When Dell sells something they don’t properly support, lawsuits result
By now, there has been a ton of stories all over the Internet about the woman who claimed that Linux made her drop out of college, and is suing Dell as a result. Let’s leave whether or not her lawsuit makes sense out of the equation for a moment. Let’s ignore the stuff that everyone else is railing about. Let’s pretend that people aren’t going to be trolling both sides of the open source debate. Let’s look at the underlying problem here, which is how when a vendor tries too hard to make something “easy to use” it actually becomes impossible to use for many people.
If you haven’t heard about it already, the basic gist of the story, is that this lady (Abbie Schubert) bought a Dell PC. Despite the information on the Dell Web site about “is Linux for you?”, she ordered it with Linux. She was told that it was compatable with everything she needed to do. She had a CD from her ISP to connect her to the Internet, which would not work on Linux. As a result, she never got her PC working on the Internet, which she needed for school. Additionally, her teacher for school told her that her work needed to be done in Word, which does not run on Linux. As a result, she says that she was unable to do what she needed to do for her classes, and had to drop out.
Now, tech savvy users will pick up on a few problems here right off the bat. First, we all know what that CD from the ISP does, and we all know that we don’t need it. It simply configures the network settings, because making a CD that does this with an autorun results in less tech support calls than a page of instructions showing someone how to plug the cable in and set the network connection properties. Unless the ISP was doing something unusual (like a static IP on a consumer line, or PPOE), the really funny thing is that her Linux machine (or any OS, for that matter) was already properly configured! All she had to do was plug the NIC in, and let DHCP do the rest. The next issue is the Word problem. We all know that you do not need to use Word to generate a Word document. And there is plenty of software on Linux which creates a Word document.
So what happened? I’ll tell you what went wrong… a combination of inflexible vendor policies colliding with technically ignorant users (not just the lady who bought the PC, either)!
I am sure that when she called up Dell, they told her, “not our problem, our site warns you about the shortcomings of Linux, and it is on us to get you generating Word documents or setting up network connections.” And dollars to donuts, when she called her ISP (Verizon, in this case), they refused to touch her OS, “it’s not supported”, and told her that if their CD wouldn’t run in her PC, then she should have read their Web site better. And on top of that were her ignorant professors, who assumed that the only way to create a Word document was with Word. That’s why they said she must have Word! They also were too unknowledgable to realize that many other document formats would have been fine, and some of them would even open in their copy of Word, such as RTF and PDF.
All that needed to happen here, was for one person to break their company’s policy, and help this lady out. It would have been best if it was someone at Dell, since they had the “whole story”(I am sure that she didn’t walk about the Word situation with Verizon). All they needed to do was say, “OK, hang on, let me go to the Verizon Web site to get the settings needed, and walk you through that.” Likewise, someone at Verizon could have done the same. When I worked tech support, I violated our policies all of the time, to make sure that customers got the support they needed. At the end of the day, my desk was piled high with “Employee of the Month” certificates, the company paying my employer to provide support consistently mentioned me by name as a standout, and users wrote glowing thank you notes to my boss. But I was also taking a monster career risk, knowing that all it took was for me to provide support for something that wasn’t in the policy to go wrong and the user to complain, and I would be in serious trouble.
Likewise, if Dell had simply told her, “hey, you can use OpenOffice to create Word documents!” that’s it, the problem would have been resolved. Instead, they kept saying, “you can’t install Word on Linux.”
Indeed, the ending to the story is exactly this. She ended up suing Dell. The college told her that they would be willing to take her work in any format that Word can open. Verizon is sending a tech out to help her get connected to the Internet. She’s happy, and the vendors look like heroes (except for Dell).
None of this should have happened. But vendors are stuck walking a fine line. Either they support this stuff which results in a lot more training for them (and how many knowledgable Linux folks are happy to work consumer level tech support for crying out loud?). Or they risk these kinds of situations. No matter how they approach it, they lose.
J.Ja
IMO, this is one of biggest problems for Linux’s on the desktop: nobody really wants to support it. I have friends who don’t like windows and run linux at home (windows is relegated to Virtual Box if it’s required for some application), but they wouldn’t dream of putting it on any of their relatives’ machines.
I don’t know if Dell decided that supporting Linux is too expensive (when it’s coupled with technically challenged users) or this is just a case of poor training on their part, but the only way I’ll give htem a pass is if on the OS select page, in big bold letters, it says, "WE DON’T SUPPORT THIS OS."
As you’ve said, given her issues, it sounds like Dell should have gotten her up and running in seconds flat. I’m fairly certain that that machine shipped with Open Office, so it the rep should have been able to tell her that she was good to go for school.
I personally fall on the side that Desktop Linux is still not ready for the unwashed masses (though Ubuntu is moving things in the right direction), but I also think a nice lawsuit is in order to get Dell to fix their support issues or stop selling Linux if they don’t want to support it and offer a free copy of Vista (not home basic) to those that purchased a Linux machine in the last 12 months.
Selling Linux without support is wrong
On that note, the laptop did indeed ship with Open Office. Dell didn’t tell her that Open Office can create files that Word can read (and I am sure it can create ’97 – ’03 style documents too, but I’ve never used it so I can’t confirm it). Likewise, if her teachers at school were more technically knowledgable, they would have been able to say, "that fine, send me a PDF or a RTF file". In terms of file format, the confusion came about from people who were ignorant of technical matters setting policy and making advisements regarding technical matters.
Support is a killer for desktop Linux. Ever if you had a Linux that looked 100% like Windows, and acted 100% like Windows, vendors would still not want to support users on it! That’s not a bad idea though, a desktop manager than 100% emulates Windows’ interface, right down to how to set NIC configurations, "Add/Remove Programs", and so on. While you would, of course, be replicating some of Windows’ worst aspects, supporting it would be transparent to support staff.
J.Ja
I think if they precisely replicated MS Windows there would probably be lawsuits (hasn’t apple already sued on that basis before?)
In the end, a company like Dell shouldn’t sell a product if they’re not going to support it. If they were a local white box builder, I might give them a pass, but they’re Dell. Consumers expect more.
The only thing they’ve got going for them is that most consumers will never hear this story.
Actually, this story is flying ALL over the Internet right now… the TV station says its had phenomenal amounts of traffic and comments on it. What makes it so sensational is, of course, the lawsuit end of it. It’s a rediculous lawsuit, which activates the "dumb lawsuit flame wars" gene that people have (which is why I avoided talking about it too much, it’s a troll topic).
Funny thing is, I tend to expect *better* support from a white box company, if they are a local mom ‘n pop, than I do from Dell. If they’re an Internet shop, I know that support isn’t happening. My experiences with Dell’s support are so overwhelmingly miserable, with the exception of my most recent experience. And I suspect that was better because I was a business customer. For consumer machines, I’ve had a *very* good experience with eMachines, and I highly recommend them, partially due to that good experience (mostly because they sell a decent box at an unbeatable price and it isn’t littered with junk).
J.Ja
My only experience with dell is via the business unit. It doesn’t take much to get a business account — says the business customer without a business.
The reason I said what i said aobut white box sellers is that if they sold a machine with linux, and they didn’t support it, I suspect they’d only offer it to people who specifically requested it and I also suspect they’d do their best to convince noobs from getting the OS.
I always build my own machines, so I really don’t have to worry about this much, except for when it’s a friend’s or parents machine (where most of my Dell CS experience comes from). It’s not for everyone, but I generally find that I can build a better machine for about the same money, if not less…and after that, I tend to upgrade it bits and pieces.
Anyway, let’s hope that Dell has learned their lesson.
At the super-low end, it is almost impossible to beat "the big boys". I priced out one of those MSI Wind systems, the kind with an Atom CPU. Adding a cheap hard drive (whatever was the cheapest), a cheap SATA DVD burner, the cheapest 2 GB of RAM that would fit, and a copy of Windows, it came out to be about $300, before shipping and handling. eMachines will sell me something for about the same price, and it will be a "real" CPU, not the Atom, and even come with speakers, mouse, and keyboard. On the other hand, once you get past about $600, I find that the "big boys" are indeed a rip off. They basically charge you double the base model price, for the next level CPU, a slightly bigger hard drive, and another $20 worth of RAM. My mother walks into that trap every few years, buys a "mid range PC", but it is still inadequete for her needs. She does a lot of photo work, so what she needs is a lot of RAM, and preferably twin hard drives in a RAID 1 so she doesn’t lose any of her valuable data. And she also needs a qulaity video card. Instead, she keeps spending $800 on "mid range" boxes that I could assemble for $500 – $600.
J.Ja
Old topic, but I blame her teachers. These educators who profess to be experts should have known that she could have used alternative software. I personally know and loathe dozens of these people who got into the field for the simple reason that they have summers off.