Local Linux laptop supplier: success!

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 10:08:25PM -0500, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> 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.

IBM will sell you a laptop with Linux and not Windows.  You don't get
very many choices in model though.

> 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.

Well I have played with IBM laptops that were pretty hot to have in my
lap too, and speaking of desktop CPUs, have a look at Compaq laptops and
see what they use in a lot of them.

> 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.

Certainly true.  I remember those first Dell's with 15" screens using
the same base as the 14" model with the screen hanging out over the edge
of the base.  The place I worked had 2 cracked screens the first month
out of two laptops.  So much for name brands being so durable.

If you want something good, look at how it is built, not the name or the
price.

Lennart Sorensen
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