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fillintheblank
November 26th, 2008, 10:28 PM
Ill admit I;m rather biased to Macs at the moment, but I would like to see what other people think about the brands of computers out there so heres the question: If you bought a computer today what brand would it be?

SunnyRabbiera
November 26th, 2008, 10:35 PM
Dell
Hewlett Packard

Both brands are great at desktop computers, personally I prefer HP's as HP typically makes computers with linux friendly parts but Dell does too.

For laptops Toshiba, also looking to be linux friendly in the near future.

cb951303
November 26th, 2008, 10:37 PM
no brand! I would go to newegg and build machines till morning :D

SunnyRabbiera
November 26th, 2008, 10:48 PM
no brand! I would go to newegg and build machines till morning :D

well if the skill is not there, then buying a brand is a good idea.

ghindo
November 26th, 2008, 10:52 PM
I would probably build my own desktop, but generally, I dig Dells. I have seen HPs break left and right, and Macs are a bit overpriced. Dells are cheap and support Ubuntu Linux.

If I were to buy another laptop, I would probably buy a Lenovo ThinkPad. I've heard they have quite a good reputation and seem very reasonably priced.

SunnyRabbiera
November 26th, 2008, 10:57 PM
I dig Dells. I have seen HPs break left and right, and Macs are a bit overprice. Dells are cheap and support Ubuntu Linux.

My experience is the opposite, dells break while HP's tend to last.

I-75
November 26th, 2008, 10:58 PM
I own a couple of older Dell's some nearly 10 years old and they continue to perform fine despite their age. One of them is Dell Dimension 4100 with only 512 ram. I don't own any newer Dell equipment however.

SunnyRabbiera
November 26th, 2008, 11:03 PM
I own a couple of older Dell's some nearly 10 years old and they continue to perform fine despite their age. One of them is Dell Dimension 4100 with only 512 ram. I don't own any newer Dell equipment however.

It depends on the year and model really.
If you are comfortable with a Dell get a dell, the newer lines are much better in my opinion and are very linux friendly under the hood.

OutOfReach
November 26th, 2008, 11:05 PM
Dell all the way.
Either that or build my own computer.

ubuntu-freak
November 26th, 2008, 11:06 PM
I'm likely buying an ASUS X58L notebook from The Linux Emporium (www.linuxemporium.co.uk) soon, with Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex pre-installed and tested etc. No pesky MS tax and stickers to worry about either.

SunnyRabbiera
November 26th, 2008, 11:07 PM
or if you live in the US you can get a system 76 too

fillintheblank
November 26th, 2008, 11:24 PM
Whats system 76?

treesurf
November 27th, 2008, 12:08 AM
www.system76.com

BloGTK
November 27th, 2008, 12:12 AM
Custom build: no question about it.

I build my Ubuntu box for less than the price of a Dell, out of better parts, and it's quiet and fast. It took very little effort, and I didn't have to worry about hardware compatibility since I only used hardware known to work with Ubuntu.

Unless you want a Mac (which is by far the best build quality of them all), I would not recommend a name-brand PC. They cut too many corners to be worth it.

Capt. Mac
November 27th, 2008, 12:33 AM
If I were to buy a new desktop, I would build one from parts off Newegg or TigerDirect. You can save a lot of money that way, not to mention the ability to ensure all your hardware is Linux compatible.

I've never been a fan of prebuilt desktops. I always hate opening them up and finding a strongbox of proprietary parts. One time the fan broke on my family's Compaq and they wanted to charge us an excess of $100 for their proprietary fan. A fan!! Needless to say, we decided to 'stick it to the man' by putting a 12 inch fan behind the computer and running it at max :lolflag:

handy
November 27th, 2008, 01:06 AM
We had a power spike hit a number of people in our town once, due to a high voltage beam breaking & causing the cables to hit the standard household distribution cables beneath. This put over 700 volts through the line! People who were in their houses heard things go pop all around them.

It was one of the few times that the electricity company ever admitted responsibility & paid for all repairs.

I got a number of computer repair jobs out of this situation. One of them was an HP box, that had only lost its psu, due to the psu being an elongated shape, with a custom switch mechanism attached, I could not replace it with a cheap off the shelf psu to bring it back to its standard configuration & due to the machine being 3 years old HP did not carry the part any more!

That customer was very happy to receive a new machine built by me of vastly superior quality & specifications all costs courtesy of the power company.

I never liked working on proprietary boxes, so many of them do it wrong inside the box, as they don't have to adhere to the design standards when they can afford to design & have their components made for them. They would at times design in such a way as to make it difficult not to use their parts, though usually you could find a way around this problem. HP, Compaq, IBM, Compaq Bell, Bell, Gateway & Acer all come to mind as being companies that had created models that were difficult to work on in one way or another.

Namtabmai
November 27th, 2008, 01:20 AM
I always build my own but if I had to buy, if I wanted a desktop Dell. If I had the money and wanted a laptop it would be a Thinkpad no question about it. Those are some solid bits of kits, I've had Sony Viao laptop and they where some of the shoddiest build quality I've ever seen. I've also had various generation Mac Book Pro's, and while they are solid I wouldn't buy them and expect linux just to work on them, especially not compared to Thinkpads.

rab4567
November 27th, 2008, 01:35 AM
I always build my own but if I had to buy, if I wanted a desktop Dell. If I had the money and wanted a laptop it would be a Thinkpad no question about it. Those are some solid bits of kits, I've had Sony Viao laptop and they where some of the shoddiest build quality I've ever seen. I've also had various generation Mac Book Pro's, and while they are solid I wouldn't buy them and expect linux just to work on them, especially not compared to Thinkpads.


Well if one wanted to build his/her own box what shall we look? Perhaps that new mother board with plashtop that would nice.

will1911a1
November 27th, 2008, 01:40 AM
I've always just put my own (desktop) computers together.

cariboo
November 27th, 2008, 01:57 AM
I just ordered one of these:

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/d945gclf/d945gclf-overview.htm

To build a little media box. The only thing I'm having a problem with is choosing the correct case.

Jim

kjb34
November 27th, 2008, 03:46 AM
I prefer putting computer together also. But if I had to make a choice I would say Dell. Had too many bad experiences with HP desktops.

zmjjmz
November 27th, 2008, 05:18 AM
If I had to buy a laptop I would probably get a Thinkpad.

gn2
November 27th, 2008, 09:26 AM
I wouldn't choose based on brand.

Specifications are more important.

I would never buy a pre-built desktop PC of any brand.

The last laptop I bought was an Asus, not because of the brand but because of the specifications and the price.

eternalnewbee
November 27th, 2008, 09:40 AM
I would never buy a pre-built desktop PC of any brand.
+1
What do you want to do with your computer?
Buy the hardware accordingly. If you don't know what you need ask around.
Buy the hardware components separately at a store, where they have all the components in stock, and have your machine assembled there. They'll even give you a warranty.

toupeiro
November 27th, 2008, 09:54 AM
If I had to buy, it would be HP. That being said, I've worked for and built every PC I've had since I was 14 years old building my first 486. I did summer jobs for the parts, and my uncle owned a computer store, so I've been very comfortable putting systems together for a long while.

All the desktops I work with are HP DC7700's, xw9400's and xs8600's. They are very powerful machines! HP, in my opinion, has the best desktop and workstation line of all the major PC manufacturers. I used to be just as dilligent about Proliant servers, but I honestly think Sun Microsystems has 1up'ed them. Their name carries a lot of weight in the server world still, but Suns x64 servers pack more punch for the dollar, and anyone who has supported sun hardware knows how rock solid it is.

Sorry, I digressed. :)

CrazyArcher
November 27th, 2008, 11:35 AM
Desktop - I'd build one myself, but if I had to pick a brand - then it would probably be Dell or HP. I work on HP's in my university, and they are pretty good machines (except the poor administration, but that's another issue).
Laptop - a few years ago I'd go for ThinkPad with no question, but since IBM completely sold their laptop division to China, I doubt if they are still worth the price. Nowadays I'd probably prefer a Dell.

Handyman Felting
November 27th, 2008, 12:54 PM
I would never buy a computer or computer parts simply because I don't want to be responsible for helping the corporations, I like having a clear conscience thank you very much.

xpod
November 27th, 2008, 01:08 PM
I would never buy a computer or computer parts simply because I don't want to be responsible for helping the corporations, I like having a clear conscience thank you very much.

Dont tell us you build the parts yourself too:)
Surely it`s quite hard to get through a day without doing something that benifit`s the big ole bad Corporations along the way?

Handyman Felting
November 27th, 2008, 01:39 PM
Dont tell us you build the parts yourself too:)
Surely it`s quite hard to get through a day without doing something that benifit`s the big ole bad Corporations along the way?

No my parents bought me the computer, and people got along just fine before corporations started ruining the planet.

ubuntu-freak
November 27th, 2008, 01:49 PM
No my parents bought me the computer, and people got along just fine before corporations started ruining the planet.


Thanks for that. Funny.

eternalnewbee
November 27th, 2008, 03:51 PM
No my parents bought me the computer, and people got along just fine before corporations started ruining the planet.
This reminds me of a friend of mine. A zen friend actually. He is truly a good man. very compassionate, very honest, and very funny (No disrespect to Handyman Felting).
You see, he doesn't eat meat out of principle.
But when invited over for a meal and there turns out to be meat involved, he says: "no problem. I'll eat it":)
So, when asked: "But you are vegetarian?" He replies: "Yes I am, and I would never buy meat, but after your efforts to make me feel welcome and comfortable, I can't just refuse to eat. That's not polite, and btw, the food is excellent".

Dont tell us you build the parts yourself too
Surely it`s quite hard to get through a day without doing something that benifit`s the big ole bad Corporations along the way?
Is there a smiley that represents the Beavis & butthead laugh? No? Then this one will have to do: :lol:
(btw, the organization of the smileys has changed...)

notwen
November 27th, 2008, 05:20 PM
I build my desktops. As far as laptops, I would recommend in this order: Dell, Lenovo & HP. Simply I've had pretty good luck w/ all 3 brands and they all have decent, if not great Linux support. I do believe that Macs are fantastic machines, but for the price of one you could generally get 2+ machines w/ similar specs. Best of luck w/ whatever you decide. =]

odograph
November 27th, 2008, 06:02 PM
I've let dell become the no-brainer choice for me, which might be bad. I might be missing out. On the other hand, it's easy to go to some place like techbargains.com, find the current dell deal, and grab it.

I tend to think Lenovos are excellent but that might be riding off my old positive IBM experiences. I've never used a post-Lenovo design.

I do like apples, and was a mac guy '84 to '96 ... but kind of went over to the other side, and disagreed philosophically with the premium. Yes, I suppose I can afford a milled aluminum macbook ... but maybe I want to hang with ubuntu users on cheap hardware world-wide. (It's too bad Steve Jobs doesn't feel the same way.)

... maybe I should be more open to HP.

JohnnyVW
November 27th, 2008, 06:47 PM
The last name brand desktop I bought was a Tandy 3000HL (80286, 640K Ram, 10MB HDD).

I do have a four year old pre-Lenovo Thinkpad R50 that is rock solid. I'm a field technician for wide-format printers and that laptop had been on countless flights and is taken in and out of my car's trunk several times a day. I have no idea how durable Thinkpads are since IBM sold the product line to Lenovo, but I still read good things. Don't buy a Thinkpad if you want a light laptop, that sucker is heavy!

Anyway... I built both of our desktops to be Linux compatable. If I had to buy a name brand, I'd either go with HP or Dell for desktop, Dell or Thinkpad for laptop. My folks have an HP desktop and we use Dells at work. Both seem pretty solid these days.

mips
November 27th, 2008, 07:30 PM
The last name brand desktop I bought was a Tandy 3000HL (80286, 640K Ram, 10MB HDD).


Mine was an Amiga 1200, 680ec20 cpu, 2MB RAM & 120MB HD and it probably cost less than your Tandy :)

cmay
November 27th, 2008, 07:53 PM
picking up the cheap asus eeepc tomorrow. i need it in case i get in the hospital again so i can read my emails and maybe even have a little chance of listing to some music. while i always build computers out of trashed old computers no one else wants this laptop i have to get brand new.

JohnnyVW
December 7th, 2008, 04:30 AM
Mine was an Amiga 1200, 680ec20 cpu, 2MB RAM & 120MB HD and it probably cost less than your Tandy :)

LOL That's a fact! I paid $2000 for it used!

My first computer was actually an Atari 800 with 48K RAM, cassette drive and a floppy drive.

linuxguymarshall
December 7th, 2008, 05:17 AM
Build it myself.


If I had to buy a namebrand it would depend on what I was going to do

Gaming - Digital Storm or Alienware
General Computing - Dell
Programming - System76
Multimedia editing - Apple (On a PowerBook G4 right now)
Media viewing - HP

dannytatom
December 7th, 2008, 05:25 AM
I plan on getting a new desktop after christmas, is there a site or something that I can see which computers/parts are most compatible with linux?

linuxguymarshall
December 7th, 2008, 05:29 AM
I plan on getting a new desktop after christmas, is there a site or something that I can see which computers/parts are most compatible with linux?



Most anything works. Avoid fancy peripherals. I am building mine mid-january or febuary

dannytatom
December 7th, 2008, 05:33 AM
Most anything works. Avoid fancy peripherals. I am building mine mid-january or febuary

What about graphic cards? Seems to be a lot of hassle around the forums in regards to NVidia. ;o

linuxguymarshall
December 7th, 2008, 05:42 AM
What about graphic cards? Seems to be a lot of hassle around the forums in regards to NVidia. ;o

I am a total NVIDIA fanboy and my graphics card and mobo are both going to be with NVIDIA chipsets. Sure, I will be running Windows XP on them until Windows 7 comes out but I plan to dual boot (On my 1 TB, 7200 RPM HDD) with Ubuntu 8.04 (Too much hell with 8.10)

geogur
December 7th, 2008, 06:22 AM
asus i am impressed with there laptops , as for a desktop i will build (intel,asus,navidia,antec,western digital,cool master).building is the best way to buy a pc.