Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on February 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

Dell’s IdeaStorm website has only been available for a few days and the votes are already pouring in. With users from sites like Slashdot and Digg there is no doubt that many of the requested features would be related to open source software. Looking through the most popular suggestions list makes me wonder whether Dell will actually listen to user feedback:

1. Pre-Installed Linux | Ubuntu | Fedora | OpenSUSE | Multi-Boot (42,165 votes)
2. Pre-Installed OpenOffice | alternative to MS Works & MS Office (22,528 votes)
3. NO EXTRA SOFTWARE OPTION (17,547 votes)
4. Linux laptop (15,423 votes)
5. No OS Preloaded (12,250 votes)
6. Have Firefox pre-installed as default browser (10,766 votes)
7. Build computers not loaded with extra software (10,304 votes)

Note: Each time a person votes it actually counts as 3. That means the number one suggestion currently has 14,055 unique people who have voted for it.

Those are the top 7 suggestions available on the site right now, and with the big tech sites writing about the new IdeaStorm site I would imagine that the open-source related ones will continue to grow in popularity. I am really impressed because the person who wrote the top two stories took some time to think out what they were going to say. They reference several applications, such as Firefox and GAIM, that should be offered to customers when purchasing a new computer.

If Dell starts to take some action on these requests you’ll find out about it on this page. That’s where they post about suggestions that they are actively working on to meet the consumer’s request. Right now, however, there is nothing available since Dell still has to “analyze” which requests are feasible.

I think it would be great if Dell started offering Linux PC’s with a variety of options, but I have a hard time seeing that happen. Right now Dell is able to offer their PC’s at such a discounted price because of the software companies who pay to put their “junk” on PC’s that new users purchase (with AOL probably being one of the most common). The Linux-only computers would probably be more expensive so Linux users would still buy a Windows machine (with all of the bloat) and just format it themselves.

News Source: Slashdot

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