Don't buy HP computers

[Markus Schönhaber]

I strongly agree that it's a good idea to let vendors/manufacturers know
that there are people out here who are interested in machines that work
with Linux (or *BSD or ...). Nevertheless...

Dotan Cohen:
>> That's a pretty strong statement.  Unless you specifically bought a laptop
>> from them with Ubuntu and your support contract said they would support
>> Ubuntu on it, I'm not sure why you would have expected any other outcome
>> than you got.
>>
> 
> Actually, he got the expected outcome.
> 
> However, now the hundreds of ubuntu-users list members know to avoid
> HP computers.

... no, they don't know that they should avoid HP, because
1. It's not surprising news that there's no Linux support for this
machine. Otherwise, it very likely would have been advertised.
2. There's a major difference between Linux not being *supported* by the
manufacturer and Linux not *working* on a specific machine (I don't
doubt that Karl is right on the former but I don't consider Karl's
statement on the latter as trustworthy information).
3. "Thou shalt not buy any machine from XYZ because I have found a
particular one from XYZ that doesn't work with Linux" (let's assume it
really doesn't) is simply nonsense.
4. At best, people now know that Karl may have a specific problem with a
specific HP machine in a specific dual-boot scenario with Vista. But
they do *not* know whether this problem is caused by the machine, Karl,
Vista or something else. Nor do they know if no-one can fix it or if
just Karl is not able to.

> When HP decides that they want our business, let them
> first support the OS that we intend to run.

Again:
Should we let vendors/manufacturers know that we want to run Linux on
their machines? Absolutely!
Should we check if Linux *works* on the machine we intend to to buy
before we buy it? Absolutely!
Should we let manufacturers know that we didn't buy one of their
machines because Linux didn't *work* on it? Absolutely!
Should we base our decision which machine to buy on the availability of
Linux *support*? Let everyone decide this on his specific needs. If you
really want to do so, be prepared that your choice will be very limited
and be prepared to pay for it one way or the other.

BTW: Lenovo/IBM doesn't provide Linux *support* for my T60. Nevertheless
it *works* like a charm running Linux.

Regards
  mks