The reasons why windmills wont work...

Its cost of support and manufacture.. small numbers cost more and linux machine sales are very small. That is why the thin client costs more than a PC anyway, A more powerful notebook with a screen is less than the thin client with a screen. Solution.. buy the notebook and put linux on if you want or keep windows if you want or both.

If you want to do something about it organize a few tens of thousands of linux users to club together and specify a machine and buy them at a reasonable price. Intel did just that with ZIF sockets.. they cost $40-$50 each once.. nobody bought them which limited Intel's upgrade plans.. so they went out and guaranteed an order of a million ZIF sockets just to get the price down to a few $.

Reply to
dennis
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It costs £X to plan, design, build drivers for, market, train, etc., spread the cost over Y units and you have your answer. Nobody buys linux from Dell because it costs too much.. it costs too much because nobody buys it. The best you can do is try and buy a windows machine and then get a refund for returning windows, then put linux on.

Reply to
dennis

I was under the impression that they have to pay microsoft on the number of units shipped - regardless of the OS shipped.

Reply to
John Taylor

Getting it was still news-worthy about 18 months ago:

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article advises that it "may take several hours of work":
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(14 months old).

Maybe they've got used to it now:

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So you could buy any Windows equipped one and get the money back for

The guy in the last story only got 18 euros.

Reply to
Fevric J Glandules

It is the same hardware. They don't offer any support. All they are doing is pre-installing a different OS.

I couldn't find cheaper elsewhere, even at the non-discounted price.

I was more interesting in having my purchase added to the linux list, rather than the windows one, but it turns out that I saved money as well.

Reply to
John Taylor

I suppose you could just phone Dell and ask them what would happen if you tried...

Reply to
Paul Rudin

They have to support their staff even if not the customer. anyway what happens when you phone up and say X isn't working, do you expect them to support you or not?

Yes, that is all, and the costs associated with that are not zero.

What? a Dell or a linux machine? There's a shop display linux PCs for £99 near me.. no queues though.

Have you accepted the windows license yet? It would be interesting if you haven't to decline it and ask for a refund on the windows.

Reply to
dennis

Consider the following scenario.

(1) Linux weenies tell Dell not to bother with the support, they can look after themselves, as suggested in a previous post.

(2) Dell believe them, and employ and train no Linux weenies of their own.

(3) This enables them to sell the Linux box cheaper than the Windows box. So they do.

(4) Linux weenies buy a few cheap Dell boxes and are happy with them. But this is irrelevant because ...

(5) ... Granny buys the cheapest computer she can find, not having a clue what "Linux" or "Windows" are.

(6) She finds she can't make it work and takes it back to Dell.

(7) Dell say "read the small print dearie, there's no support on Linux boxes, and that's in response to customer demand, piss off and stop bothering us".

(8) Granny kicks up a big fuss on all the consumer watchdog telly programmes about being mis-sold something she can't use by a company that won't even support it afterwards, and which ludicrously claims that the lack of support is due to customer demand, as if anyone would believe that.

Reply to
Tim Ward

Yes, it was quite painful. No doubt it looks great when viewed across the LAN on a dual-core 3 gig screamer.

I *believe* that MS is no longer able to sign up companies to pay for a Windows licence whether or not one ships with the PC. But Dell etc. do buy in bulk and are able to get a low price for their OEM licences.

The PC retailers also defray their licencing costs (I believe) by shipping their boxes with all that crapware that everybody loathes so much. The crapware vendors pay the PC shippers to install their demo versions in the knowledge that at least *some* bozos will pay up when the flashing box tells them that their trial period has expired.

(Retail versions are "worth more" as they come with less restrictions).

Compare and contrast with: "The authors of NSD would definitely not like to see all servers switch to NSD because this would not achieve the intent of diversifying the software base."

(NSD is a BIND alternative).

Reply to
Fevric J Glandules

Dunno about HP, but with Dell I have no idea how you find the Linux options unless you use the site search widget. There is no indication to the casual site browser that anything other than Windows is available. Dell "recommends" Windows at every opportunity. If you find the Ubuntu pages, there's a stern warning that it's not Windows. It's not referred to as an Operating System (no idea why). No reference is made to the fact that Ubuntu - out of the box - will have a complete Office Suite installed, a choice of web browsers, a squillion other applications available through a simple point and click package manager.

Why doesn't the Inspiron 1525 page list the (30 quid cheaper) Ubuntu option?

They're in bed with the monopolists, that's why.

Reply to
Fevric J Glandules

Not any more, AFAIK.

Reply to
Fevric J Glandules

They never have had to. Its a myth put out by M$ bashers. However most system builders find it more profitable to include windows.

What's amazing is the number of people that can't work out that it can be cheaper to buy 1 million windows licenses and only ship 900,000 than to buy

900,000 licenses.. they assume M$ has forced them to buy the extra licenses. Sounds like they have never bought anything in bulk in their lives.
Reply to
dennis

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"In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system".

Wikipedia, I know. So let's quote the United States freaking DoJ:

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"Microsoft's monopoly power allows it to induce these manu- facturers to enter into anticompetitive, long-term licenses under which they must pay royalties to Microsoft not only when they sell PCs containing Microsoft's operating systems, but also when they sell PCs containing non-Microsoft operating systems."

They're also not allowed to supply dual-boot machines. And they are under a lot of pressure from MS to limit the number of non-Windows machines.

Plenty about coercive OEM contracts here:

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I'm an "M$ basher" it's with good reason: the engineering's shit, and as an engineer [1] I find that offensive, and as a human being the business practices offend my morality.

[1] FSVO 'engineer'.
Reply to
Fevric J Glandules

None of them are forced though are they. Anyone can buy retail windows and sell it.. its when you want to get discounts that you sign up to these deals. There is nothing unusual in signing a single source agreement for a supplier to get preferential terms. Only the fact that so many people jump on M$ is unusual.

Reply to
dennis

Get real. An OEM large-scale supplier of PCs has two choices:

- sign up to Microsoft's licensing

- go bust

What's *unusual* is getting fined 497 million euros for violating EU competition law.

Reply to
Fevric J Glandules

Is that as well as the 2000 million euros in the press a couple of weeks ago? Sounds like the EU wants some cash for its slush fund.

Reply to
dennis

Right you are, the 497 mill Euros was the 2004 fine. They've now got another 681 million GBP against them, making a total in excess of a billion quid.

Sounds like MS just won't behave ethically.

Reply to
Fevric J Glandules

The EU aren't well known for being sensible.

Reply to
dennis

This may not be the "official" reason but I believe that Windows boxen ship with demo versions of Word/Office and MS pay Dell for every demo that gets converted into a sale.

No demo software, no sales, no kickbacks for Dell...

Owain

Reply to
Owain

And something else that goes wrong...

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Reply to
Bob Eager

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