[lug] CD-R drives?

[socket at peakpeak.com]

"Michael J. Pedersen" <marvin at netinfra.net> writes:
> Avoid Compaq if you ever want to install Linux.  I think the same is true of
> Dell and Gateway.  They put their BIOS on a special partition of the hard
> drive, making it all software, which sucks royally.

If I ever wanted something from Compaq, it'd be an Alpha-based system.
My experience with their PC line has also been somewhat... wanting.
(My high school had a bunch of Compaqs, they were among the least
stable systems I've had to maintain.)  A company I worked for last
summer had purchased a bunch of PII-based Dell machines, and those
worked rather nicely with Linux.  Certain departments in the
University of Colorado have deals to get their hardware from Gateway,
and my experience was that Gateway was bending over backwards to try
to give us good stuff, but it's quite possible that their normal
end-user PC hardware isn't as good as the hardware they'll use for big
contracts.  I don't know.

I learned an important thing from all this, that building a computer
really isn't that difficult, and I shouldn't have bothered having an
independent company do it for me.  The place I bought it from isn't a
canned reseller of any individual larger company, so I can't really go
to the big manufacturers like Dell or Gateway to whine about their
hardware.  Although I suppose I could send ASUS (motherboard
manufacturer) a quick message or two...not that it would really change
much.

> If you want, I do build PCs for myself (and for others), and haven't had
> complaints yet.  Contact me if you're interested.

Thanks!  I think I'm going to be looking for individual hardware
components rather than full systems from now on.

-- 
Chris Riddoch                  socket at peakpeak.com
Will provide pseudo-insightful commentary for food
(303)938-0672      http://www.peakpeak.com/~socket