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Re: [LUG] Mandriva not going to pay M$ tax...

 

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

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


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