[nzlug] Laptops sans OS possible:

[Simon Bridge]

On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 21:34 +1300, Jack Pivac wrote:
> Righto,
> Well there are no notebooks available at the moment without licenses, 
> but they will keep an eye out for me, although its not very common that 
> they receive stock without licenses. This due to the fact they do not 
> build systems, but get them typically out of a corporate environment, 
> already with licenses.
> 
> Ex-Lease desktop pc's are sometimes (now) available generally with a $75 
> discount for no license.
> eg:
> HP D530SFF
> P4-26/512DDR/40G/IDE/AGP/cdrw/Gbit/USB2/s/Bl&Silver    $350 + gst delivered
> 
$350 is a good price. Who are these folks?
Since they will explicitly discount the licence, perhaps they should go
it that wiki thing?

> 
> One of the ex-lease notebooks available:
> 
> A- Toshiba Satellite A50
> Pentium Mobile 1.5GHz
> 512MB, 40GB HDD,
> DVD Combo, NIC, USB2, Firewire, wifi b&g onboard
> 15" LCD, bag
> XP Home
> no modem
> $500 + gst delivered.
> (unfortunately with a license)

That's interesting - Ark have come back with two, both with the centrino
label, one is the A50, which a casual google suggests it has trouble
with linux. The other is hp compaq nx5000 which was showcased at a
linuxworld expo when it was new.

Basically, the first ten hits for the A50+linux are all posts about how
such and such is giving trouble. By comparison, the first ten for the
nx5000 are all about how well it works.

Huh... looking for a specs page, look what I found:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11860_na/11860_na.HTML
... look under *what's special*: "SUSE® Linux HP Edition 9.1
preinstalled"

Ark are asking $600 for the nx5000 and $625 (both ex gst) for the A50.
No OS. There is also a lease option