Fitting the battle of life

Following on from my post this morning about the non-cost of OpenOffice versus MS Office, what happens when you don’t have much money to buy a new computer? The ‘average’ consumer isn’t going to want to be scouring the shops for bargain parts, worry about static discharge and getting jumpers set right by either upgrading their computer or building one from scratch – especially if they need the mobility of a laptop (and 2008 could well be the year laptops overtake desktops in terms of sales). So, what to do?

[Note: I've started with the base models from Dell and tried to match specs as closely as possible.]

As an Ubuntu user, I would always recommend anyone to use it. I’d almost go so far as letting them take my laptop for a test-drive for a couple of days. (Almost.) I’m sure with a little gentle encouragement, a little guidance when they need it, they’d fall in love. Oh, and it’s free, I’d tell them. You can get it from Dell, I’d tell them. Wow, all this for free? I’ll get one of those, not one of those hideously expensive Vista machines then, they’d say.

Well, here’s the problem. Take the base models, the Inspiron 6400 and it’s Ubuntu counterpart, the 6400n. With the same specs (1.60GHz cpu, 80GB hard drive, one gigabyte of RAM, the same Intel graphics), the Ubuntu machine actually works out £10 more expensive than the Vista Basic machine. (The Ubuntu machine starts at 512MB memory, which would be enough, and is £20 cheaper overall, but in the interests of fairness…)

So what is that extra £10 doing there? It’s there because companies pay to have their software pre-installed on retail computers, which of course reduces the overall cost (and, in a way, locking you in) – remember all those ‘get your internet here’ icons on the desktop last time you bought a Windows computer? Ubuntu doesn’t do that – it wouldn’t fit with the philosophy, for a start, and you can’t make something free any cheaper.

One argument that says that the £10 doesn’t matter is that Ubuntu comes pre-installed with even more (useful) software than Windows does out of the (retail) box. Look at the GIMP, for instance. It’s not an equivalent to MS Paint. It’s an equivalent (for simplicity’s sake!) to Adobe Photoshop. Which costs over £500. And that’s with a 10% discount from the nice people at Amazon.co.uk. Look at it like this: that £10 pays for a whole lot more than it looks like it pays for. Think of it, perhaps, as a one-off registration fee for unrestricted access to the Ubuntu software repositories. To the community support network that exists. To complete customisability of and freedom over your computer. And £10 is less (to continue a theme from my last post) than ten pints of beer. So you’re only losing what, two nights (maybe even one!) of drinking? (Remember also that Dell is enabling multimedia out of the box, so the £10 probably covers some kind of license for that too.) Let’s also bear in mind that Vista Basic is, well, basic. Ubuntu comes in one form, like Mac OSX, which has all the features in it, not some myriad different forms that give you more as you pay more. So it probably isn’t a fair comparison to choose the Basic option anyway…but we’re going for a cheap computer here.

To return to the £10, it’s also a signal to send to companies like Dell that there is consumer demand for Ubuntu-based (or even GNU/Linux-based in general) computers, and that’s a signal that in my opinion is worth £10 to send.

The £10 ‘Linux tax’ on Dell computers is actually very good value for money, I would say. Just wish I had the other £330 to buy the damn computer with.

I read, as those who know me will no doubt know, the Guardian as my paper (well, actually, being a broke student, website) of choice, and especially make sure to catch the Technology supplement on a Thursday, simply because techy stuff is a minor passion of mine. I’ve noticed over the past year or so (perhaps since I started actively looking) more and more mentions of Linux, and particularly Ubuntu. So it came as no great surprise to find this post by Kevin Anderson today.

He has been using Ubuntu for six months, and comes to the conclusion that it is “ready for advanced computer users, but not most mainstream users”, for example his parents. However, not only has he not asked his parents to try it, but the issues he brings up as ‘cons’ include mainly driver issues. One comment from an American describes a large group of Ubuntu users whose average age is 74 all humming along quite nicely, and (from my own experience) my mother is quite happy using Ubuntu – and I certainly wouldn’t call her an advanced computer user. After several comments, (including my own!), the author conceded: “I guess, that’s not much different now with a Windows machine”. Victory is ours!

I do admit that the issues he had with his own machine are genuine issues with certain video/audio drivers, but with the likes of Dell offering pre-installed issues in the mainstream market, the ‘average’ computer user simply isn’t going to run into the same difficulties. And, of course, it’s well known that Windows has driver issues, worse than GNU/Linux does. But I won’t turn this into a MS-bashing post.

The simple fact is, while all publicity is good publicity, articles such as this slightly skew the perspective an ‘average’ user has of Ubuntu. It would have been a very different article had the author taken a new Ubuntu Dell for a ride, instead of installing it on his own, older system. Articles like this do highlight the benefits of Ubuntu (and there is indeed a list of praise-worthy points), but at the same time aren’t entirely constructive. While the author added an update to the main article with a link to various features coming in Hardy, he didn’t update it to clarify his remarks about the ‘your parents’ test, which many people would miss in the comments.

Rant over.