[PCWorld]

Post your comments for New, High-End Laptop Offers Linux Preinstalled here

[xyberviri]

For what its worth you can order a laptop from dell, and dell does ship firmware and drivers for its hardware for linux.

Ubuntu will install on most dell systems and get all the device drivers right, apart from the WLan drivers which you can install with apt-get

[knocz]

Why would we have to pay a little bit more for a system with Linux? There's no Windows licencing involved, helping to reduce the overall costs of the final product.

[karthiq]

The wintel cold war is proving to be a boon to linux.

Although intel linux machines existed before they were very rare and it was upto to the discretion of PC makers to ship them.But now intel is beginning to take an active interest.

[linuxrants7xpg]

knocz, on 19 March 2012 - 02:11 PM, said:

Why would we have to pay a little bit more for a system with Linux? There's no Windows licencing involved, helping to reduce the overall costs of the final product.

A couple different reasons.

Most of the big name manufacturers don't offer Linux pre-installed on computers. I believe Dell still does, but good luck finding them on the website. The ones that do have to deviate from their standard processes, so what's being deviated to has to make up for the costs involved. Less Linux computers are sold, so they have to sell for more to cover costs. End result, higher price for Linux than Windows.

For other manufactures, such as ZaReason who was featured in the article, it's a different story but the end result is the same. Because they're smaller than other manufacturers like Dell and HP, they can't buy components in quantities like Dell and HP can. Lower quantity means higher cost. End result, higher price for Linux than Windows.

It sucks, but right now it's cheaper for someone to buy a new computer pre-installed with Windows and then take Windows off and install Linux.

[JustinSteiger8epo]

One reason non MS OS machines cost a bit more is that with MS you also get advertising in the form of "extras". When a computer comes with AOL pre-installed "for you" it's AOL paying the manufacturer to install these "special offers".

That advertising cost is returned to the end user in the form of a lower price. Personally I would pay the little extra to support the people pre-installing my OS of choice (*NIX). I have no reasoning behind Apple's steep prices; used to be hardware; but I'm thinking it's all in a name now. (I still like my MacBook Pro (running *nix though). Just feels nice.