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Follow-Up On TuxTops
Some of you may remember the TuxTops story concerning their exit from the laptop business. We've heard from QLITech regarding their acquisition of the TuxTops line -- it's good to see someone will still make it. [Update: 02/22 03:08 PM EST by michael : Newsforge has a story. Looks like QLITech will be taking over support of TuxTops' customers as well - good.]
The Emperor & The King
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think these have got to be the most pretentious names I've ever seen.
And what is up with "The Chinstrap". I'm no fan of the other two, but atleast "The Prince" would make a little more sense and not sound so ridiculously stupid.
"Hey whatcha got there?"
"Oh this is my new laptop, its a Chinstrap."
"Umm...yeah right. Later man"
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
(here goes my karma)
But really, I wonder if the cart is coming before the horse in this scenario. Is linux really a reasonable portable operating system. Sure, I boot ppc on my powerbook, and it looks really cool and stuff, but it's not useful to me on a day to day basis. I would hope any company marketing portables is putting alot of effort into building applications that make them viable. Perhaps I'm just being too closed minded.
tcd004
The guts of the Penitum 4!
don't click here unless you want stock photos
there prices are way too high. I thought that one of the good points of hardware vendors using Linux was so that they could drop the price. From what I've seen so far, it always seems that a system with Linux pre-installed always cost more than a comparable system with Windows pre-installed. It's as if the vendors are saying, "Pay us extra, 'cause we 'support' Linux." No thanks.
I can put together a box myself from peices for less than what they're charging. So, their business plan is to enter a market composed of people capable and willing to building their own systems. They don't offer a considerable discount over the BigBrand guys, and their only distinguishable selling point is "IT HAS LINUX". My prediction is that they will follow TuxTops to the bottom of the heap before the year is out.
BTW, what happened to the idea of building a business out of providing custom distributions? Now that would be useful and a better business model than overpriced hardware.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
No but you just made me think of an old Steve Martin bit.
King Tux!
I suppose that makes that name a little more palatable.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
There are others, too.
Werner Heuser, the author of the Linux Laptop Howto and several other helpful Lapop-related documents about Linux, runs a little business in Germany for Linux-Laptops. You can have a look at www.xtops.de if you're interested.
(I'm not affiliated with Werner, I just contributed parts of the Howto and wrote the old Battery Powered Linux Howto that he took over and rewrote.)
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You may like my a cappella music
That's what I forgot in my other response to your question: I'm a freelancer developer and (still, but not very long anymore) a student. I can bring and take my work with me wherever I go to. My laptop is about 1.2 kg, so I don't have to carry a big bulky heavy bag with me, yet still I have 12 gigs of harddisk space and it's fast enough, too. You can see the obvious advantages having a Linux laptop means for me.
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You may like my a cappella music
diz,
The only way we are going get get companies like Lucent to finally provide drivers is to show that people will *BUY* their products.
The Emperor, and King are built by Compal, (no, not a typo Compal, not Compaq) and the Emperor is the *SAME* unit as the Dell Inspiron 5000e, last we checked we were about $300.00 less than Dell on this unit.
Regarding sound:
The Chinstrap is a cranky unit, and is more well suited to a dual boot setup. Cirrus Logic Just sent us "production" audio drivers for the King, and we've had *NO* problems with the Emperor under R.H 7.0 / 7.1 Beta.
As per an earlier post, Most of Tuxtops' field data was based on RH 6.1 / 6.2
One last note, when is the last time you've seen a good high quality laptop without a built in modem?
"In an open world, who needs windows or gates?" (tm)
Blatant ad Check out Emporer Linux They sell mainstream laptops (sony, toshiba, whatever) with linux on them for a few extra bucks. I know the people who run the shop, very professional, and very good. /Blatant ad
1.) On an airplane - No net access so you can watch DVD's (yep you can watch DVD's in linux), Play games or type whatever you need to type.
2.) In the car when driving you can listen to mp3's
3.) At home or in the office there is nothing a laptop can't do that a desktop can ... trust me.
Now if you've ever tried to install linux on a laptop you will find that with everything built into the mother board and lack of room to tinker with the insides ... that installing linux is not the easiest thing to do.
Solution ... instead of buying a laptop with windows pre-installed ... get linux pre-installed ... and QLITech offers this ...
And if you must have windows I am quite sure that QLITech would set you up with a dual-booting system.
So I am more than pleased to see that TuxTops legacy is still alive and not to mention all previously supported computers are still supported through QLITech ... they could have easily just taken over the notebook section, but they stayed with the commitment of TuXtops.
Lastly ... about the names ... have you not noticed the names of notebooks these days ... Protege, Satellite, iBook, or iPaq ... come on these names are no more absurd than any otherrs ... at least there's reasoning behind their names.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
We can understand your concerns over quality,
however the Emperor is made by Compal, the same company that build Dell's laptops.
The Emperor is the Compal N38W2, also Known as the Dell Inspiron 5000e, not some cheap flimsy unit.
Plus our unit is about $300.00 less than Dell's unit M$ Tax maybe???
Last we checked the ATI Rage Mobility Chipset is *WELL* supported under XFree 4.01
"In an open world, who needs windows or gates?" (tm)
for those of that use *nix on a daily basis for our work, a laptop that *doesn't* run *nix just isn't very useful.
:)
Fortunaely, due to the weird rules about faculty startup money, and since I'm also getting a real workstation, by boss is transmogrifying my startup pc into a laptop--which means I can continue work at home, even if only the editing (no, there's no laptop with the computational power I need
It runs just fine on my thinkpad 755c--a 486 laptop with 20M and a 340M hard drive.
The sound doesn't work for linux, but I understand that If i'd boot into dos first, then start linux from there it would work until sleep set in--but who needs sound???
Just today, I was putting in for a quote on some IBM Thinkpad A21s from CDW, and noticed that CDW is now carrying Thinkpads in a wide variety of configurations preloaded with Caldera instead of Windows.
For a while now, Dell has been selling certain models direct as a special order this way, but this is the first I've seen of national distribution of Linux laptops through major resellers. And IBM makes mighty fine laptops with very nice tech, like bright screens, passthru ethernet and modem (indeed, passthru everything) on the docks and port replicators, reinforced door hinges and so on.
There's still some (rapidly dwindling) value to a company that makes tweaked, optimized Linux servers and workstations. But if you can get Linux fully supported from the major vendors on their best hardware at prices that beat the specialty vendors (who are just rebadging no-name Chinese laptops anyway), what's the point?
I'll bet IBM's return and repair services are better than the little guys', too.
A hand to the ALITech folks for picking up a good line of hardware and running with it.
After hemming and hawing and drooling over Jim's Obsidian 30 for about six months, I picked up an Amethyst 20U before trekking down under. OK, so I wiped the default RH install and slathered a real distro (Debian Potato/testing) on it.
The box has been a champ. With docking station, it's virtually a second desktop. Sans, it's a thin, light, powerhouse. Battery life is good (close on the 3:20 advertised), screen rocks, keyboard feel is great (packed a Happy Hacker keyboard, hardly used it). Onboard networking is very nice to have. Still need to try out the FIR, and I've had trouble getting PCMCIA up and running, but that's after wiping what TuxTops had given me. Power management works, though it helps to go to standby from console. Had to throw together a presentation -- plug video out to the pojector, hit the <FN><CRT/LCD> switch, and voila. Coulda saved myself a lot of worrying on that one... ;-)
One nit -- the screen tends to rub against the touchpad and mouse keys in the closed position, I've found it helps to keep a sheet of letter-sized paper inside the case when closed for travelling. Otherwise, very happy.
Yes, the pricing is comperable to (or slightly better than) Compaq and Dell boxes, and better than IBM. Yes, there are cheaper boxes out there, but they tend to do less or have less coverage. And, yes, if you're familiar with Linux, it's a perfectly acceptable portable OS. My alternative bet would likely be something based on Symbian for instant-on and ready-to-fly systems. Windows? A joke.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?