Local Linux laptop supplier: success!

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

At 19:39 05/01/2004 -0500, Ian Goldberg wrote:
>On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 06:51:27PM -0500, Teddy Mills wrote:
> > Choosing a laptop vendor, just because they support linux; is that reason
> > enough?
> > I would be much more interested in the laptop itself, the hardware, price
> > and components, and overall support.
> > The linux support you can do yourself, and will probably do a much better
> > job than the company would.
>
>Supporting vendors who have not been brainwashed by Redmond is a really
>good idea to me.  And if they offer to install Linux on it for you, you
>know you're not going to have incompatibility surprises.

Oh come on. The majority of the world uses Windows. How is it "being 
brainwashed by Redmond" if IBM, for example, chooses to ship Windows 
preloaded on their machines? I agree with Teddy. I certainly would not deal 
with a vendor just because they "support" Linux, especially not a small 
vendor like Angel who may have one and only Linux friendly tech who leaves 
a week after your purchase. Basing one's decision on this as the most 
important criterion seems to be like cutting of one's nose to spite one's face.

I do not know what Angel laptops are like these days but Angel, Ultinet, 
and Eurocom were all built by the same Taiwanese supplier at one time but 
had minor cosmetic differences. I was never overly impressed with them. 
They often had desktop CPUs in them, especially the Eurocom, their 
keyboards sucked, they were like toaster ovens sitting in one's lap, and 
various plastic doors and bits would break if you looked at them sideways. 
However, that was up to about four years ago. I haven't touched one since 
so they may be better now. Having said that, "MS tax" or not, I still 
prefer to use and sell name brand laptops, especially now that the price 
differential is insignificant and in some cases better. I checked out 
Angel's web site after your post to see what their pricing was like these 
days and did not see anything that jumped out at me as a good deal. I think 
you can do as well or better even with the "Windows tax" built in, 
especially if you do not get hung up in the GHz wars. Others and I have 
written here before about what makes a good laptop computer a good laptop 
computer and it usually has little to do with what the ads emphasize.

Laptops get banged around more and are more service intensive. People spill 
stuff into the keyboards, they break hinges and latches, the batteries 
eventually die, often sooner than you would think, the pointing devices 
start misbehaving, the motherboards die, etc. Try finding parts for a 
couple year old clone or even second or third tier laptop manufacturer and 
you'll quickly find that the vendors have moved onto "better" things. By 
contrast, you can find almost any replacement part for an IBM, HP, or 
Compaq, even for five year old models. It depends on whether you view 
laptops as disposable computers or as something you might want to hang onto 
for a while.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4N 3P6

Tel: 416-410-3326 

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