The reasons why windmills wont work...

[dennis]

More than a PC these days and used more power to do a lot less.

[Rod]

Neoware c50 - £ 168.00 Incl. VAT?

[dennis]

That would be more than a notebook by the time you add a screen.

I wonder why they don't quote power consumption?

[geoff]

A xerox is always a copy ...

[Duncan Wood]

They're all essentially custom built so that's unlikely to be an issue.

[Jules]

Yes, you could buy a cheap low-spec diskless PC and net-boot Linux/*BSD on it - and that's not changed in years. Shame that more people don't do it.

But I expect in the MS context you'd still need a machine with a fast CPU, huge amount of RAM, and the licensing cost for the OS, Office etc. are no doubt rather steep :-(

[Dave Holland]

Mine's green. Hang on, it was purple a moment ago. Ah yes, floatbg. :-)

[Huge]

Very droll.

And too true these days. If it doesn't spit sheets of paper, they aren't interested.

[Huge]

[Derisive snort] Never heard of TCO, then?

[Huge]

Plus the people and infrastructure to support it. Which costs way more than the hardware. In fact, the cost of the hardware is approaching irrelevant.

[dennis]

The windows version of the HP machine is cheaper than the linux version. ;-)

[dennis]

Just as well the windows client version of the HP is cheaper then.. more to spend on servers.

[dennis]

Yes, do you understand how to calculate it?

[The Natural Philosopher]

It certainly is with a PC..running windows.

A typical financial institution speds around £3000 a year per PC to keep it all up to date and running.

When I last got figures on a Unix/glass screen box, it was around £75 a desktop.

Microsft will fade out in the corporate arena in time. It will be linux PC's running custom X terms and browsers probably.

[Fevric J Glandules]

Sheesh. Another company in bed with the software monopolists...

Every time I try to compare Linux and Windows boxen on dell.com, either the Windows box at the same spec is cheaper, or there is a Windows box of much higher spec for a small cost increment that nobody in their right mind would ignore (and again, upgrading the Linux box to the same spec would be more expensive).

[Jules]

Has anyone called them up to see what the official reason for this is? It'd be interesting to know - and if it's some "to cover costs of software support" reason, whether they actually asked potential Linux system buyers whether they *wanted* support.

[Fevric J Glandules]

Actually I've tried again and for the first time got two laptops of the same spec where the Ubuntu version is 30 quid cheaper. (Inspiron 1525 if you're interested). The "Non-Microsoft Application Software" version is £298.99. The one with an "Operating System" is £329.

Bafflingly the main Inspiron 1525 page offers prices "from £299" but if you click the link then the page loads with the £329 previously mentioned.

To be fair, before they can ship either operating system on a particular system they have to invest a fair bit into making sure that it all works. This cost is (currently) spread across many many more Windows boxes.

[Paul Rudin]

I've been told that you can successfully get a refund for Windows bought with a PC - just phone up and say you don't accept the licence agreement.

So you could buy any Windows equipped one and get the money back for Windows (although I'm not sure how much you get), then install Ubuntu.

[Roger]

The message from Jules contains these words:

I have not managed to get anywhere on Dells site in the recent past.

Makes one wonder what the financial deal is between Dell (et al) and Microsoft. Upgrading to a newer Windows isn't exactly cheap so how come Windows is effectively a no cost item when it comes to buying a computer?

Can someone persuade the EU to mount another legal challenge to this virtual monopoly.

[John Taylor]

I had this with my laptop, so I phoned up Dell sales, and asked why the linux machine was more than the Windows version (say no to 0870 helps here).

They couldn't explain it, but the guy did give me a discount, which amounted to the price of the windows machine less their cost of windows and a bit more. I think I saved about £70 on a £450 machine.

Regards JohnT