[H-GEN] Laptops

[Andrew Over]

On Sat, 3 Oct 1998, Frank Brand wrote:

> Make sure the power supply is compatible and be very careful with the
> warranty. Mostly good waranty support will only come with the better
> known brands (read expensive). If the brand is sold through an agent

I do intend to get a name brand of some form (be it
gw2k/dell/toshiba/hp/compaq/...), just not one of the seriously overpriced
name brands (like IBM).

>From what I've seen over the last few days of research, most manufacturers
are now shipping universal (110/220V 50/60Hz) power supplies (the shaver I
bought over there last year has one, so it doesn't involve that much
effort on their part). 

As far as the warranty situation goes, most of the companies I've looked
at don't sell an international warranty as standard with their products
(at least in the US).  It appears to be an optional extra in most cases.
But reading fine-print _IS_ A Good Thing (tm).

> > Ideally, I'd prefer some arrangement that doesn't involve the bundling of
> > MS [insert POS here], since an MS operating system is likely to remain on
> > this machine for precisely as long as it takes to reformat the hard drive.
> 
> Might be difficult as I believe some manufacturers have agreements with
> Microsoft that computers *must* be sold with Windows (eg Dell, Gateway -
> I believe you can not buy their machines without a copy of Windows).

I was under the impression that this (forced bundling) was illegal, and
was one of the "predatory" trading practices that got MS into toruble with
the DoJ in the first place.

However, I am not so much concerned with the copy of Win98, as the copy of
MS Office that certain (gw2k/dell et al) manufacturers insit on bundling.
The value of MS Office is significatnly higher than that of OEM Win98, and
I'd rather not pay for something I won't be using.

Got any preferred manufacturers?

Cheers,
--Andrew