My Macbook came with 10.5.6 and I don't remember paying for 10.5.7 or the recent 10.5.8 updates. In fact, they were free via the system update tool. I guess if Microsoft can charge for 5.0 (2k) -> 5.1 (xp) and 6.0 (Vista) -> 6.1 (Win 7) it should be fine to charge for 10.4 -> 10.5 and 10.5 -> 10.6, given that the new features justify the price. Version numbers are completely arbitrary anyway.

One thing you should watch out for is the really long delivery times for Dellbuntu systems, at least in my own experience. My brother bought an m1330 (with Vista) and it arrived in two weeks with no issues. I decided to buy my own but with Ubuntu pre-installed and I was given the same two weeks estimate. However for about two months I kept getting emails about unavailable stock and that the delivery estimate was moved back each time. This is despite the fact that the flashy stock checker said everything was fine when I customized the system. On top of this, I couldn't cancel or get a refund apparently because of the way the automated system works (what a load of bull).

I got annoyed about a month in and just bought a Macbook for ~£30 less and better specs (everything was the same except the Macbook had an Nvidia 9400m instead of a 8400m). If I didn't have spare cash from my student loan I'd have been in a right mess because the m1330 didn't arrive until May 11th, about 3 weeks after my project deadline.

Yes, I know my experience might have been bad, and others may vary, but this has put me off doing business with Dell for good, especially when my brother had no issues with his Vista machine, which tells me Dell isn't really serious about Ubuntu.

To answer the submitter's question I've personally bought the 9" eeePC with Xandros preinstalled and installed Ubuntu on it with Adamm's kernel (which is as simple as adding a repo). I'm sure the larger eeePCs should be just the same.

Achievement farming here we go!

On my eeePC 901, I'm using the standard Ubuntu 8.10 install and then using a wired connection I have installed Adamm's kernel which fixes all the hardware issues. The instructions are simple to follow and are available at http://array.org/ubuntu/ (if you can use apt-get you can follow these instructions).

With XP, you can turn off the stuff that makes it annoying (theme, welcome screen, system restore, etc) and you've basically got win2k again.

With vista, reverting to classic theme shows that the glossy "refresh" and "go" buttons in explorer and other places are hardcoded in and look way out of place, and the dimensions of the start menu and other screens (mostly control panel) look very odd in classic. The welcome screen can't be changed from the ugly default, or reverted to nt logon. It's next to impossible to configure a 2k-like system from vista. I'm sure the same will be true of win7.

Notepad++ is the only application (i.e. not including games) keeping me on Windows.