The End of the "Microsoft Tax"

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  • Mouse (and no option to add one for the E520N)

eh… Alright. That’s what, $5? $10? shrug

  • Modem (ditto above)

ROFL. The lack of that would actually INCREASE the worth of the system, imho.

  • “Better” integrated graphics

Yup. But it’s all relative. Folks mentioned that you needed the ‘better’ one if you wanted to run all of the crazy graphics stuff in Vista, but that isn’t quite the point… The people buying a prebuilt system from Dell (especially a Ubuntu one) aren’t typically looking to replace it with another Windows OS.

  • “Software” (MS Works 8, Yahoo! Music, Corel Photo, etc. Bloatware, I know, and there are free alternatives, but still…)

You seem to forget that Ubuntu comes with software too. Open Office. Gimp. Chat apps. Music players. Plenty 'o stuff.

  • 6 months AOL (I now, but it’s still “free”)

Wow. Sounds like it would go GREAT with that modem… heh.

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Again, where’s the value for the amateur customer?
(is there even a such thing anymore?)

What’s the point in buying a system that has less than 5% of the supported products exposed commercially. Go to PC Connection, NewEgg, Best Buy… logical places for amateur or casual users to go for software, peripherals, and support.

Find me a Linux version of Photoshop, in a box, on a shelf. Microsoft Word? with a one-click install? no? Will Half-Life 2 run on Linux?

Will that new fancy 8Mpxl camera their son/daughter bought them plug seamlessly into Ubuntu? What about that disk-defragmenting software that the sales associate insisted they needed the last time they were at Best Buy? They were there to purchase a game, so their grandchildren could use the PC when they came to visit. Think Grandma will read the license agreement before breaking the seal on the box mounting the CD?

(Remember that Grandma is no longer -your- grandmother… I’m talking boomers here)

Forget about going to Border’s and getting a quality book on using your new computer to surf the internet.

Computers are not cars. Knowledge is a barrier to use, and the best way to cross it is to pick the most well published, well supported, most saturated products, and that path leads to Redmond.

Linux cannot win until:

  1. A niche market like Apple develops a “gotta have” Linux-based solution.
  2. A federation of consumer software firms decides that Linux-compatibility is a must for all of their products (and prove they can make a boatload of money doing it to their shareholders).

We talk about all these SaaS tools, and the browser being the new O.S., freeware, open source, and the greater good, but the bottom line is still shrink-wrapped boxes and books on shelves. Show me the money.

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Looking at the Ubuntu site, perhaps Kubuntu is preferred?

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(original post got mangled due to formatting quirk)

Mouse (and no option to add one for the E520N)

That’s, like, what – $5? 10? It’s definitely something that should be addressed, I agree… After all, we’ll never get to the point of someone’s Mom buying a Ubuntu system if it doesn’t even come with a mouse. That being said, though, if we’re looking just at price, it’s pretty inconsequential.

Modem (ditto above)

Modem? ROFL. Honestly, I’d consider the lack of that as an INCREASE in value.

“Better” integrated graphics

All relative, I guess. Vista has more graphic requirements than Ubuntu. But comparitively, if the one with Vista is adequate for Vista and the one with Ubuntu is adequate for Ubuntu, what does it matter? Anyone using it for “gaming” is going to upgrade to a real video card, anyhow, on either OS.

“Software” (MS Works 8, Yahoo! Music, Corel Photo, etc. Bloatware, I know, and there are free alternatives, but still…)

Umm… Ubuntu comes with things like Open Office, Gimp, music players, Instant Messengers, etc. What’s your point?

6 months AOL (I now, but it’s still “free”)

Wow. Sounds like it would go GREAT with that modem… heh.

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No, you have been able to buy systems from Dell before with Linux preinstalled, but only for short periods of time before they pulled the line due to pressure from MS. See

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html#msoft

Also see footnote 44 on the same page with links to articles going back to '99 on Dell’s various Linux offerings/retractions/clarifications.

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Brandon,

Part of the reason that you don’t pay the full MS Tax for a retail system is that the vendors of that annoying bloatware are paying Dell a good bit of money to get preloaded on their systems. There’s probably more than enough money being paid to Dell to offset the cost of the X3000 and whatever else is in there.

So, with Ubuntu, in essence you’re also paying Dell not to screw up your computer with a bunch of garbage before they send it.

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As others have said, you’ve been able to buy Linux and FreeDOS machines from Dell for about 2 years now. It got the exact same level of fanfare back then as it’s getting now. It’s amazing how the Linux zealots will continuously keep re-labelling the same old news as “new” and announcing it as yet another “turning point”.

The only difference is that Dell only used to sell RedHat Enterprise Linux which is actually quite pricey. When you did the math the Linux system was MUCH more expensive than the equivalent Windows XP Professional machine. And it didn’t help that the FreeDOS machines were all at the low end as far as capabilities were concerned. They wouldn’t sell you a high-end machine with just FreeDOS on it.

So all I can say is “yawn”.

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And just to be clear, the price difference between the FreeDOS machine (basically NO operating system) and Windows XP Home edition was about $20. So that was essentially what my cost would be to get Windows XP. Heck, who wouldn’t go ahead and just pay that “tax” instead of trying to come up with another operating system to run on their machine? Even Linux users would probably like to have it at that price just so that they could run it in a virtual machine if necessary.

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I’d like to point out that the GMA 950, while integrated, has hardware acceleration for high-def video. This is the chipset in both my Dell laptop (E1405) and my Dual Core Mac Mini. Both are up to the task when watching anything up to 1080i video (don’t have any 1080p sources to try). The 950 mostly suffers in the area of 3D, which should only be important for gamers (and not to troll, but if you’re buying a PC to play games on, why are you buying a Linux PC anyway?)

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I wonder how much overhead it costs Dell to package and sell these boxes? I think that will determine the overall success of them. If they can break even on it, I’d wager that would be considered victory.

This very question has been asked several times here: Who’s the target audience? Savvy techies. The goal has to be to stop you from spending your money elsewhere. If Dell can accomplish that, then they win.

I think a lot of times those of us in the tech industry tend to get ‘out of phase’ with the average user. It’s easy to do. Sometimes I watch my wife surf the net and just marvel at the things she does. It blows my mind.

A computer is nothing more than a tool (or an obstacle) to get to something that a user wants. I think of it like a camera for me (not into photography). I don’t want a complex camera with lots of modes and buttons. If the camera becomes an obstacle to what I want – a photograph – then it sucks.

So… what does the average user want? Something that isn’t an obstacle. An operating system is general purpose and, by being so, it fights a constant battle with performance, configuration, ease-of-use, and security every step of the way. If everything is a compromise, someone will always hate the answer.

I think that’s why Mac’s newest advertising campaign is such a success. The OS isn’t better than Linux/Unix/Windows or anything else. It’s just a different set of compromises. But the marketing folks are tapping into the consumer’s desire for ultimate ease-of-use.

I hope Dell breaks even.

g

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I wonder if dell will preinstall any crapware on ubuntu like the do with windows. It is possible you know.

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The OS was always the marginal money maker at MS.

Marginal? The latest 10-Q has the Client division (workstation level OS’ only) bringing in $4.2B of the quarterly profit, with the MBD division (all of the Office related technologies, and all of Microsoft Dynamics expensive products) bringing in $4.8B of the profit.

You have a really fascinating concept of “marginal”.

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It’s true that the GMA X3000 is more powerful than the GMA 950, but

The question isn’t really whether either is good it is whether or not you are paying more for the better one and graphics is one place where you pay some, even if small, premium for 3.6x better performance. The larger point is that the MS tax is not quite as high as it was thought to be.

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It depends on your definition of “crapware”. Many of us consider OpenOffice, Firefox, and many other open source applications to be “crapware”. So yes. They are likely to load the machine with tons of crapware because the typical Linux distro includes a lot of junk that people like me do not need or want. :wink:

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander…

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Why nobody talks about the “Apple Tax”??
Now that Apple sells OS X for the x86 plattform, why should I be forced to buy Apple hardware to run it?
What I want to see is Dell selling machines that come with OS X as one of the options.

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Why nobody talks about the “Apple Tax”??

If you don’t like Apple, it’s pretty damn easy to avoid paying into their coffers.

If you don’t like Microsoft…the situation is much more difficult. The vast majority of hardware options are sold with the assumption that surely you must want Windows, and even if you don’t…well you must be a pirate anyways, so you still should pay. Even if all of the add-ins, spyway and advertisementware that gets clogged onto a Windows PC yielded enough benefit for the hardware maker that Windows was less expensive than no OS at all, that still irritates buyers who don’t like that they’re automatically helping Microsoft smashout another competitor in yet another industry that they just have to dominate.

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As others have mentioned, it’s not the first time that Dell have tried to push Linux. It just happens that Michael Dell uses Ubuntu himself, hence Dell having it as an OS option. Much seems to be said about Aero’s requirements but my junk PC runs Beryl pretty nicely with even a cheap ATI card.

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@Dave Markle: read the terms of your license agreement. MSDN licences are for development and testing only - and for the OS discs, that means testing your built software, you cannot run your regular development environment on there. The only software from MSDN that you’re allowed for general business use is Office.

Action Pack is different - you are permitted to use the software for general business use. However, I’m not sure whether you’re allowed to install the OS on a bare machine (with no previous Windows licence). Volume License copies are licensed for upgrade only - the machine you use them on must have either an OEM licence, or a full package product (retail box) licence. I’m not sure whether this applies to Action Pack or not.

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Action pack includes upgrade licenses. You must be upgrading from a licensed product to use them.

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these machines actually have different specs, so it’s kinda hard to find exact difference of tax.

when i’ve equalized FreeDOS (http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/e510_nseries?c=uscs=19l=ens=dhs) and Ubuntu (http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=uscs=19l=ens=dhs) machines, they became to cost 649$ each.

it’s a bit harder to do it with Windows machine. after same equalization, it began to cost 729$ – again 80$ difference. but it additionally has a mouse, and also it appears that X3000 accelerator and modem are built in in mobo, so it has a different mobo. so i suspect actual Windows cost is less than 80$.