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

 

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

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