Stuart Bird wrote:
I stumbled across this web site recently. The hardware looks good and
the prices appear competitive. The AMD Dual Core 5000 looks really
nice!!
http://efficientpc.co.uk/
Apologies for what starts with a blatant advert:
If anyone is interested, I can beat those prices, or at least increase
the spec for the same money (eg Dual Core 5600 with 500GB HDD for the
same price as their 5000/400GB, otherwise same case/graphics/etc),
although since that would basically be at cost that's for PLUG people
only, and doesn't include shipping which the Efficient PC offering does
(on the assumption you're all local and would prefer a better spec to
bundled shipping).
The reason I'd be interested in doing this is that as most of you guys
know, we do sell PCs and stuff like it but I'd like to specifically sell
some Linux boxes and to do that I'm likely to need some help from people
on this list helping to resolve any installation problems that crop up;
I don't have Dell's resources to test hardware/software combinations and
provide decent support (not suggesting that Dell actually provide decent
support, but I'm not selling something I can't support). It is likely
that Efficient PC could (at this point anyway) provide better support
than I could, and that would have to change before I tried to sell this
properly.
Although this is an advert (and I'd welcome opinions on whether I should
therefore have not posted it), it does raise an interesting idea: what
(if anything!) should PLUG do to try to make money from Linux as a group
(eg to raise funds for FOSS projects), and what can/should PLUG do for
local businesses such as mine to help them make a commercial success of
Linux themselves? Personally (in large part because I could gain from
it!) I think that anyone who wants to sell Linux desktops and profit
from that should be encouraged (although they'd be wise to give
something back to the community if the community is supporting them).
At present, we use Linux internally, on external hosting servers, and on
servers which we sell, but its never externally promoted as "Linux
powered", not because that's hidden, but because that's just not
relevant to the target audience, and if anything might put people off
because its something they don't understand. I would like to build and
sell Linux Powered systems to people who are aware that's what they're
getting, either because it's what they're looking for (they already know
Linux) or because they just want a PC to do a job and don't care what OS
it uses as long as it works. I'd be happy to do a lot of the work in my
spare time (building the website etc) because its something I care
about, but it'll never succeed unless I get buy-in from the rest of the
company and that means it has to be profitable.
NB: We have suppliers who build PCs to order, and that's the route I'd
take, as due to WEEE regulations building things ourselves is more pain
than its worth.
--
Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555
Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG
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