Hardware vendors

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sun, 2012-07-08 at 12:42 -0400, Steven Stern wrote: 
> My 7 year old Dell Dimension 8400 is on its last legs, so I thought it
> time to find something new:
> 
> 07/07/2012 11:57:40AM Agent (Sagar A): "Hi Steve"
> 07/07/2012 11:57:42AM Agent (Sagar A): "Welcome to Dell US Chat! My name
> is Sagar Andreas and I will be your Dell.com Sales Chat Expert.I can be
> reached at sagar_andreas at dell.com or via phone at
> *******-*******-*******-******* ext. ******* . How may I help you today?"
> 07/07/2012 11:58:25AM steve: "I'm pricing out desktop computers. I plan
> to install Linux. I don't see an option to select "no operating system".
> Is there a way NOT to pay for Windows?"
> 07/07/2012 11:58:48AM Agent (Sagar A): "Its my pleasure to have you on
> my chat line today. I'd be more than happy to assist you."
> 07/07/2012 11:59:38AM Agent (Sagar A): "Steve i am so sorry we dont have
> any systems which comes with Linux as call comes with windows OS"
> 07/07/2012 12:00:01PM steve: "That's a shame. I guess I'm done buying
> Dells."
> 07/07/2012 12:01:01PM steve: "bye"
> 07/07/2012 12:01:44PM Agent (Sagar A): "i am so sorry ..."
> 07/07/2012 12:01:48PM Agent (Sagar A): "Is there anything else that I
> can help you with?"
> 
> Now that I'm done with Dell, I've priced out systems on Ohava, zareason,
> and System76. The quotes come out with insignificant dollar differences.
> Do you have any experience with these vendors?
> 
> A few comments;
> 
> 1) No, I don't want to assemble my own machine from parts.
> 2) I plan to install Fedora 17
> 3) Looking at a quad core i5-3550, 8GB memory, standard "intel advanced
> graphics" rather than a more expensive Radeon card.
> 4) 500GB SATA disk
> 5) mini- or mid-tower case

I don't know the above-mentioned vendors, but I've had good experiences
with aslab.com.  They were one of the early Linux specialist vendors.  I
bought my first system from them in the mid-1990s with Red Hat Linux
3.0.3 and my most recent system two years ago.

-- 
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu