A+ for Dell's new Ubuntu Linux netbook

You bought what you bought.

You bought what you bought. Stop whining.

You bought what you bought

I think the guy is right at being a little bent, a month is a long wait this day and age and then seeing it cheaper and not receiving the product. Stories like this and my own experience with Dell is one reason I conditionally recommend Dell to people. Not a bad product but buyer beware on customer support.

I order 10 laptops a month

I order 10 laptops per month. So I have a great deal of experience in this area. Yes, a month is too long... But if you order from the manufacturer, it will always take a month, and possibly 3 months.

Yeah, yeah, this is unacceptible, but a manufacturer is assembling laptops AFTER they are ordered, there is no inventory. Your order is grouped with others into batches, and the parts that go into it may not even be made yet! When Dell, Lenovo, or any other manufacturer orders parts like memory, they don't order inventory to sit on the shelf, they order a flow... For example they might have a contract for 10,000 units per month. If they sell out of this months allocation, then your laptop will sit in the queue until another shipment arrives. No manufacturer will have a inventory of parts or assembled units sitting around, the parts are worth less with each passing day, so excess inventory is money evaporating.

Manufacturers are not the ones that keep inventory. Distributors, and retailers are usually the *only* part of the industry that has inventory.

100% of the laptops I order from a manufacturer take 4 to 12 weeks to arrive, this has been true for the last 7 years.

To get fast service, use a retailer, such as CDW, or any of the others out there. Retailers sell at a lower price, and they will generally tell you on the web page if they have stock on an item, and will typically ship within 24 hours. CDW would ship within 2 hours if I order before 3pm. CDW would ship from 10 different warehouses, and they might have 25 different versions of the same laptop for sale. I noticed that frequently they would have the same exact laptop with two or three part numbers, each one with a different price! The difference is when they were ordered they had a unique price, so a more recent order will usually be cheaper than one they received last month.

The one exception to the "manufacturers always take 4 weeks" rule is Apple. Apple will frequently take a month like everyone else, but sometimes they run specials, and when they do they typically have inventory. But apple has a higher markup, so they can afford the extra cost of inventory aging.

But it is still cheaper to buy apple systems from a retailer, like CDW.

I'm sorry you think you got poor service from Dell. But you got the same service that nearly all of the manufacturers give. Don't buy from a manufacturer if you want service, and the best price. Don't do it!

There is only two valid reasons to buy from a manufacturer in my opinion. First, if you are entitled to a discount for some reason, such as an employee discount. Second, if you are ordering something with a special configuration, or that cannot be purchased through a retailer. Perhaps you can think of another reason, but it's not for better service, or a better warranty, or for quicker delivery...

I mention CDW because that was where I bought most of my systems from, not because they are the best or cheapest. I could save some money from a retailer with a lower level of service. At CDW I was on first name basis with a sales rep, and I had someone to handle returns and answer questions. I paid a bit extra, but the time I saved made up for it. When I bought my own personal laptop, I did not use CDW.

Now for a while I was buying desktop systems directly from dell, as they were made in the same city I live in, Austin, and ground shipping was the same as overnight... and I frequently got 24 hour turn-around on my orders. But they moved the production to Nashville, and then it started taking 6 to 8 weeks. The desktop systems were for lab use, so we ordered them with Ubuntu. Good stuff! The machine I am typing this on is an Ubuntu desktop system from Dell... Nice! I have 4 gigs of ram, and I use it for my day to day computing, with my laptop here for running XP when I must. But I digress...

My 4 gigs of ram did not come from dell, we would order them with minimum memory, and order the memory from someone like zipzoomfly.com for 1/3rd the price of the Dell memory. 4 gigs of memory the last time I checked was under $30...

A $250 Netbook

Take a look at the soon to be released (June) NorhTec Gecko which is a system on a chip (the whole mb module can be unplugged and replaced like a PCI card). It's a little shy on your battery spec, but runs on std rechargeable AA's so carrying spare set (or buying locally in a pinch) is easy. Also, there is no need to carry around a charger brick. You can plug the unit straight into a std wall outlet for recharging. If it actually delivers what is promised, this unit offers what many of us sore-shouldered travelers have been wanting for more than a decade. (I have no connection with NorhTec - just interest similar to yours in a truly light, low-cost netbook for email and some relatively simple spreadsheets while on the road. Paying $400 or $500 for a Dell "mini" is ludicrous when one factors in the hardware quality, replacement parts lock-in and functionality.)

Ubuntu 9.04

And in a mere five months, Ubuntu 9.10 will be available! Since, every version seems to get better - unlike Windows - Ubuntu seems more attractive every day!

rumoured? With firefox,

rumoured? With firefox, being open source, you can always check out upcoming features in betas or nightlies and the current on looks very promising :-). I am running it now (my whole OS is a 'preview release' of fedora so there is not much risk of breaking it) and it is much faster in many ways. On Linux the main reason for browser slowness are certain graphics drivers and flash which can be fixed by flashblock and the much better drivers which are being developed (intel and DRI2/UAX).