Erik, I bought one of Pioneer's higher range laptops in May 2006. At this stage Pioneer sold with or without an MS operating system & like you I refused to pay the tax. If memory serves me correctly it was called a Dreambook and has a 64 bit AMD cpu, 1G of ram (since upgraded to 2G), a 17" screen and an Atheros chipset wifi card. It is actually a rebadged Taiwanese Clevo D470K.
I have had absolutely no problems with it to date. I run Fedora 10 currently. It's main negatives being it's weight (but it is a 17") and short battery life (about 2 hrs). I mainly use it connected to the mains however. Hope this helps. - Regards, Peter. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein- On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 08:42 +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > Meijer, Luke wrote: > > > It is obvious you want something that you know you cant get. > > "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable > one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all > progress depends on the unreasonable man." > -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) > > Yep, i am an an unreasonable man. Me being an unreasonable man lead > me to start to use Linux in 1995, starting two open source projects > (at least one of which I'm sure you have installed on your machine) > and maintaining them to this day. It also resulted in my getting > a reasonably well paid job at a small high tech startup where at > least 95% of my work is Linux related development. > > While we as Linux users put up with the status quo we will continue > to be rode rough-shod over by microsoft and the companies like Dell > and HP who do under the table deals with them. These deals are what > is keeping microsoft where it is and preventing the spread of Linux. > > > I was in the exact same situation with my Dell XPS 1330 purchase > > as Ubuntu was an option for US Dell customers only. > > So why the fsck can't people in this global backwater get the same > deal? > > I know of at least one survey which showed that Australia has a > larger number of Linux and Free Software developers per head of > population than any other country in the world. > > > I chose to go ahead and accept the ~$100 MS tax and build it with > > Linux the same day it arrived. > > Yep, you and the millions of other people who did this help microsoft > fund the SCO debacle and ramming its broken standard thru ISO, in the > process breaking ISO. I hope you're pleased with yourself. > > > For someone who's time is so valuable and wants to drop ~$2000K > > on something 'high end' I really think $100 is not a lot of money > > for piece of mind on guaranteed driver support. > > You're an "Open Source" kinda guy aren't you? Well I'm much more > in the "Free Software" camp. > > > It just seems from your responses that you are already aware of > > the choices and this is more of a chance to 'vent' rather than a > > request for help. > > First, you obviously don't understand my motivations. Secondly, > I have found one single supplier of laptops (other than netbooks) > with Linux pre-installed, Pioneer Computers: > > http://pioneercomputers.com.au/ > > That is not a huge choice. Remeber, I chose Linux. I like choice. > I'd like to have two or three companies to chose from. I don't > think that is unreasonable. > > Erik > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Erik de Castro Lopo > http://www.mega-nerd.com/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
