and Ubuntu. They're probably looking at the long term, i.e. tech support, driver/software development, etc.

Point taken, but I do think that its funny that installing Ubuntu for me on an old Athlon XP 1900 and Geforce 2MX was as easy as popping in the self installer cd whereas XP required me to find individual drivers for each component.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Dell charges more because someone has to write drivers. And support people.
They do not sell the OS itself.

I wonder if drivers Dell will write for it's computers are going to be open source?
If they are, that's neat - it should be easier for volunteers to rewrite these drivers to work with non-Dell hardware and we will have more Linux drivers.
OR, if Dell itself won't write drivers, they will buy components that come with Linux drivers. So more component makers would have to write Linux drivers in order to be able to sell their parts to big distributor like Dell.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Deeko

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser
The Vista machine will cost the consumer more in the long run.

Oh? Do explain.

Ya seriously. I want to hear this explaination. The way I see it is that time is money and the time that it takes your average dell customer to try and figure out Ubantu will cost them far more in the long run in comparison to Vista and where it falls short of quality.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: MegaVovaN
Dell charges more because someone has to write drivers. And support people.
They do not sell the OS itself.

I wonder if drivers Dell will write for it's computers are going to be open source?
If they are, that's neat - it should be easier for volunteers to rewrite these drivers to work with non-Dell hardware and we will have more Linux drivers.

That's one optimistic way to look at it. I doubt that they are looking at it that way. I think they are just applying the supply/demand rules even though the OS is technically free. They are basically "guessing" what it would cost and then factor in the demand to come up with a price. Therefore, they are selling the OS.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: MegaVovaN
Dell charges more because someone has to write drivers. And support people.
They do not sell the OS itself.

I wonder if drivers Dell will write for it's computers are going to be open source?
If they are, that's neat - it should be easier for volunteers to rewrite these drivers to work with non-Dell hardware and we will have more Linux drivers.
OR, if Dell itself won't write drivers, they will buy components that come with Linux drivers. So more component makers would have to write Linux drivers in order to be able to sell their parts to big distributor like Dell.

Support people makes sense but even then it shouldn't cost that much, driver development doesn't make any sense at all. Driver dev is not handled by dell, but the respective part suppliers, Dell will not write drivers for the video card or sound, Nvidia or Realtek has the responsibility of providing you with that.

Besides, I doubt Dell would have the technical capability to write their own drivers, if you've ever looked into a Forceware or Catalyst driver, there's just so much complexity that unexperienced 3rd party developers without intricate knowledge of the hardware would never be able to write an effective driver from the ground up. You'd have to figure out how to program for the classic architecture, the new unified shader architecture, apply a different profile to every game for every card model, optomize it for good performace, etc...

As far as drivers go, dell just has to link to other companie's driver installation programs.

 

[Anubis]

i must fail b/c i click on the links and the vista system is over 100 pounds more then the linux one

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Originally posted by: Deeko

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser
The Vista machine will cost the consumer more in the long run.

Oh? Do explain.

Time spent actively preventing viruses/malware or actual dollars spent on anti-virus/anti-malware programs. Degradation of performance if neither of those steps are taken.

Time wasted hunting down all the programs you want/need with Vista, plus time spent keeping all of those programs updated. Ubuntu updates include all programs installed via the Ubuntu installer plus there's a huge repository that includes damn near every program you'll ever need.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser

Originally posted by: Deeko

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser
The Vista machine will cost the consumer more in the long run.

Oh? Do explain.

Time spent actively preventing viruses/malware or actual dollars spent on anti-virus/anti-malware programs. Degradation of performance if neither of those steps are taken.

Time wasted hunting down all the programs you want/need with Vista, plus time spent keeping all of those programs updated. Ubuntu updates include all programs installed via the Ubuntu installer plus there's a huge repository that includes damn near every program you'll ever need.

there are a ton of free anit virus/malware programs that update themselfs

and most users who purchase PCs from dell either dont install any other software or allready have it

your arguement is bad

 

[irishScott]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: MegaVovaN
Dell charges more because someone has to write drivers. And support people.
They do not sell the OS itself.

I wonder if drivers Dell will write for it's computers are going to be open source?
If they are, that's neat - it should be easier for volunteers to rewrite these drivers to work with non-Dell hardware and we will have more Linux drivers.

That's one optimistic way to look at it. I doubt that they are looking at it that way. I think they are just applying the supply/demand rules even though the OS is technically free. They are basically "guessing" what it would cost and then factor in the demand to come up with a price. Therefore, they are selling the OS.

And you were expecting something different? Corporations never offer anything for "free". Even the freebies/sales/good deals always make them money in the end. No point in doing so otherwise.

Either way, Linux (including Ubunut) is still free and open source. Dell making some money off of Ubuntu (in some form or other) is doing nothing to damage that. Yes, it would be nice if Dell strictly played by the rules, but once again, what do you expect? Companies as a rule skirt whatever regulations are in place until they catch flack for it, and even then they don't always stop.

Soapbox:
The media is a perfect example. The media is a corporation, and is interested in making money. Not delivering accurate news. At present, relatively accurate news makes them money, so they deliver it. There's a reason all of those retarded pundits are on the air, and it's not because of their opinions...

 

[Spook]

Its simple supply and demand... Yeah, the OS is Free, but they don't have enough demand in the beginning to drive the price down, They have to provide support on a relatively new OS, and provide the training and such... So, they have to recoup the expenses, it will go down, but early adopters always pay.... haven't you guys figured that out yet.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser

Originally posted by: Deeko

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser
The Vista machine will cost the consumer more in the long run.

Oh? Do explain.

Time spent actively preventing viruses/malware or actual dollars spent on anti-virus/anti-malware programs. Degradation of performance if neither of those steps are taken.

Time wasted hunting down all the programs you want/need with Vista, plus time spent keeping all of those programs updated. Ubuntu updates include all programs installed via the Ubuntu installer plus there's a huge repository that includes damn near every program you'll ever need.

there are a ton of free anit virus/malware programs that update themselfs

and most users who purchase PCs from dell either dont install any other software or allready have it

your arguement is bad

Finding the best free anti-virus solution can be a hassle, and most of the time you'll still have to register the product which means more spam. Don't forget the additional overhead these programs create.

Anyone who has any common sense installs numerous additional programs for additional functionality. Those that do not install additional programs are the ones who will simply pay for the apps Dell/MS offers.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: techs
Ha Ha! You pay more for free software.

Do they (Dell) have to support it? Then it's not free.

They do not, they direct all support questions to Canonical.

So basically you could buy the windows version of the laptop and install ubuntu on it. It's the same hardware wise, so you already know all the hardware is supported.

Dell charges more because someone has to write drivers. And support people.

Dell does neither.

 

[irishScott]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser

Originally posted by: Deeko

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser
The Vista machine will cost the consumer more in the long run.

Oh? Do explain.

Time spent actively preventing viruses/malware or actual dollars spent on anti-virus/anti-malware programs. Degradation of performance if neither of those steps are taken.

Time wasted hunting down all the programs you want/need with Vista, plus time spent keeping all of those programs updated. Ubuntu updates include all programs installed via the Ubuntu installer plus there's a huge repository that includes damn near every program you'll ever need.

there are a ton of free anit virus/malware programs that update themselfs

and most users who purchase PCs from dell either dont install any other software or allready have it

your arguement is bad

Ummm... the vast majority of computers are currently infected with some type of virus/malware. The vast majority of this demographic are running Windows. The vast majority of users in this demographic don't know what the fuck they're actually doing, and don't realize their computer is even infected until it's too late.

These people aren't necessarily dumb either. My sister is doing an insane triple major (English, French, Political Science) at UVA, was a 4.1 All-AP Honor Grad during high school. She had no idea her computer was infected until I looked at it and practically crapped my pants from all of the shit that was popping up.

So yeah, free prevention tools aside, very few people know how to actually use a computer, and many aren't even aware of said free tools beyond the well-known ones that suck (Adaware, Norton (which isn't even free), etc).

Even those who do use them are not impervious. I use Comodo firewall personal, AntiVir Free edition, Spyware blaster, Sysinternals Rootkit Revealer, Hijack this, and tons of other stuff.

I still got a virus through a pic I downloaded and had to boot into safe mode to remove it. (It also disabled AntiVir, so I had to jump through a few hoops).