On Wednesday 14 March 2007 19:49, Adam Williams wrote:

I'm not going to vote because (a) I'm never going to buy a Dell and (b) I don't care what OS comes preloaded since I'm going to wipe it anyway and reinstall. Anyone who matches (a) *or* (b) should also refrain from voting.

Yes, that's right, let's all sit back and allow the MS Tax to continue. Let's not let anyone know how many we are, then we are free to grumble for all eternity that so-and-so many dollars out of every computer purchase go to Redmond regardless of what we actually use on it In fact, let's not tell anyone anything about what we do. Let's all just download in all quietness, set firefox to identify itself as internet explorer, and pretend we're using Vista. With a little luck, following your lead, in a few years, we won't have any support from any vendor regarding anything. Won't that be fun -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 14 March 2007, Adam Williams wrote:

Of course Dell is smart enough to realize that web polls are worth a pile of something warm and stinky.... but anything that will draw people to their site is worth doing.

Web polls, as are being conducted by Dell are worth quite a bit. You were perhaps thinking they should ask the man in the street? This isn't a political contest, its a request from a vendor for an expression of interest of its customer base.

If you don't have a legitimate interest/intention in buying a Dell with Linux preloaded then you shouldn't vote in the survey;  a stuffed ballot box is obvious to anyone.  

This is pure nonsense. Clearly you have an axe to grind with dell, and you are perfectly willing to cut your own nose off with said axe just to see if its sharp. All linux users should vote at the dell site. Doesn't matter who you prefer to buy from. Doesn't matter what you plan to run on your linux box. Doesn't matter which distro you might like to see them offer. What matters is all the linux users in the world can scream at ATI and Nvidia and Broadcom and get absolutely nowhere. But when Michael Dell gets the CEO of Broadcom on the phone and says get rid of the binary blobs or we will take our multimillion dollar contract to Ralink you can bet your bottom dollar they will listen. When ATI sees sales drop off because their goddamed drivers crash and lock up and need end user recompiles you can bet they will spend the extra 1 tenth of a cent to put some storage on their chipset and store the video software in there rather than having it loaded at boot up. Dell has clout. So does HP. Turning up your nose and walking away the instant they show any signs of heeding the linux market is childish, short sighted, and self defeating. Get over yourself. Go vote for the community. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen