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Tom Potts wrote: > On Thursday 21 June 2007 22:44, Rob Beard wrote: >> Tom Potts wrote: >>> On Thursday 21 June 2007 21:44, Rob Beard wrote: >>>> Tom Potts wrote: >>>>> But arnt canonical the ones supporting dells ubuntu so long as its not >>>>> for business? >>>>> Tom te tom te tom >>>> I get the general impression from the Ubuntu-UK mailing list that >>>> Canonical are looking into this. >>> Now lets see - you've just been given access to loads of money and its >>> looking good. Then someone buys a Dell machine and you get money to >>> support it! Then it turns out the customer is using it in a business and >>> you look in the small print of your contract with dell and discover that >>> your not allowed to a) support it or b) upgrade the support to business >>> level. >>> Do you 1) tell a possibly recent linux convert to go swivel >>> 2) tell Dell to go swivel and discover your company is bankrupt cos >>> you've spent the money and you've been shafted........ >>> >>> Cynical perhaps but then Dell 'offered' the staff at one company I worked >>> for discounts on machines. They were about more expensive viewed from our >>> IP address than they were to the general public... >>> And if Canonical actually offer support can imagine how that would make >>> Dell look? >>> Tom te tom te tom >> I get the impression that Dell is trying to ease the support burden. To >> be honest though, any big businesses buying Dell PCs with Ubuntu would >> probably have some sort in in-house support team although saying that, >> pretty much every big business I know of that buys Dell use Windows >> instead > Thats because M$ has forced cowardly companies like Dell not to 'sell' Linux > even to the point of voiding warranties if you load it. I showed linux to the > company I worked for 7 years ago and one machine did what 5 or 6 windows > crippled machines did for £30K less. We could have gone mostly linux then but > we couldn't find a 'reputable' company for support (not that dell were much > use) - according to the number crunchers. > The support required in reality wouldn't have been much compared with the > windows support - you can normally fix a linux machine in the time it gets > through to dell support! >> (including the company that I work for - well, okay I use Ubuntu >> on my work laptop dual booting with XP). >> >> Speaking from experience, I wouldn't buy a Dell PC. Yes, they're cheap >> but considering how many I've had fail I wouldn't touch them. Fair play >> to them though, their business support have UK call centres now. > I can never understand how Dell manage to get away with this idea that they're > cheap. When I've done the maths I've always found you could buy the bits for > 10 machines, spend less than an hour putting each machine together and get at > least 9 fully functional machines for the price of 5 or 6 dell machines of a > similar spec and you get a machine load of spares as well Well they are cheap on the advertising literature they send through, but when you go online to order the price shoots up. I think one of the reasons that the company I work for buy Dell systems is because we buy in bulk for the whole country. In fact we're doing to be doing a rollout of new machines in the next couple of months - I think the totals must be in their hundreds of PCs. > Most IT departments these days seem to consist of people who can pass the buck > to dell or microsoft but not do any real IT - but I do understand why! > Tom te tom te tom > > I seem to find lately 50% of my time has been calling Dell because motherboards are dying (a common known problem on the Optiplex GX270 machines). Not only does it cost us in time (in some cases I have been on the phone to Dell for an hour just to diagnose a fault which I have already pre-diagnosed!!!) it also causes us hassle with down time of machines (including in some cases re-installing Windows because of the hardware problems screwing up the Windows install). I think myself lucky that I don't have these hassles at home to deal with. Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html