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I've been trying to buy a Linux laptop. Unsuccessfully. I'm looking for a low-end system, just enough to give presentations and access systems remotely. My main systems are desktops. I don't need to be able to play movies. I don't need dual boot. I don't need much compute power or a big screen. I do need WiFi capability to public access points, and VGA output to projectors. One would think this would be easy.

So first I try Fry's, which used to have Linux machines on sale. No more. Everything is Windows or Mac. I try Best Buy. No joy, even after a talk with the Geek Squad guy.

Online, we have LinuxCertified. No obvious business address on the web site, always a bad sign, and a criminal offense in California. Low-grade domain-only SSL cert. Phone number not answered during working hours. Not looking good.

There's an article about a $498 Linux laptop from WalMart, but it's been discontinued. WalMart no longer seems to have any Linux laptops.

There's EmperorLinux, but their laptops start at $1145 and go up to $6000. Their $1145 machine is a Dell 520, which Dell sells for $599. $400 extra for Linux?

So now we're down to the blogger/enthusiast sites. One guy has a list of Linux laptop vendors. Going down the list, it doesn't look good. The HP link is dead. The Dell link leads to Dell's French site, and even that's selling only Windows laptops.

But some of the links aren't dead. MGE PC Online will actually sell a Linux laptop. It's a bit overpriced; $805 for the cheapest Celeron machine. But you get Red Hat Fedora preloaded. ShopRCubed has Linux laptops that start at $840. Their advertising is deceptive; they advertise a model with "Intel Dual Core Technology" for $799, but in fact that's the price with an Intel Celeron. Adding WiFi and a Ubuntu install brings you up to $840.

There's American Computer, or ACC PC, or CompAmerica, or whatever. Very low base prices, but they don't install Linux; they just sell you a bare machine and claim "Also Certified to run the Linux Operating System."

Let's try Google's "Froogle" system. There we get some Linux laptops. There's a discontinued Acer model that's out of stock. There's a Pentium II laptop on eBay for $80. ("Boots Linux; some keys don't work") Nothing useful there.

Face it. There are no major commercial vendors of Linux laptops any more. There are a few resellers buying machines, adding Linux, and increasing the price. That's it.

You should realize though that most of these companies purchase the hardware from companies like Sager (Linux forum) and Compal, and those companies also supply the big-name guys like Compaq, HP, Dell, and Toshiba. So when you find some no-name laptop, it is usually equivalent to some branded laptop that never touched the hands of HP/Compaq/Toshiba/Dell. (And figuring out exactly *which* brand-name laptop it is equivalent to can be extremely difficult) Some of the below claim to manufacture their own notebooks, but what this means is that they buy them from Saeger/Compal or someone else, and put in a hard drive/CPU/RAM, which is why you will find identical looking cases at several of these vendors.

If you find a HP/Compaq/Toshiba/Dell/IBM/Sony branded laptop that has linux preinstalled, it means that the vendor paid for windows and removed it. I do not list them below because I think this is a despicable and deceptive practice. These manufacturers do not (yet) sell no-os or linux laptops. (But please, call them and ask!! The squeaky wheel gets the grease!) Also if you order a no-OS laptop, please request linux to be installed anyway, and tell them you'll pay for it! Let them know there is demand!

1. Linux-preinstalled laptops
2. ASA Computers
3. ASLab (Linux Forum)
4. American Computer
5. Cyclox
6. Kachina Tech (positively ancient laptops -- K6 and PII)
7. QLI Tech
8. Workstation 2000

1. No-os laptops
2. ARM Computer
3. Chem USA
4. Mtech Laptops (these guys outright lied to me about what they could deliver, in order to get my order, were not able to deliver the laptop, and I had to cancel my order -- which took 3 months to process and they kept $5 for the priviledge -- do not do business with them)
5. PC Torque
6. Power Notebooks (very good customer service according to Reseller Ratings) (Linux forum)
7. Xtreme Notebooks

-- Bob

Not the first misconduct at Bell Labs! Check this well documented case.

No government owns the moon. There is an international treaty/pact/something which states that no country may place a claim on any celestial body (scroll down to article 2). This has, however, not stopped private enterprise from placing such claims.

That's ok, they'll just store the petabytes of data on transcapacitors.

Let's not forget that ACC invented the Transcapacitor, too!

Let's not forget that ACC invented the Transcapacitor, too!

So I get it! How about we reconfigure the solar matrix in parallel for endothermic propulsion!

You would surely need a transpacitor to do that ?

Where on this list of the top gadgets is the Transcapacitor? This is going to change everything.

This reminded me of our old friends the American Computer Company who have been known to make similarly ambitious announcements.

Maybe CMR and ACC should collaborate on reverse engineering alien sanitation technology. If they're thousands of years ahead of us, they must have worked out how to clean a toilet by now.

Right now I hold Starbridge Systems in as much esteem as I hold American Computer. Starbridge systems makes provably bogus performance claims. They're not overstated nor are they misleading, they're bogus. Maybe they do have something but their marketing department is overzealous and/or stupid, either way having such obviously false information sure makes it look like a scam.

You're all hypocrites and cowards! You are simply afraid of change!

You will be left behind by the forthcoming Next Wave, and the accompanying Revolution!

Look upon this man for soon you will be groveling at his feet!

The guy (Jack Shulman) is Guru! He and his company has invented almost everything in computer science during the last decades. If you don't believe me, check http://accpc.com/founders.html. Worship the Guru!

You may be interested to visit other sites of this American Computer Company. One is www.kasparov.com. They claim that "This world wide web site's creation was originally requested by Mr. Garry Kasparov".

And more:

"The e4 staff recently learned that IBM DEEP BLUE may soon have a serious computational competitor: a newly designed supercomputer, "Debbi-1", is reportedly being readied by American Computer Company. Debbi-1 is said to be based on AMERICAN COMPUTER's "XB-70 Valkyrie" supercomputer, a design which uses the latest INTEL technology, reputed to be similar in nature to the largest supercomputer on earth -- which is presently located at Sandia National Laboratories."

However, the American Computer Company doesn't seem to be very large company, because it resides in the same leased apartment with some other respectable sounding companies. Snipped from
http://www.ufomind.com/misc/1997/dec/d27-001.sht ml:


------------------------------
compamerica.com,
accpc.com (American Computer Company)
Address: 6 Commerce Drive, suite 2000, Cranford, New Jersey

Note: ACC (ie. ACC Corporation) is also the name of a much
larger telecommunications corporation.
------------------------------
acsa2000.com (American Computer Scientists Association)
Address: 6 Commerce Drive, suite 2000, Cranford, New Jersey

Note: ACSA is also the acronym for the
Association of California School Administrators
------------------------------
ticorporation.com (Technology International Corporation)
Address: 6 Commerce Drive, second floor, Cranford, New Jersey

Note: Similar acronym to Texas Instruments (TI)
-----------------------------
kasparov.com (American Computer Company)
Address: same as above
-------------------------------------------

There's a whole folder of this guy at http://www.ufomind.com/people/s/shulman/. Interesting reading. Don't forget to check http://www.geocities.com/CapeCa naveral/Hangar/9587/ which has an engineer point of view.

(Notice that I haven't said anything negative of the guy. Read and decide yourself, that's why the brains are for :)

- Sami

He looks like one of the Beasties in the Sabotage video :o)

Nice threads though !

He looks like one of the Beasties in the Sabotage video :o)

I feel the need to read this page aloud to my mini-me so we can do the quote thing (bending the fingers) to such lamely futuristec terms as "mini-computer" and "server" appearing in the 1970's papers by these guys.


Check it out here: http://accpc.com/founders.html
read a couple paragraphs as you too do the quote thing.

Oh yes, they are very credible, they also claim that aliens helped them invent the transistor.

sure I believe them.

The funniest stuff is actually on the rest of ACC's site. Check out their history, for a look at their founder visionary's mugshot and learn how they invented "A very potent cypher system which even today can not be decoded using any existing code breaker but itself (tech item 'm').

I particularly like item 'r' (Office of the Future), of which MacOS and Windows are apparently derivative products and items 'w' (Eurodollars and Wall Street's automatic trading system).

Oh yeah, and item 'a' (a programming language which turned calculators into true minicomputers in 1968 was apparently invented by ACC before they were even founded in 1970.

a little fish in a big pond
there is no .sig here... it is a .figment of your imagination

Anyone care to check a couple of claims? I remember seeing this a while back and discounted it as a hoax, but I just found some other info on their site that, if true, may add some credibility to their claim. Of course, these claims are so broad I'm a little incredulous.

1) Claims to have been around since the 60's
2) Claim to have developed the Router and SMP
3) Claims to have invented RAID.
4) Claims to have developed part of X.25

And quite a few more. You can view their claims here. I don't have time to check them myself, but I'd be interested to see what anyone else could dig up. If this resume is correct, I might not be so quick to discount them.

Roswell URL:

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