[plug] SME PC hardware linux supplier?

[Michael Hunt]

On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 22:32, Cameron Patrick wrote:
> 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).

If I had the $2500 - $3000 to spend on the project I might have thought
seriously about something different. Unfortunately I didn't so the iBook
was the best solution for the budget. 

> > * 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.

Agreed. All the cheap laptop for sale today are really desktop
replacements and are not something you want to carry around all the
time.

> > * 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.

I really didn't think much about suspend and resume until I started to
use it under OS X. It is currently being worked on quite aggressively
and looks like a solution will be available in the next couple of
months. Wireless wasn't much of an issue to me either when I first
brought the iBook, but have found a perfectly acceptable solution in the
DWL-122 USB wireless stick that I got for $65.

The long and the short of all this discussion is that people have
different needs, budgets, expectations etc. and that different solutions
will be applied (including using/purchasing different hardware). My
iBook has turned out to be good fit for me, but I wouldn't/couldn't say
that that would be the same for others.

> Cameron.

Michael Hunt