On Sun, 9 Mar 2003 13:55:32 -0500, Peter Christensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My five-year-old Gateway Pentium 200 MHz died recently. (It won't boot from > the hard drive or a rescue disk, and it won't go into bios-setup mode.) I > don't think it's fixable, and anyway, it was so slow that it's probably time > to replace it. Temporarily I'm using a borrowed computer with Win95. Yuck! > > For my next computer I want to make sure that everything is compatible with > Linux. I searched this list and found a few posts about buying computers. > They were a little old (one or two years), so I'm wondering if the situation > has changed. A few people recommended the AMD Athlon processor over > Pentiums. And Matrox for video, Soundblaster or Ensoniq for sound. Any > thoughts on this? > > I've heard that computers nowadays are built with the cheapest possible > components, so I was wondering if building it myself would be a good idea. > It might not be much cheaper than buying one from Dell or Gateway, but if > the result was a better quality machine it might be worthwhile. So far I've > only had to replace broken components in my Gateway, such as the hard drive > and CDrom, also added memory. Building a computer would be a challenge, but > I think I'd enjoy doing it... I would definitely advise against buying a computer from a mainstream vendor, eg IBM, Dell, etc. However, there is a third option which you are not considering, which is buying a computer from a small place, which will build it according to your specifications. This is the way I went. I went to resellerratings.com, and eventually settled on a place called Envision Computer Solutions (http://envisioncs.net/), which was highly rated. I had some technical problems with the order (not the owner's fault) but eventually got them settled, and the computer in question is now humming away quietly near me. I would definitely buy from this place again, and I am very picky when it comes to service. The owner, Todd Keller, is pretty neutral when it comes to Linux. He does not know anything about it, but neither does he freak out when it is mentioned, like the big resellers supposedly do (I have no personal experience with this). He is generally very cooperative and service-oriented. Bear in mind that if you assemble the computer yourself: a) There is a chance you may damage something if you don't know exactly what you are doing. At the very least a book or two is required, and no book can stop you from making mistakes. You might want to take a look at the book "PC Hardware in a Nutshell", which I have a copy of, and the corresponding web site, http://hardwareguys.com/ I found it useful in educating me about the issues. However, I would not necessarily take their specific picks too seriously. These choices are often quite subjective, and the best choice changes all the time anyway. In particular, I am not convinced that PC Power and Cooling power supplies are all that great. b) You'll have to research the components in addition to putting them all together. Just the research by itself is quite a bit of work. I spent several weeks on understanding the issues. Of course hardware doesn't change that much so you won't have to do this very often, but you will need to do this once. Bear in mind of course you want things that are well supported by Linux. So, it might be an idea to get someone to actually assemble it for you. Otherwise, it could be an expensive (not to mention time-consuming) learning experience. I think, however, most people in this group would disagree. You can see what they think from two earlier threads on debian-user which I started. 1) On Mon, 2 Jul 2001 From: Faheem Mitha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: buying a computer (http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2001/debian-user-200107/msg00318.html) 2) On 25 Feb 2002 From: Faheem Mitha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: hardware quote comments? (http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/debian-user-200202/msg04267.html) The above hardware selection is rather different from my final hardware selection, which I can send you if you want. Also, I eventually did not go with this vendor, since Envision was rather cheaper and I wasn't willing to pay a big premium to have Debian preinstalled. Faheem. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]