On Monday 17 April 2006 09:55, Tom Munro Glass wrote: > A new neighbour told me yesterday that the Win98 laptop he uses for > email, browsing and basic Office documents has run out of disk space so > he can no longer update his Norton antivirus files! I've offered to demo > Linux to him and I'm thinking of suggesting Kubuntu since this often > seems to be recommended on this list for newbies. It's a good choice, BUT remember that Ubuntu takes anal-retentivity over Freedom to the level of an art form. Thus there are no tainted extras of any form distributed on the CDs. Things like some modem drivers, flash, RealPlayer and Sun's java all have to come from elsewhere. > I think he's probably going to be looking at buying a new lappie, so can > someone point me in the direction of a retailer that can supply the > hardware without paying M$ tax? As far as I'm aware, not in NZ, since DSE stopped selling that Transmeta based machine. There might be something on the ex-lease market from time to time. Now is actually quite a good time to purchase there because it's a multiple of 3 years since 2000.
> He's not interested in broadband at the > moment, so is there anything I need to watch out for in terms of modem > compatibility? Heaps, and the only safe thing to say is suck it and see. The wireless goes absolutely perfectly though, therefore an access point is a possibility. On my R40 ThinkPad slmodem works fine, but on an R51 of my acquaintance it failed hopelessly here in NZ, but apparently slmodem modem drivers work ok in the US and Europe. Weird! ThinkPads are pretty well supported by Linux. If he can afford one, the T43 is a particularly luscious machine. Sorry, but he'll have to pay the M$ tax. It's as cert. as death, unless he buys 500 units. :-) The [EMAIL PROTECTED] e-mail list is particularly helpful. -- CS
