Selling What the Customer Wants at Robert Pogson

I have been disappointed by Dell. They started selling a few models with GNU/Linux a couple of years ago but managed to hide them on their website deeply and never offereed a clear choice side by side with that other OS.

There is news that Dell has finally learned that the world doesn’t like what they have been doing.

Dell puts Linux and Atom in Vostro PCs for emerging markets

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Where Dell previously designed products for developed markets, and introduced them later in emerging markets, the focus has shifted to designing products exclusively for emerging markets, Felice said.

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The products run the Ubuntu Linux distribution and have been engineered to provide the basic features required by customers in these market segments in emerging economies, said Steve Felice, Dell’s president for the Asia-Pacific region and Japan, in a Webcast from Beijing

Isn’t that refreshing? Instead of selling the same old stuff they will actually design and build systems the customers want. Maybe, just maybe, Dell will be able to keep up with the fast-moving Acer. Why did they wait years before making this move? We have been telling them this for years. Where did they release models with GNU/Linux first? In the USA where it is wanted least… Well, better late than never.

They still do not get that low price is a key feature for these emerging markets. $500 is too much for many millions of customers they could have buying netbooks. In China, more netbooks are being sold than notebooks. For Dell’s sake, they had better ramp up production of netbooks with GNU/Linux.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

1 Response to “Selling What the Customer Wants”

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1 Richard Chapman Sep 5th, 2009 at 9:56 am

“Why did they wait years before making this move?”

I fear the answer to that question and many more like it in this IT world turned on its head by Microsoft will have to wait until their influence is gone. Even the language we use has been tainted by the IT dictatorship of Microsoft. We do battle in the comments and forums but mostly over technical issues. A time traveler from the future would look at that and say, “You idiots, they don’t even have the right to do what they are doing. It’s against the Law and Microsoft’s top management should be tossed in jail”. Call it future hindsight.