[plug] SME PC hardware linux supplier?

[Craig Ringer]

Mike Holland wrote:

> skribe wrote:
>
>> Is there a logical reason why any sane person would choose to do 
>> this?  What I mean by that is fork out the fat wad of cash for 
>> Apple's hardware and then 
>
>
> skribe,
> I don't think you've checked the price of i-books lately.
> $1695 for a 2.2kg laptop with good battery life and wifi sounds good 
> to me! 


In my opinion Apple's iBooks are a significant exception to their 
hardware pricing. They cut a lot of corners building them, but they're 
very, very cheap and with a 3yr warranty should be just fine. A G5, on 
the other hand, is a bit steep for what you get IMO, as is an eMac 
(price is OK, but it's gutless and almost impossible to repair).

Meh. Whatever. I'm currently stuck in the unpleasant position of 
choosing between two platforms I loathe for when the POST upgrades it's 
publishing dep't. Windows - cheap but nasty, breaks randomly, and full 
of security problems. MacOS - overpriced OS, expensive custom hardware, 
breaks randomly ("oh, just delete the .plist file" / "just repair 
permissions" - *sigh*), nice-ish OS, security situation acceptable. Woohoo.

I'd love to be able to use Linux, but ... the DTP software just isn't 
there. The closest thing is Scribus, and it's very very far indeed from 
being production ready in a newspaper environment. Inkscape rocks for a 
vector editor, but doesn't solve the key issue - layout software. Still, 
we're already using some stuff like GhostScript as integral parts of our 
workflow (gs 8.3.x actually works better for the POST than Acrobat 
Distiller 6).

--
Craig Ringer