System76 Ubuntu PCs: Cyber Monday Sale

There have been sub $200 netbooks available on and off all year. I expect you'll find one again before Christmas. The Compaq was available for shipment earlier today. I'm sorry it's no longer the case.

That's my luck, I hear about a good deal but by the time I can check it out, it is gone. :(

Newegg had the nice little Acer Aspire 10.1" on sale for Black Friday for @$200 (we use that model at the college and from the little I've used them I quite like them, except for the fact they are running XP. :P). I was hoping to get one to Linux up, but the site was so overloaded it took a while to get to the order process and they sold out before I could get an order in ... < 10 min after the sale started....

I've noticed the price comparison between Preinstalled Linux (I'm pretty much just check ZaReason though) and Preinstalled Windows tends to vary by machine and machine type. Sometimes they are fairly close, sometimes the Linux vendors are a bit high, sometimes they are a little lower.

I noticed this was especially true when I was shopping for my notebook last year. When I got up into the nicer notebooks, there wasn't much difference in price between ZaReason and the major OEMs for similar spec'd machines. Except Apple of course, who's similar machine was about twice as much. :P

Of course, we all know that one of the reasons OEMs are often lower is because of all the subsidizing of the costs from the 5000 companies that pay them to preinstall their stupid apps and trial apps and such.... I suspect they probably get better prices on components as well due to probably being able to order much larger quantities than most of the Linux only vendors...

Quoting:OK, I'm going to do something I almost never do. YOU ARE AN IDIOT!!!!

Then I suggest you go back to not doing it.

> My grandma is looking for a computer for less than $200 and I haven't been able to find anything

I was going to suggest a Dell Vostro A90, which the last time I checked you could get for $209, but Dell seems to have dropped it. :(

The best deal I could find with a quick check of the usual suspects is an Asus EEE from Best Buy for $250. It, of course, comes with Windows XP.

[url=http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus - Eee PC Netbook with Intel® Atom™ Processor - Midnight Blue]http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus - Eee PC Netbook with Intel...[/url]

@jdixon: Yeah, I checked the link for the Vostro A90 yesterday because one guy I work with is in the market. It's discontinued. Pity. I only heard good things about it.

Amazon.com still has the Gdium Liberty 1000 (900MHz Longsoon 2F 64-bit MIPS processor) for $279 preloaded with Mandriva. With the $40 price increase I think a Dell Mini 10V factory direct for $279 is probably the better deal unless you are specifically interested in the MIPS processor. (I am, but not $279 worth of interest.) They also have the Dreamnovia Dreambook for $149 but that's a SkyTone Alpha 400 clone with a 400MHz processor.

@mortenlaver: I really needed to do it at that moment and some people seemed to appreciate it.

@jdixon: A friend is looking for a Linux laptop for his wife. I pointed him to System76 and he compared the Pangolin Performance to the Dell Inspiron 15n. I went through Dell's configurator for the machine and noticed that 1 year of basic support added $60 and one year of "Standard" support adds $210. I told him that the System76 comes with support that's probably equivalent to the one year "Standard" support from Dell, or most likely it's actually better support. I honestly think you will get a better ownership experience and support and better quality hardware from System76 or ZaReason than you will from Dell.

As for the Black Friday / loss leader on websites controversy: Yes they can and will take some customers away from the botique Linux vendors. But they will tend to be people who can save a few bucks by wiping Windows and installing their own Linux distro. My friend has installed Ubuntu on an old desktop but he would rather have a supported Ubuntu laptop for his wife.

> I went through Dell's configurator for the machine and noticed that 1 year of basic support added $60 and one year of "Standard" support adds $210.

Well, you have to define basic and standard. Dell's current included option is for one year of "Mail-in Service". One year of "inHome Service after Remote Diagnosis" is an additional $70. System76 includes 1 year of "Technical Support".

It's pretty hard to compare support packages. Dell's consumer support is only so-so, but probably as good or better than the industry standard. I can't speak for System76. I've heard glowing reports of ZaReason's support from others, but again no personal experience.

Both the Pangolin and 15n are outside my price range (my Mini 9 was around $240, including taxes and shipping), so it's rather a moot point for me.

Quoting: Dell's consumer support is only so-so, but probably as good or better than the industry standard.

Order a Dell from the business lineup (Optiplex, Latitude, Precision, etc) and Dell's support is A+.

Quoting:Order a Dell from the business lineup (Optiplex, Latitude, Precision, etc) and Dell's support is A+.

That's a good thing to know. Often I wonder whether the consumer or business offerings are better, and this is something that could push a buyer in one direction or another.

Not that I've ever purchased a "new" computer, but if I was planning to do so, it's good to know.

I don't think Dells support (in terms of helping with using the computer) for consumer machines is very good. However, when I recently had a hard disk crash on my Dell laptop the service was excellent. I reported it on a Friday, and the following Monday I received the replacement disk.

> However, when I recently had a hard disk crash on my Dell laptop the service was excellent.

If you can convince them you have a hardware problem, their service has always been good. The problem has always been is in getting to that point.

I have to agree, if you buy a Dell business offering, their service is very good. The company I work for buys Dell, and if we have hardware probs we get a technician on site to fix the problem. Because of the amount of money the company has pent with Dell, the company also gets a special discounts on purchases, and a case manager, who always calls back.

I imagine that wiping Windows off the Dell box and replacing it with {Linux/BSD distro/project of choice} could cause problems with the Dell support. I'd like to be wrong (and I'd like Dell to offer Linux on everything).

On the other hand, I've had the occasion to open up three Dell boxes of varying vintages over the past month, and all had the memory modules in a hard-to-access places (and not enough places to plug in said modules) and featured a bizarre plastic contraption that seems meant to funnel air across the motherboard. One had a dead power supply, and of course only a Dell part would fit. I pulled the hard drive and scrapped the rest.

Quoting: I imagine that wiping Windows off the Dell box and replacing it with {Linux/BSD distro/project of choice} could cause problems with the Dell support. I'd like to be wrong (and I'd like Dell to offer Linux on everything).

They actually have a live CD that can be used to run hardware tests and give error codes for the tech support, so having Linux is not really an obstacle. You don't really get Windows support anyway.

Quoting: On the other hand, I've had the occasion to open up three Dell boxes of varying vintages over the past month, and all had the memory modules in a hard-to-access places (and not enough places to plug in said modules) and featured a bizarre plastic contraption that seems meant to funnel air across the motherboard. One had a dead power supply, and of course only a Dell part would fit. I pulled the hard drive and scrapped the rest.

Layed out quite nicely now, IMO. Nothing is ever as (potentially) nice as a whitebox, but you can take pretty much anything out of a Dell machine without the use of a screwdriver.

> One had a dead power supply, and of course only a Dell part would fit.

AFAIK, that's only true of an early model Dimension and their small form factor models. The rest seem to use industry standard power supplies. And I believe the small form factor model actually is a standard one, just not one that's as commonly found.

Quoting:> However, when I recently had a hard disk crash on my Dell laptop the service was excellent.

If you can convince them you have a hardware problem, their service has always been good. The problem has always been is in getting to that point.

I was told to run a hardware diagnostic (that I'd already run myself), and luckily the diagnostic program comes with beeps indicating errors. I don't know if the tech could identify the problem based on the sounds, but he quickly decided that the problem was real.

Quoting:I imagine that wiping Windows off the Dell box and replacing it with {Linux/BSD distro/project of choice} could cause problems with the Dell support. I'd like to be wrong (and I'd like Dell to offer Linux on everything).

I don't think the hardware diagnostic depends on Windows being installed (I have kept Vista there). Anyway, I told the guy that I had installed Linux and that it was still working fine (except when trying to read from the Windows paprtition), indicating that only the Windows partition was affected by whatever had happened to the disk. He didn't comment on that.

Quoting:I was told to run a hardware diagnostic (that I'd already run myself), and luckily the diagnostic program comes with beeps indicating errors. I don't know if the tech could identify the problem based on the sounds, but he quickly decided that the problem was real.

The Macintosh II (late 80's) had that built into the BIOS. I was most impressed when our resident well-adjusted-techie explained to me how the tech support people could make a basic diagnosis of hardware problems over the phone, based on the ditty coming from the speaker.