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By Jacqueline Emigh Now that a laptop with pre-installed Mandrake Linux is available in France, will Dell follow up with Linux laptops in the US or other nations? In the words of Dell CEO Michael Dell, the many distributions of Linux are too "alienated" from each other to make that work. When Linux Today posed this question during this week's press launch of new consumer products and service offerings from Dell, the company chief didn't reply with a definite "yes" or "no." But, he said, in looking at the prospect of offering pre-installed PCs elsewhere, Dell discovered there must be "literally hundreds of distributions" of Linux--and, further, that these distributions are quite "alienated" from each other. "Instead, we have the n-Series," Michael Dell told Linux Today during a press Q&A at Dell's consumer launch press conference in New York City. Shipped without an installed OS, Dell's existing n-Series PC workstations ship are bundled with FreeDOS, a free operating system. The n-Series PCs are members of Dell's Optiplex and Precision workstation series. Meanwhile, the new laptop with pre-installed Mandrake is now being sold from Dell's French-language Web site. Students in France can get low-rate loans if they buy the Mandrake machine, but the laptop is also available to others without this sort of financial aid. Pre-installed with Mandriva Limited Edition 2005, the Dell Latitude Ln 110 comes with an Intel Celeron M processor; 15-inch XGA LCD screen; built-in WiFi; a DVD drive; 256MB to 1.28 GB RAM; and an 8-cell lithium ion battery. Meanwhile, at the Dell press conference in New York City on Wednesday, the company rolled out a new brand of XPS desktop and notebook PCs for the US market, along with the Dell Dimension E510 desktop PC and an expanded line-up of digital TVs. Aimed by Dell at "tech enthusiasts," gamers, and affluent households, the new XPS brand initially includes the XPS M170 notebook and the XPS 600, XPS 400 and XPS 200 desktop PCs. All of the PCs announced at the launch will ship with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. For the E510, Windows XP Home or Professional will be optionally available, according to Dell's press materials. During the press conference, Mike George, Dell's VP of consumer products, told reporters that Dell's US consumer business has grown rapidly over the past few years, so that it now constitutes 15 percent of all Dell revenues. Beyond the new XPS brand, he said, Dell will try to further grow its consumer business in the US with new service offerings in sales, tech support, and maintenance. Speaking with Linux Today at the launch, George said that, in a new sales program--which was beta tested over the summer in the Nashville, TN region--consumers calling in over the phone to Dell with be assigned personal sales reps, to help "guide" them through the buying process. Related Stories:
 
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