Linuxemporium - a customer review.

[whitefort]

A while ago I posted a message asking for details of anyone in the UK selling laptops with Linux pre-installed. This generated some private messages from people wanting to know how I got on in my search.

So this is by way of a customer review. I stress that I have no connection with Linuxemporium, other than being a very happy customer.

First off, this was my first laptop, ever. Second, I'm quite new to Linux. So I had two reasons to be nervous. For this reason, I sent Linuxemporium a crazy number of emails with pre-purchase questions. In retrospect, some of the questions were probably so dumb that the Linuxemporium folks must have wondered what sort of idiot they were dealing with, and if I was ever actually going to buy anything.

But every email was answered, promptly, politely and helpfully. Eventually I did buy one of their machines. (Lenovo 3000 N100). I purchased it with extra memory, and thought this might cause a bit of a delay, but it arrived very quickly, well-packaged, by recorded delivery.

It's a beautiful machine, and I'm very happy with it. Unfortunately, I did run into a small problem once I started using it, and that's largely why I've decided to write this review.

You know how some firms are very helpful UNTIL you buy the product, then they don't really want to know you any more? Well I'm happy to report that Linuxemporium aren't like that. Both by email and telephone they continued to be just as friendly and helpful as during the pre-purchase stage, and they solved my problem very quickly.

So, for those of you who private-messaged me, and for anyone else who's looking for Linux laptops in the UK, I can put my hand on my heart and recommend Linuxemporium.com without reservation.

(And for those who aren't in the UK, I think they do international orders too.)

[Arby]

Seconded. I bought a laptop from these people about 6 months ago. Same model actually, Lenovo 3000 N100. I've been very happy with the machine and I can vouch for their customer service. I bought my machine with Ubuntu 6.06 on it. After I stuffed up my upgrade to Edgy they even offered to take the machine back and restore it to it's original state for no more than the cost of shipping the machine there and back. I didn't take them up on it but I thought it was a good offer. Definitely a place I would go back to. You pay a little more to have someone take the trouble to set everything up for you. But I thought it was worth it to have everything 'just work' out of the box, and it did.

[whitefort]

... After I stuffed up my upgrade to Edgy they even offered to take the machine back and restore it to it's original state for no more than the cost of shipping the machine there and back.

Yes, I must admit, I've been wondering what might happen if I try to update to Feisty when it finally appears. I'm pretty sure I'd mess up my laptop, as I think there are special scripts involved to make sure that some of the laptop-specific features work.

Yesterday I spent an hour or two learning how a package called Mondo works. It creates a disaster-recovery backup, so you can restore a system from bare metal if need be. I'm hoping that this means that if I do something that messes up my system, I'll be able to quickly get my laptop back to 'just out of the shop' condition.'

But it was good of them to offer to help you. They really do seem to be genuinely nice guys.

[HughReid]

I have been happy with Linux Emporium too. Very helpful long after you have bought from them.
One thing they haven't been able to help me with is the ieee1349 (firewire) card. After reading the relevant posts about using Kino to edit video from my DV camcorder I use the command "gksudo kino" in a command line window ('cos that's how you have to do it) and that gets round the problem of Kino not being able to access the file "raw1394".
I am still left with the message "No AV/C compliant cam connected or switched on?"
Can anyone help? I'm not sure what AV/C compliant means.
Cheers
Hugh