[CoLoCo] Dual-boot and wine options

[Jim Hutchinson]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 11:16 AM, Jeffrey LePage <jeffrey_lepage at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> I'm trying to help a local school get some Linux machines (for admin and
> staff use).  They had decided to go with Dell and get some desktops with
> Ubuntu pre-installed.  They were offering pretty decent machines for cheap.
> Then Dell informed us that they couldn't give us the advertised special
> because we're a school.  Go figure.  Instead they would sell us the same
> machine for MORE money.  Also, the only OS option is Vista Business.


I just replied to the other thread and then saw this. Oops. Yes, the school
purchase thing is annoying. The state has contracts with vendors and often
they are not as good as what you can get alone. I think that's bull and
someone in the state house really needs to look into this. In your case,
however, aren't these for a charter school iirc? If so, maybe you could get
around it by just not being specific and if it's a private school (or you
claim it is) I don't think the state contracts apply but I'm not sure.

Another option would be to just buy the windows boxes and then refuse the
EULA and hassle Dell for the refund. It may take a while but it sends a good
message.


>
> I'm talking to HP and others now.  They're willing to _try_ to match Dell's
> original price, but they also insist on installing Windows.  They want to
> install WinXP Pro.   The school thought about going with a white-box
> assembler and getting no-OS machines, but they decided they wanted a big
> well-known vendor.


The only reason to buy from a big vendor is support. However, they charge a
lot for what you get. If you buy 10 computers you might have trouble with
one or two so you wasted 80% of your money. I think one of the reasons to go
Linux is to also go local for support. Take the money you would have spent
on support for the dells, bank it and use it if need to pay someone local
(maybe yourself) to fix it. The parts in a white box should all have
individual warranties so you would just RMA it and replace or if out of
warranty buy a new one. Most major things have at least 3 years or more
though (mobo, graphics, CPU, hard drives but not optical drives but they are
cheap).

Anyway, my two cents on that.


> So, what are my options?  Let's say I get some vendor to sell us machines
> with WinXP pre-installed.  Maybe I can use this to our advantage and offer
> some extra Windows support?
>
> How about re-sizing the pre-installed windows partition and making them
> dual-boot?


I would say avoid the dual boot if you want them to adopt Linux. They will
just fall back on win as a crutch. Of course if they won't go 100% Linux
then a little is better than none.


-- 
Jim (Ubuntu geek extraordinaire)
----
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
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