Gary, I'm resending an email that I sent to the list on January 18 and which addresses your question. I still haven't bought a laptop but the price of the $1000 HP computer that I reference below has now dropped to $750. I'm also in the market for a laptop. I've looked at what's available and I like both Dell and HP but it seems strange to me that the Dell linux laptops are actually about $200 more expensive that the equivalent HP Windows laptops. I would have expected them to be cheaper since linux is free. I think that they are making people pay extra for support and maintenance of linux. I tried out an HP Pavilion costing $1000 and I was able to install both Kubuntu 7.10 and Puppy linux. They both appeared to work well although I didn't try everything. HP seems to be the better buy because you can save $200 and get Vista as a bonus. I think that I might try the HP tablet computer next but I wonder if the 12" screen might be too small. Tablets don't seem to be very popular but I think that using Ubuntu with Rosegarden on it, I could set it on the music stand on top of my piano and read the music directly off the computer. Also the touch sensitive screen might be useful. Of course I want it to do everything else that a normal laptop would do. I think that it would be helpful if VAGUE had a discussion of this so that we could draw upon the combined expertise of the group in making our purchase decisions. $1000 is after all a significant investment. I choose this figure (actually $999.99) because I want to buy the computer in NH, tax free. I will then declare it on my Vermont income tax form and pay the $7 extra tax which applies to out of state purchases of less than $1000. This will give me a net savings of $63. Of course this won't pay for the gas to go to NH but if I make the purchase during a trip that I make for other reasons, it's a nice bonus. It's good to keep in mind that a purchase from a chain store in NH can be returned to that chain's branch here in Burlington. Terry
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 08:48:13 -0400From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Dell Ubuntu PCs?To: [email protected] Hi Everyone, Our family PC (Dell Dimension 4500, Win XP) is now 6 years old and is showing it’s age more and more every day. So, I’m in the market for a new PC for general use by 6 to 10 people (read as “Accounts”) and I’ll probably use the existing family PC for one of my numerous projects. We’ve owned several Dell computers over the years and are very happy with their quality and service. I’m NOT happy with the way Microsoft has handled the licensing of Vista and I’d like to have our next family PC running an operating system other than Vista. We like XP but I realize that its useful life is short concerning updates and security fixes. I’ve been using Ubuntu Gutsy as the main OS on my laptop for the past 6 months and I’m very happy with it. I’ve also been playing around with an Ubuntu Hardy box in our master bedroom connected to the TV for playing video files stored on the family PC through an 802.11g network. In fact, with Hardy, out of the box, I was able to plug in a $20 USB Bluetooth adapter (IOGEAR) from Wal-Mart and connect one of our Wii controllers to the box via Bluetooth. I was very impressed by that. Do any of you have first or second hand knowledge of the Ubuntu desktop PCs (Inspiron 530 n-series) that Dell is selling? Does anyone have other recommendations about turnkey computer systems with open source operating systems? Thanks in advance for your advice. Respectfully, Gary _________________________________________________________________ E-mail for the greater good. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?source=EML_WL_ GreaterGood
