[Leaplist] Re: More Anti-Linux Propaganda from MicroSuck and Worst Buy

[Bryan J. Smith]

I have a long-standing history of what Microsoft does at Best Buy.
I have a long-standing history of what Microsoft does at Tier-1 PC OEMs.


Do I boycott any of them?  Of course not.

I fully take advantage of Microsoft's "subsidy" at Best Buy and Tier-1
PC OEMs.  I buy things they are losing money on, and ignore all their
sales for over-priced, huge mark-up accessories, even as they are
nearly tackling me out-the-door.

I don't ever mention I run Linux (made that mistake once, and got the
"you don't like Windows or something?" comment), I just cheerfully buy
what they are going to lose money on.  That's their approach and I take
full advantage of it.

My over year old personal laptop is a Best Buy-only Gateway P-7811FX,
a model configuration solely sold at Best Buy at a loss.  Gateway doesn't
support it and I have to go to Geek Squad if I have an issue.  I haven't had
an issue because I run Linux.

In fact, the pre-installed MS Vista Home Premium Edition 64-bit that comes
with it had several driver issues that Fedora 9+ x86 and x86-64 did not upon
installation and with every update (now at Fedora 11).  Everything is supported
natively -- from suspend to hibernate, from wireless (including coming back
from suspension) to the nVidia power save to 3D.  And it's better than Vista
at suspension/hibernate as well.

I thank Best Buy for letting me get a notebook with a GeForce Go 9800GTS
512GiB GDDR discrete RAM (over 1GiB with shared), 4GiB DDR3 RAM,
high-res 1920x1200 LCD panel, etc... for half the price of an equivalently
equipped Dell XPS notebook (basically the only vendor that offered anything
close).

Today I'd likely give my business to a Tier-2 recently mentioned on the
list that pre-installs Linux instead, but I like my inexpensive Gateway notebook
that continues to work flawlessly for over a year.



 -- 
Bryan J  Smith           Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:         http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
---------------------------------------------------------- 
Red Hat:  That 'other' American software company built on
open customer selection of options and value, instead of
controlled distribution channels of forced bundle and lock


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