i notice the page has a link for "Unsure about open source, click here to shop for PCs with Windows", but the Windows PC pages do not seem to have "Unsure about spyware, viruses, etc? click to shop for Ubuntu". While clearly the 99.whatever% of malware that currently targets windows will grow with the *nix market (which hopefully will grow because of this), its not exactly balanced and even-handed behaviour.
With regard to the previous comments about mroe support needed for Ubuntu users than Windows users, i disagree. Last month I spent two days rebuilding my 70-yr old dad's PC following a massive spyware invasion; Dell's customer support (yes, he bought Dell cos of an ad in the Sunday Times and they seemed cheap and helpful) were excellent and there is absolutely no doubt that their hardware support team are very good, but why did I have to call dell at all when all i wanted to do was reinstall XP Home? Cos they didnt ship ANY recovery disks or OS installation disks with the PC. Obviously that cuts costs - but not when they then need to send out ten CDs on next day delivery (OS plus drivers plus preinstalled apps), which couldve been shipped with the PC for an extra 10p or whatever.
As an experiment on the "more support will be needed" front I might put the xubuntu livecd in his machine and see how he copes with it :-)
What would be a really smart move is to preinstall the Ubuntu /Debian netinst onto a recover partition on the PC. PC goes wrong? Reboot into Recovery, hook up your broadband link and reinstall the OS. No customer support needed, and if it gets messy, at least you should be able to get online and let remote support people look at machine.
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Dell UK's Ubuntu page ...
i notice the page has a link for "Unsure about open source, click here to shop for PCs with Windows", but the Windows PC pages do not seem to have "Unsure about spyware, viruses, etc? click to shop for Ubuntu". While clearly the 99.whatever% of malware that currently targets windows will grow with the *nix market (which hopefully will grow because of this), its not exactly balanced and even-handed behaviour.
With regard to the previous comments about mroe support needed for Ubuntu users than Windows users, i disagree. Last month I spent two days rebuilding my 70-yr old dad's PC following a massive spyware invasion; Dell's customer support (yes, he bought Dell cos of an ad in the Sunday Times and they seemed cheap and helpful) were excellent and there is absolutely no doubt that their hardware support team are very good, but why did I have to call dell at all when all i wanted to do was reinstall XP Home? Cos they didnt ship ANY recovery disks or OS installation disks with the PC. Obviously that cuts costs - but not when they then need to send out ten CDs on next day delivery (OS plus drivers plus preinstalled apps), which couldve been shipped with the PC for an extra 10p or whatever.
As an experiment on the "more support will be needed" front I might put the xubuntu livecd in his machine and see how he copes with it :-)
What would be a really smart move is to preinstall the Ubuntu /Debian netinst onto a recover partition on the PC. PC goes wrong? Reboot into Recovery, hook up your broadband link and reinstall the OS. No customer support needed, and if it gets messy, at least you should be able to get online and let remote support people look at machine.