Blog Insights: Dell's new Ubuntu PCs

by Dan Blacharski

May 31, 2007 —

What bloggers are saying about the latest in information technology

Last week, Dell made a minor splash by releasing its new Ubuntu Linux PCs, starting at a reasonably-priced $599. Buyers only get hardware support with the deal, if they want software support, they have to pay extra. ZDNet's Ed Burnette also notes that they've also revised their "no operating system" PCs, or the "n" series, which seem to offer little advantage, and actually have starting prices that are higher than the Ubuntu-equipped ones. Ed suggests that it would be easy for a tech-savvy user to erase Ubuntu and put in their own OS of choice, which makes the "n" series completely unnecessary. The key of course, being "tech-savvy," which is the targeted audience for both the "n" series and the Ubuntu model; the average Joe who just wants to surf the web after a long day at the construction site doesn't really want to be bothered with having to be tech-savvy and aren't going to go down this road.

Also on ZDNet, Dan Farber and Larry Dignan makes the observation that the offering doesn't seem too user-friendly, and he's probably right about that. One big downside is the lack of hardware support, Dell won't be supporting audio and video codecs that aren't already included, and that means there will be no support for MPEGs, WMA, WMV, DVD or QuickTime.

Gizmodo makes a few predictions about what to expect from Dell in the future on the Ubuntu front, predicting (or hoping) that because Dell is now in the Linux game, more vendors will be pressed to make their drivers compatible or open source. Of course, that's great if it happens, but vendors won't have a whole lot of incentive to go too much out of their way to deliver drivers for a little-used box that is probably going to be about as popular as the old NeXTCube.
Information Week's Alexander Wolfe was criticized hard for his harsh but realistic assessment of the Ubuntu box, but it's true that Linux users tend to be "power users," who lose sight of what the average Joe is looking for-which is the ability to play their music and video files as soon as they take their computer out of the box, without having to tweak anything.

Whether it has a nice interface or not is actually besides the point, perception always takes precedence over reality anyway. And when somebody's looking for a home computer that will be easy to use and relatively maintenance-free, they're not going to think, "I should go out and buy a Linux box." The perception is, buying an Apple will make me cool, buying a Windows PC will make me productive, and buying a Linux box will make me a geek. It's most decidedly a niche product, and it isn't going to pose any serious threat to Microsoft, or even Apple for that matter, any time soon.

ITworld.com