On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, you wrote:
> Shortly after I mailed this message yesterday, I found that two local
> stores are selling ~800 MHz Pentium III machines with "everything" for
> $800 to $900. One machine is an HP, another is an A-Open. They include
> gargantuan hard drives, 128 M, kb, mouse, modem (surely a winmodem) sound,
> cd-rw, and even some kind of 17" monitor. And this is WITHOUT the so-called
> Microsoft "rebate" where you have to sign up with their ISP for 3 years.
> This is, apparently, without any catch. I suppose these are discontinued
> models, and there are probably sales like this going on all over the
> country right now. One warning: a lot of "popular" work-station type
> computers are gutless wonders. Make sure it has enough PCI slots on
> the mobo for whatever you want to do.
Beware of the HP Pavilion line, not only is the modem a winmodem, but it is
a combination sound/modem card. Neither the soundcard or the modem parts work
under Linux, they barely work under windows. The lower end Pavilions also use
an integrated video card. It will work under Linux (configures as a ATI
Rage/Mach 64 card), but it is kind of on the slow side.
--
Alex
(Go easy on me, I'm a COBOL programmer in real life)
