If someone sells laptops w/o Windows installed

[Peter L. Peres]

Yes. In one case the supplier installed MSDOS I think to see if it booted
right and then deleted the partitions with fdisk I think before shipping.
Any laptop where you purchase it with a disk up-or downgrade will have a
blank hdd in it and you can tell the vendor you want him to leave it like
that. There is a better chance to get such a machine from a local shop
that does its own integration (shop around in your area), than from a big
chain. You will also likely get a good price.

Buying a big name brand laptop for use with linux/others is a risky
business imho. They almost always have the cojones to implement
non-standard hardware that requires special drivers. If you then try to
run anything but a mainstream os (like netbsd etc etc) on it you have a
problem. The problem can range from nonfunctioning modem to burned out cpu
due to acpi incompatibility not allowing the cpu cooler fan to run.

Cheapers laptops will have more compliant hardware since they usually do
not have the special agreements with our favorite software house and they
need to be compatible with the mainstream. Many even have linux drivers on
the system driver cd (supplied).

Peter
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