Yes, it's messed up. Just as you describe, nobody should get the Developer Edition. The vanilla edition is regularly on sales for hundreds of dollars less. Also

Yes, it's messed up. Just as you describe, nobody should get the Developer Edition. The vanilla edition is regularly on sales for hundreds of dollars less. Also, many attractive configurations aren't available at all with the Developer Edition. Biggest example is obviously the 15" XPS, because why would developers care about screen size for a development workstation, right? I'd have hoped Dell realizes this, and doesn't make the braindead assumption that only DE customers are interested in Linux. Most people I know who bought an XPS bought the vanilla (Windows) edition, and then installed Ubuntu - which is easy. If Dell slips up and, say, introduces hardware not supported by Linux, it will lose all these customers.