This hit the news this morning – Dell will sell cookie cutter machines from WalMart. Knowing that there are many evil empires out there, this marriage made just below the umpteenth circle of Hades will certainly make things interesting for how computers will get into classrooms. From what I heard on the CBC story, one of the big drivers for Dell to make this move (other than perhaps figuring how to mint half cent coins) – though not in the linked story that I have here, but on Newsworld this morning – is that HP has taken over as number one in the low end space as a result of it’s selling boxes at Wally-World. CBC also seems to think that it’s not going to work as they see (or report others seeing) Dell as being a luxury brand being sold at a discounter. Granted that might be an issue, but Apple’s done well selling the iPod there.
Finally, though not in Canada, but in the US, the WalMart Dell boxes will ship with Ubuntu installed. Now I can just see the lawyers salivating as there is bound to be someone who buys the box, thinking that it’s going to have Windows and run games and the rest. Linux being sold to people who don’t know enough about computers and are buying the first $350 box that they come across that has been pilled into the center of the walkway in some random location just feels to me like it’s bait and switch. But there is a very good chance that this could help bring a push of FLOSS to the North American consumer market. Whatever the result is (if any), it should be interesting to see.
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