Opinions on Linux OEMs?

bradburn asks: "I'm in the market for buying a new computer and I want a machine with Linux and have it properly configured. I'm thinking about buying a computer from either Penguin Computing or VAresearch but I've not seen any reviews on them. Has anybody had problems with them? How easy are they to deal with? Are there other companies which preload linux I should consider looking into?" Whoa! A whole barrel full of questions? Anyone care to answer?

VAResearch did OK by me

[A nonymous Coward]

I bought a personal screamer from them, and my company bought one too. No problems with either. And I compared my price with a similar Compaq box, running NT of course, and mine was $1500 cheaper near as I could tell. Probably a lot of that is the Billy Tax, but it was close enough to reassure myself that VAResearch didn't lose much on economy of scale.

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linux hardware solutions

[vipw]

www.linux-hw.com

i've never actually purchased from them yet, but they have given back to the community through booth sponsorships and such. they are geared alot more to the home power-user than varesearch(which i thought would be more appealing to slapdashers) which focuses for the most part on businesses. They sell alpha workstations at reasonable prices too. I definately recommend at least having a look at their website(which even looks nice), as they seem like the perfect solution to having to pay inexorbiant amounts for a preconfigured linux box.

My only gripe is that they don't sell AMD based systems, oh well my next computer will be from them anyway

Laptops?

[godel]

Are there any companies besides VA shipping them with some linux preinstalled? Somewhere in to $1500-$2500 range?

Have you considered ...

[Etyenne]

... buying a Netwinder ? These machine look quite good, are reasonnably priced and offer great hack potential (2 Enet port, video in/out, telephone jack, etc.) The only problem I see is that the ARM platform is limited in OS support. But if you are running Linux exclusively, that is not a problem.

Other vendors

[sig11]

We will preinstall Linux if you want (Idea Computers Inc.) . You can even specify the distrobution. We don't have a real website yet but if you send an e-mail with what you want to [e-mail] we can get you a price. Oh, and we won't rip you off on shipping. heh

Geeze, I hope I didn't do a bad thing by posting this. Oh well, whats done is done. ;)

Lee