[H-GEN] Avoiding the microsoft tax and laptops

Electra Flarefire electra at humbug.org.au
Tue Mar 11 10:10:52 EST 2003


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On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 08:58:14AM +1000, Trent WADDINGTON wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Mark Suter wrote:
> > I can thoroughly recommend an iBook.  They work very well with
> > Debian GNU/Linux.  You can get a well configured system (base
> > model, total 640MB RAM, wireless card) for less than AUD 2500
> > brand new (academic pricing from www.infinitesystems.com.au/
> Surely a whole swag of money went into making MacOS and this is
reflected
> in the price of an iBook, shouldn't you be asking infinite systems to
> supply you with an iBook without the "MacOS tax".

The iBooks are reportadly quite hard to break as well and last ages..
Plus, whats the battry life like? Some 6 hours? :)

I'm getting/might be guetting a secondhand G3 PowerBook rather soon, the
battery sucks as it's a few years old now but it's still a very nice
machine and seems to have held up well..
Apart from SUN hardware, I'm lead to belive the apple machines last a very
long time in service if your not worried about using a 5 year old machine
in 5 years time. :)

>You can run MacOS under Linux using "mol", reportedly. So maybe you can
>get some benefit out of your tax, since there's probably no way you're
>going to get out of paying it.

Anyway, if you get a new machine and OS 10.2 it's quite a descent OS by
it'self and worth a look, even if it's not as flexable, powerfull and
usefull as Linux. :)
At the very least, you can impress people with transparent everything and
a very nice looking GUI.

> >Forget the Microsoft Tax.
> >What about the NERO tax.
> >Just how much does it add to the price of a cd burner these days ?
>
> considerably less than the Roxio/Adaptec tax a few years back.

How about nothing? Just get an OEM burner.. They don't come in fancy
boxes, just a plastic bag with a few cables and tapped on manual(if your
lucky) but they don't tend to come with any software short of a few
drivers.

Anyway, I'm prolly wrong, but I can rant too. :)

	Byron.

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