[Leaplist] Laptop without Windows in Orlando

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 28 July 2009 03:29:27 Teemu Laine wrote:
> Dear fellow Linux users,
> I am a Finnish graduate student traveling to Orlando next October and I am
> considering of buying a new laptop there as the prices are considerably
> cheaper than here in Finland. However, I do not want to pay the Microsoft
> tax for a software that I won't use. I therefore ask kindly your
> assistance: could someone please tell me pointers as where to find in
> Orlando (or nearby) laptops without OS or with Linux pre-installed?
>
> I am interested in a fairly high-performance model with at least 1440x900
> screen resolution (15.4" screen or so). It would be great if the machine
> would have an international warranty. Mac would be one option but I'd
> rather stick to open source and save some money as well, if possible.
>
> Thank you for your comments and suggestions in advance!

Hi Teemu,

I'll give you my opinion -- others' opinions will vary.

My experience is that the Microsoft tax is much cheaper than the premium you 
pay for Linux-preloaded laptops, and I've never seen a no-OS laptop.

My best laptop purchase experience was buying from Costco. They have a very 
liberal warranty, and they told me that I could bring the computer home, 
overwrite Windows with Linux, and if the Linux didn't work right, I could 
return the computer for my money back. In fact, my laptop worked perfectly 
with Linux except of course for the Broadcom wifi -- I bought a Linksys WUSB54G 
USB wifi and installed ndiswrapper to get it to work.

Unfortunately it costs about $45.00/year to join Costco, but there again, you 
could pay your Costco membership price plus the price of a Windows laptop and 
still save at least $100 (often more like $500) over a Linux preloaded laptop.

When converting a Windows computer to Linux, leave a small Windows partition 
to use as a diagnostic tool, a standard of comparison, and to satisfy the 
silly tech support drones.

So if YOUR pocketbook is the priority, I'd recommend buying a commodity 
Windows laptop and adding Linux. If your priority is not supporting Microsoft, 
that's something entirely different -- then you need to get a Linux preload.

SteveT

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