[oclug] Re: [oclug]Colossal Dell Gaffe (was IBM promo)

[Chris Herrnberger]

On Friday 16 March 2001 10:27, you wrote:
> Brutal!  I can't believe it!  The company I work for is a Dell integration
> partner and I just e-mailed our rep with this info.
>

Brutal is not the word for it, classic BS is more like it. Pissed me off so 
much that I tracked down Michael Dells email address and forwarded a gentle 
but not so pleasent email to the address with a link to the site. I am not 
expecting a response.

I summary, I spent over an hour on the phone with Dell Canada sales staff 
last night all the way up the latter and they basically have no clue what 
linux even is. They are looking into it and promissed to call back with 
information on the make, models and hardware spec's of laptops that they 
carry with Linux pre-installed. 

So just for fun, thanks to RGB's comments wrt to IBM, I repeated the same 
exercise with IBM Canada (just to be fair) Its now a hour later, I am 
currently on hold with the 5'th operator in Dallas Tx, now back to North York 
and its a six week waite for box with no identifiable linux version, and no 
one has a clue as to the level of driver support for the one laptop they sell 
that comes with check this, DVD, IRDA and USB fully supported. Hmmm
They seem to think is comes with Caldera. 

In summary, there is much education and work that remains to be done, that 
will not necessarily involve linux enthusiats as these are now internal 
matters to each vendor. Patience however has not been my strong point. Here 
are companies that are spending $X number of dollars on Linux integration and 
support yet neither of these companies investment in dollars, has translated 
into a sale for a consumer grade (corporate sale) product. Things are not 
good. 

Update: Still on hold with IBM now in Toronto again, Model No 2647L7U T20, 
has the following hardware supported, DVD, IRDA, PCMCIA, wave lan plus all 
the usual stuff, OS is Caldera 2.4 E Desktop version, and retails for 4K 
plus. The caveat being that if this hardware is not supported a full refund 
is available within 30 days. (manufacturer is Intel....interesting)

While this is comforting in a sense, this is the top line model and not 
generally available in terms of affordability for general consumer 
consumption. I think patience is needed here so no need to get too excite 
(note to self!!) however it is somewhat dissapointing given where we sit in 
the overall program of mass deployment of Linux based consumer grade products 
by commercial vendors.

Further update: IBM Sales manager just called as Im typing this, and here is 
the drill. (This guy was good..new his stufff cold) The 2647L7U model 
requires a chip to be installed (19K5887)  mini pci port  $264. that will 
provide modem and ethernet support stock in the unit. Standard modem and 
ethernet ports are not supported. (so just use the PCMCIA ports) DVD is 
supported for video playback. USB and IRDA are at the current levels of LInux 
support.  4799 retail cost  (+264 for mini pci port) + GST/PST and shipping.

Two lesser models are supported to the same extend. A Series, 26284LU and 
2628GLU however IBM still considers these as niche market products. Which is 
a fair assessment. All models are shipping with Caldera 2.4 E Desktop. And 
prices start at 3699 for a plain jane A Series laptop. Hmmmmm 

Note: this exercise was started from the IBM sales website and general 
contact no at 10:05 and its now 12:03  Two hours later and I have the data I 
need to purchase a laptop. Me thinks this is not to good but OK. (note to 
self: get a coffee, smoke a ciggy and chill) 

Best
____________________________________________________
Chris Herrnberger