I was beginning to feel left out, being the only blog im sure not to mention the new deal between Canonical and Dell. Now, you can order a dell computer with Ubuntu Feisty pre-installed. The prices are good, you get good support, and the OS of choice. You can also order a dell designed for FreeDos, and load Ubuntu onto that, if Windows is that undesirable for you.
dell.com/open
it appears that Dell was wrong in saying that there was no way to recover the data even when I have a new controller.