[plug] SME PC hardware linux supplier?

[Cameron Patrick]

Michael Hunt wrote:

> > What I mean by that is fork out the fat wad of cash
> 
> Well it is not really 'a fat wad of cash'. One of the main reason's for
> going for an iBook was actually the issue of price. $1585 for a new
> iBook (education discount) was actually the cheapest notebook I could
> find. I'd expect to pay somewhere between $1700 to $2000 for a similar
> Intel notebook. 

I recently bought a laptop and seriously considered buying an Ibook
and not running Linux on it.  IIRC an Ibook specced out with a big
hard drive, extra RAM and wireless came to ~$2200 with a student
discount.  I ended up buying a similarly specced Pentium M-based
laptop which cost ~$500 more (although with a substantially faster CPU
and rather lighter).

> * Size and weight. A lot less than the desk-note replacements that were
> in the same price class. Sure the screen size is smaller (12 inch as
> opposed to 14 and 15 inch common on Intel) but I need to take this to
> college everyday.

I find that a 12" screen is a nice size for a laptop, especially if
you're going to be carrying it around a lot.  The Ibook isn't
particularly light compared to Intel-based laptops of similar size,
some of which are < 1.5kg (and most of which are much more expensive).  
It's a heck of a lot better than carrying around the 3kg+ "desktop
replacement" monstrosities which a lot of notebook vendors are selling
these days.

> * Good Linux hardware support (okay not everything and perfectly, but a
> lot better than some of the Intel stuff out there)

As you mentioned, the Airport Express (or whatever Apple calls their
wireless cards these days) isn't supported under Linux yet.  Likewise
suspend/resume isn't there yet, or wasn't when I last looked.  For me
at least, those are pretty big things to be missing on a laptop.

Cameron.