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VPR Matrix 200A5 Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "The hard to find VPR Matrix 200A5 laptop has been reviewed. Never heard of it? It's a laptop that's designed by F.A. Porsche and sold exclusively by...Best Buy! It seems there is starting to be a rather large following of the VPR line of laptops, but that they are getting tougher to find at Best Buy (not sure if they are discontinuing or if they are selling out stock before releasing a new version.)"
The laptop looks like a good set of compromises that all laptop manufacturers have to make. I don't see what all the negative comments are based upon! Now, the question that should have been asked and answered by the review is: DOES IT RUN LINUX WELL? Who wants to buy a computer only to be stuck with Windows? Do all the components have Linux drivers or at least have freely available documentation for those of us who can write drivers?
and I'm very happy with the performance. Everybody ask about it..of course they get confuse and then you have to explain too much (is a clone...is sold by Best Buy) I run Mandrake 9.1 and it works like a charm. The only two things that did not run out of the box was resolution, but it took little time to fix it, and ACPI stuff. I still have to try this: http://linux.brasileiro.net/misc/vprmatrix/ The screen is a samsung (same as Apple) and it is very nice. I purchased it at $2K with $300 in rebates and I primatched twice getting it down to $1,300. If you can find a Titanium at that price let me know. This is by far the best compromise in performance/functionality/design, etc. I really like it and recomended for personal use. By all means this is not a corporate laptop. OhRock
...and immediately wiped the hard drive in favor of a real operating system...
:)
Even if you don't consider a Microsoft OS a real operating system; I certainly consider it good enough to gather a bit of hardware information before I wipe a drive and try an install on unfamiliar hardware.
That could've been eight extra hours bitching on Slashdot
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
I got the 185A5 a few months back and immediately wiped the hard drive in favor of a real operating system.
So in your haste to be Ub3r-1337, you nuked what was probably the best method of finding out what hardware is in there. Brilliant. Booting into Windows Whatever for five minutes would have saved you eight hours of banging your head against the wall, but at least you preserved your geek/anorak/H@x0r status, didn't you? You even got to complain about it on
You know, when you drink the $OS_OF_CHOICE Kool-aid to the point where you do something dumb like this, you really should take up a different hobby.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Please try to take this with the least offense as possible, but if you aren't familiar with the /proc filesystem and the enumerating of devices that it is capable, how can you effectively judge its superiority over Windows?
I'm not saying that Linux is better or worse, instead my point is that before installing an operating system in unknown hardware, understand how to -find out- how to identify said hardware in the preferred OS. I just find it very zealous for someone to complain about "dumb tech support" when you are purposely ruining all chances to find out about the hardware sitting in front of you by pairing yourself with an OS you have little control over.
OK, that sounded way worse than originally intended. But how can you make an effective judgement between Windows (as an OS) and Linux (as an OS) when you obviously haven't learned Linux yet?
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.