Daily Archives: March 1, 2007

Pesky varmits, customers

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

The risk in asking customers what they want is that they will tell you. And then, spoiled brats that they are, they will expect you to follow through. It’s a risk Dell took two weeks ago when it launched IdeaStorm, a collaborative suggestion box intended to surface the deepest wants and needs of customers. Turns out the biggest, or at least most vocal, demand by far is for Dell to offer computers with the Linux OS preinstalled…

According to Nate Anderson of ArsTechnica, 85,000 users went to the trouble of creating an account on the Dell site and voting for the “pre-installed Linux” option, and another 55,000 asked for “pre-installed OpenOffice.”

IN a statement, Dell responded to the IdeaStorm firestorm by saying that it wouldn’t be able to meet the demands because customers want too many variants. “There is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux,” said Dell. “We don’t want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another.”

Ryan Paul — also of ArsTechnica, is sympathetic to the company’s dilemma.

The big problem with Linux preinstallation, he writes,

is that one size rarely fits all. Although modern community-driven distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora are designed for a broad audience, serious Linux users are very particular about how their systems are configured. This is even more true for users who prefer highly granular distributions that provide more installation options. Smaller hardware vendors that specialize in Linux preinstallation are better equipped to accommodate user requests for certain configurations.

As an individual Linux user, I would much rather see Dell make Windows optional for every computer and focus on ensuring that the hardware components in Dell computers are compatible with Linux in general rather than specific Linux distributions.

Quagmire news (contd.)

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The headline says it all, really. Full story reads, in part:

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq – or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The officers – combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency – are charged with implementing the “new way forward” strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial “surge” of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.

But the team, known as the “Baghdad brains trust” and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations.

“They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about ‘Plan B’ by the autumn – meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it’s getting harder every day,” he said.