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Sokraates
January 24th, 2008, 05:26 PM
This is an article translated from Futurezone, the IT-section of the ORF (the Austrian Broadcasting Agency, about what the BBC is to the UK).

I have translated the whole article, though only the final bit is truly interesting. So here it is, for those, who don't want to read everything:

"In the near future the producers [HP and Lenovo] would themselves offer notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled, therefore the installation from prepared mediums has been chosen as an interim solution."

So it seems the rumors are true. :D

You can find the original article (in German) here (http://futurezone.orf.at/tipps/stories/251610/).

Below is the translated version. The comments in square brackets are my own.


Wednesday, 23.01.2008, 12:26

Low priced notebooks for the University of Vienna
New service offered by the Zentraler Informatikdienst [A.N.: Central Service for Informatics]

Starting in February the Zentraler Informatikdienst (ZID) of the University of Vienna will offer students and employees a new programme called u:books through which low priced business notebooks can be bought.

In cooperation with the „Neptun“ programme of the University of Zurich the experts have selected three devices respectively from the producers Lenovo, HP and Apple. According to the University the first period for selling will start February 25th and end March 23rd. In the future sales should start at the beginning of each semester.

The exact prices for the devices are not fixed presently. According to the ZID, some prices are still negotiated. On enquiry by the ORF [A.N.: Österreichischer Rundfunk, the Austrian Broadcasting Agency] the responsible employee of the ZID, Christian Marzluf, therefore declined to comment on prices of the devices, but they should be significantly below the prices which end users would have to pay on the free market. Each member of the university may only buy one device.
ZID: u:book [A.N.: http://www.univie.ac.at/ZID/ubook] (http://www.univie.ac.at/ZID/ubook%5D)
ETH Zürich: Neptun [A.N.: http://www.neptun.ethz.ch/] (http://www.neptun.ethz.ch/%5D)

Three categories of devices
The devices in question are not consumer machines but sturdy business notebooks with a tree year warranty. "For example from Lenovo we offer devices from the ThinkPad-series", says Marzluf.

From each producer an ultramobile device, a "workhorse" and a powerful mobile workstation will be offered. The ETH Zurich as already announced on January 18th that the MacBook Air will be offered in the context of the Neptun-programme. Marzluf: "It will also be available from us."

The service package of the ZID will include preconfigured network settings (wireless LAN and VPN-client) and the first-level-support by the helpdesk of the ZID. Also software with univerity-licenses and a university-wide printing system will be available.

Vista, XP, Mac OS, Ubuntu
At universities the question of the operating system with which the notebooks will be delivered came up. "We offer the machines with Vista and a downgrade-option to Windows XP", says Marzluf, "but there is also the option to order the devices from HP and Lenovo with FreeDOS and have a version of Ubuntu preparded by us installed."
In the near future the producers would themselves offer notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled, therefore the installation from prepared mediums has been chosen as an interim solution. During the selection the devices special attention has been paid on their Linux compatibility.

(APA | futurezone)

barbedsaber
January 24th, 2008, 05:31 PM
ibm (I dont remember their thing with lenovo, who owns who.) anyway, ibm have supported linux for ages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4

gn2
January 24th, 2008, 05:34 PM
"In the near future the producers [HP and Lenovo] would themselves offer notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled, therefore the installation from prepared mediums has been chosen as an interim solution."

Yes but will they offer them for sale to the general public or will the pre-installed Ubuntu machines only be available as part of the service to students enrolled at the University?

Sokraates
January 24th, 2008, 06:07 PM
ibm (I dont remember their thing with lenovo, who owns who.) anyway, ibm have supported linux for ages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4

True, and they even offer SUSE preinstalled on ThinkPads in China. But here we're talking about offering Ubuntu preistalled, which they haven't done before.


Yes but will they offer them for sale to the general public or will the pre-installed Ubuntu machines only be available as part of the service to students enrolled at the University?

The info in the article is all I have, but the way I understand it, the offer will extend to the general public.

BarfBag
January 24th, 2008, 06:10 PM
AWESOME! I've always liked Thinkpads.

bash
January 24th, 2008, 06:14 PM
I know the Swiss service from the ETH Zürich. They offer notebooks for student with a special student discount. Only available in a special time window and limited numbers. Though I never found their discount to be all that great.

But from the article its not clear whether they will just offer those student notebooks with Ubuntu or machines in general with Linux preinstalled.

The person in charge for that project says that the vendor themselves would offer machines with Ubuntu preinstalled in the near future, so the installation of Ubuntu after you bougth the machine is only an interim solution. But from the context (even looking at the rest of the text in german) it's not clear if he just means that HP and Leveno will make a special Ubuntu preinstalled model for this student project. Or if they will offer models with Ubuntu in general and they will just pick one of them to offer with a discount.