From: "Frank Haber" 

While bulk purchasers may get deals on these no-opsys "N" machine
from their Dell rep, the user or small consultant often pays *more* for the
privilege of no Windows.  There are never deals, rebates or coupons on the
Ns.

(Actually Dell is moving away from rebates, period. You still can get
fifteen diferent pricings on one machine "build" by approaching
from permutations of five different routes/entry-pages.  And if you're
still not confused, there are always free monitors, RAM, CPU upgrades, etc.
to make comparison even harder..)

I theorize that Dell's cost/seat for Windows varies lots.  They used to get
$70 for the upgrade to XP pro.  Then it went to $90.  Then they polluted that
comparison by replacing all XP Homes with MC.  Some machines came with
Media Center builds that were quite shameless - you had DVD drives,
sometimes even DVD burners, and no operable DVD player.  Media center came
up at 6x4x256, or bluescreened, and it was very difficult to get it out of
the picture.  Pro forma and desultory, I'd call those efforts.

(The more "consumer" oriented machines, with tuners, etc., worked
better.  It was the small biz machines with MC that really suffered.)

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5