Personally I work for DSE Ble. I can say (VERY unofficially) that as far as notebooks and desktops are concerned the company is very much part of the M$ family. Though our tech guys in Auck (as far as I know) have a knowledge of Linux and though a few of the staff (such as myself) are aware of and in favor of Linux it's always going to be a predominantly M$ world. That being said however there seems to be a slow trickling of other products (open source) to be sold in store. For example when ever anyone comes to me to buy M$ Office I always recommend OpenOffice, cause it's good, reliable, cheap and I use it myself at home (though it sometimes costs the company $300 each time I do this). Also if someone happens to mention Linux I tell them what I know about it (quite limited). I think there will come the time in the not too distant future where the company will have some good Linux distro on its display models in store. The facts have to be faced: 1) Linux is a very high quality alternative to M$ products 2) as people in the everyday lives become more 'computer literate' open source will be more popular 3) it doesn't matter how cool Linux is (and don't worry you're speaking to the converted- though at the moment I don't have it installed) M$ will ALWAYS have a monopoly. And by the way we just don't sell OpenOffice (for around $10) we also (at least in my store) sell Fedora and Ubuntu as far as I'm aware for similar prices.
As someone else aptly puts it on this list "just my $0.02". CM. On 05/03/07, Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
BTW, are we still in touch with Dick Smith Electronics? DSE, like any other consumer electronics store, is there to push product, and the more they can show people of a product's capabilities, the more people will want to buy. I saw Sabayon at a friend's place the other day, and I saw Vista the night it was released. And Sabayon beats Vista hands-down for eye-candy - working perfectly, I might add. It shows off the qualities of your standard high-grade graphics card much better than Vista does, IMHO. So, who do we know at DSE? Would they be willing to dedicate a top-end machine to showing off Sabayon? Because, Vista's effects, according to my friend, are being replicated on the XP by enthusiastic XP hobbyists. Whereas Sabayon AFAIK, is currently unique amongst the distros and amongst the desktop OSes. Just my 0.02c - highly inflated, of course! ;) Wesley Parish So, who do we know at DSE -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
-- CM.
