I’m seriously thinking about one of these mini laptop thingies.  Since I work in a Dell shop, the deal should pretty much be sealed by this point.

It’s not.

Dell has seriously botched this little adventure.  Rumors aside, Michael Dell was spotted a while back with a version of this laptop and the press went mental.  Then nothing.

More rumors appeared, after which I bugged my Dell rep for some answers.  Rep took forever to get back to me, which appeared to be the fault of Marketing.  Rep gave me some information and an order/ship date.  After the date came and went, I asked a silly question about the actual product appearing on the Dell site.  No answer.

As of a few days ago, I saw reviews and articles on the new Dell.  It was called three different names, none of them being the one Rep gave me.  After that it finally appeared on the Dell site.  In fact, the last place it appeared seemed to be the Dell website.  As a long time Dell customer, this does not surprise me.   I’m satisfied with the computers and service Dell provides.  But their website could piss off the pope, causing him to go on a massive killing spree with automatic weapons.

I don’t think Dell ever took me seriously when I complained about their site.  I complained over some heads and finally got some Muckity-Muck in Support to talk to me.  Turns out I’m not the only one who has problems with that site.  It’s not that I’m not used to being the only one.  It’s not like being the only one ever stops me.  But it’s always nicer to get that tiny bit of validation.

I went over some of my difficulties with their site.  One of my favorites, and the most astounding, is that their shopping cart seems to have a hole in it.  I’ll fill it up, select my last item, then the site won’t let me get to the cart.  Eventually when I manage to get to the cart, there’s nothing in it.  Everything has falled through the hole and I have to spend another hour trying to fill it up again, complete with customizations I did on pc’s or laptops.

I thought I was really getting somewhere.  I was wrong.

The fellow started asking me questions that a first level tech (and his dog) had already checked four times before calling Support.  When he told me to go check my network, I realized I was being blown off.   Gee, if all of my coworkers have this problem, as do people NOT on my network, I’m thinking it’s not my network.  I don’t have these problems on anybody else’s website.  I wisely avoided mentioning my primary OS is linux, lest he tell me the site isn’t compatible (the Windows people have the same problems).

So, I logged into the site to find out how much my new laptop might cost.  I suppose it was another moment of pure (fatal) optimism to think I’d find the laptop there in the first place.  No, it’s probably a consumer-only device, meaning it won’t appear on the commercial account logins.  Even Rep would have to go to the consumer side to get me a price or info (if Rep even has access to consumer).

Crossing over to the dark (consumer) side, I found the laptop pretty quickly (CLUE to commercial accounts webmasters).  It’s available in three or four configurations.  I was overjoyed to see that it could be ordered with linux (Ubuntu 8.04).  The difference in configurations was the size of the solid state hard drive.

OOPS…. you can only order the unit with the smallest hard drive with linux - not the other ones.  No option, period.

Are these people completely nuts?

I was really impressed when they started offering linux on their pc’s, even if it was the servers or consumer desktops.  It was nice to see them start using Ubuntu, as that’s what I run.  But this one is just plain stupid.  How can you offer one operating system on one laptop and not on the rest.  The only difference is the hard drive size; it’s not like Ubuntu won’t work on the other ones.  There’s simply no reason not to.

I’ll ask Rep next week, if Marketing let Rep in on the Big Secret<tm>.

I suspect I know what happened…. Marketing got into Website’s drugs.

If they’re going to have a difficult time putting linux on the other laptops and won’t offer me a no-OS option, I’m going to have to start thinking long and hard about what kind of mini laptop to purchase.  I’ll bet it’s on a website that’s easy to reach, order from, and use.

I read some good reviews of the Asus mini-laptop.