Lenovo to sell Linux Laptops
Lenovo, one of the world’s biggest PC manufacturers, is to start selling laptops to business and consumers with Linux pre-installed on the machines.
That’s good news, I guess: In particular when you don’t want or need an instance of MS Windows preinstalled on your machine, you can now finally avoid the “Microsoft Tax“ that you currently have to pay no matter what, just to delete it off your box once it arrives. It may also give customers an idea of how many dollars they actually spend on Windows, because nowadays many still believe “Windows was for free, it came with my computer”…
Apparently, earlier this year Dell already announced it would start shipping Linux PCs also.
Way to go, Dell and Lenovo!
Well, it probably depends on how Lenovo handles pricing. I think a common complaint with other vendors has been that you pay the same price to get Linux as Windows. [Of course, the tricky bit is that there are fixed costs for offering a product with a different low-volume OS. So, while Microsoft might not be profiting, the manufacturer’s cost could end up being a wash.]
Also… I’m not sure if this is the case any more, but IIRC at one point Microsoft’s volume pricing was simply based on total number of units a vendor sold — regardless of the installed OS. Something to the effect of “for $X million, you can put Windows on all the systems you sell this quarter”. So, in those terms, you’re still paying a hidden cost to Microsoft in the end.
Yay monopoly power!
Lenovo has been selling a few T60 models with no-OS for the past year. It’s good that they’re going to be doing pre-installs, but if the pricing model is the same you’ll pay at least a few hundred dollars *extra* beyond the price of a Windows ThinkPad for this service. Also, this is for the T-series only. I hope they’ll extend it to the X-series at some point.
I spent the last two months trying to order an X-series Lenovo without a Windows license, only to be forced to give up. Lenovo’s final stance on the issue was that you need to agree to the Windows EULA in order to install Linux on the machine, and failing to do so voids your hardware warranty. So I bought a Panasonic
Yep, Dell sells PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed, though only in the U.S., UK, France and Germany as far as I’m aware: http://www.ubuntu.com/dell
I agree with you guys: as long as the pricing scheme is still charging you at least as much for no OS or Linux installed as they take for Windows then there’s not much won… Let’s hope this will become better over time. *Offering* it in the first place is a good start, though.