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Re: Linux Laptop (newspaper letter)

__/ [ Ian ] on Wednesday 03 May 2006 18:34 \__

> On Wed, 03 May 2006 16:31:48 +0100, William Poaster wrote:
> 
>>>> Without any OS = £774.33p
>>>> 
>>>> With XP Home = £831.90p
>>>> 
>>>> With XP Pro = £867.15p
>>>> 
>>>> Price difference:
>>>> With XP home installed = £57.57p
>>>> 
>>>> With XP Pro installed = £92.82p
>>>> 
>>>> Also when you look at the desktop models, you see similar. You can be
>>>> paying just over £100 difference between having no OS & XP Pro
>>>> pre-installed.
>>>> 
>>>> Kind of knocks a hole in the Windows users argument (in another group)
>>>> that you don't pay for windows in an OEM machine. ;-)
> 
> There is much confusion over OEM licensing - MS distributors don't even
> understand it. The OEM price is about £80 for XP Pro in the channel -
> varies a bit with the dollar, but that is the price smaller systems
> builders pay. eg Novatech. Dell get kick backs from MS and without them
> they wouldn't be profitable selling PCs. They benefit from economies of
> scale but have the penalty of the overheads of a large corporate. Sort of
> evens itself out so overall prices from Dell and smaller companies just
> for the boxes is similar. Service is generally going to be better with the
> best small companies but perhaps worse with some.


You overlooked a very important point though:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/15/dell_my_way_controversy/

Dell were getting paid 50 bucks from one vendor alone, to include spyware by
default. This may not be a Microsoft kickback, but the customer is
dishonoured.


>>> The skeptics use vendors that support their hypothesis as exemplars.
>>> From what I have heard, Novatech have better customer service than Dell
>>> (based solely on word of month).
>> 
>> So I understand. :)
>> 
>>> They would replace faulty screens without hesitation.
> 
> They could of course go bust doing this if they can't get the money back
> from their suppliers ;-)


It is almost irrelevant from the customer's perspective, unless the customer
is a business that is dependent on one particular vendor.


>>> They have plenty
>>> to prove on the support front, which means that the customer is the one
>>> to gain.
>> 
>> Excellent!
>> 
>>>> Oh, & you haven't finished there of course. If you want MS Office, it
>>>> could be another £214. Then you want an AV, which can be as much as
>>>> £28. So the total difference on a desktop could be as high as
>>>> £335.54p, & you haven't even bought a monitor yet!
> 
> Its rather surprising that Novatech don't just supply OpenOffice.org as
> standard.


I once said that it's only a matter of time before Dell do so. If the
customer requests it, it'll happen. It has already happened with Mozilla
Firefox, but only in the UK where the demand for Firefox is higher (compared
to the US).


>>> I was thinking along the lines of a console for the living room.
>> 
>> That would be good! :-)
>> 
>>> If GNU/Linux has a deficiency when it comes to diversity in games
>>> (guess whose fault it is: game developers), a circle can be closed.


Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      |    WARNING: /dev/null running out of space
http://Schestowitz.com  |    SuSE Linux     ¦     PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
  8:20am  up 6 days 15:17,  13 users,  load average: 0.35, 0.44, 0.59
      http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project

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