"I think Dell has done a great thing. If they can sell a PC with Linux/OpenOffice cheaper than the same PC with Vista/Office 2007, then the Linux user base will grow and the industry will change. Moms and Pops who want a basic email & web-surfing system don't need Vista, and they'll gladly take the Linux PC if they can save a couple hundred dollars"
Exactly, except instead of: basic email & web-surfing systemtry:
-An email system on a par with slightly older versions of outlook.
-some of the best web-browsers ever written like IE7 and a half (firefox :)
-Mp3 player/recorder etc (some superior to "media player")
-watch movies Divx,mov,avi, blah blah blah
-digital video cameras / editing
-wordprocessors and spreadsheets
-chatting/voip/webcams (skype,msn,icq,ekiga,aim,irc blah blah blah)
-no viruses(or very few) or spyware
-automatic updates
-more...
The above is what the majority of people want to do, and can with almost any decent modern distro. As you say, if dells distro is perfect for the hardware inside then most of the people who have been put off in the past by bad hw support would change their tunes.