New portable

[David Fox]

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Alain Muls <alain.muls at telenet.be> wrote:
> Hi
>
> Shortly, I will buy a new portable. Since I do not want to pay the Microsoft
> tax, I want to buy a portable that I almost compile myself. What components

Not sure if you can avoid the microsoft tax if you buy new, unless you
go to a certified linux laptop vendor. You may have to pay ewaste tax
fees, depending if you are in a locality that collects for that.

http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-notebook-lc2430s.html

Seems OK at first glance - lots of room, you'd want the "optional"
802.11 (why isn't that included?) and it comes with an nvidia graphics
that is easy to enable in ubuntu. My Fujitsu (A1110) has a intel
mobile graphics card; that is not as easy to get working - or isn't
performing as well as I had hoped, in a variety of ways. I'm running
Jaunty on the laptop to see how well (or if) the driver for intel is
going to work on it. So far, it's an improvement over Intrepid.

Another thing to try (what I did) is buy a "like new" laptop off of
craigslist. You might not be able to transfer the warranty, which of
course is a loss, but you may avoid both the microsoft tax (free
Vista! :) *and* the applicable e-waste fee. I got my laptop in very
like new (it wasn't even installed) condition for $100 off the retail
price at Fry's. :)



> bye/Alain

>