[CLUE-Tech] IBM Thinkpad Laptop comment

[Richard Knechtel]

My father bought one of the IBM Thinkpad A20's that came with Caldera
2.4. CALDERA SUCKS BIG GREEN ONES! I am not impressed with it, IMHO it's
the WORST linux distro.  They tried to install Red Hat on it and
couldn't get it to work so they put Caldera on it. BIG MISTAKE! The
laptop came with a pretty small HD to not much room to install many
applications.  Corel Office 2000 for Linux installed ok on it I just had
to manually put icons for the programs in KDE. Which by the way is
stripped down like no tomorrow! 

Concerning them shipping the laptop with an OS, tell them "Fine, test it
with whatever os but wipe the drive before you send it out and don't
charge me for the OS and software!". Best thing to so is make up some
name of a company and tell them your with such and such company wanting
to buy the laptop. (Just don't use mine! :^) )  If they think your a
company they -may- be more likely to give you what you want.  I have
delt with IBM many times and you can usually get what you want if you
push enough.

If you can get the laptop OS free, check out the Linux Laptop
(http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/) web page and find
your model and see what the person(s) did to get Linux running on it.
That is what I did with my old Gateway2000 Solo. 


Kevin Cullis wrote:
> 
> Hey all,
> 
> My wife is looking to update her laptop later on this year, so I'm
> starting to investigate what's available. While she has a Toshiba, I
> called IBM today about their laptops which were good prices. But, it
> came with the Screw Me edition of MS and Lotus SmartSuite.  I asked
> about Linux and they load only Caldera 2.4.  Second, they will not
> refund for SmartSuite OR the Microsoft version of THAT OS because "We
> have to test the machines before they go out the door and you have to
> have an OS on it."  Well, why not check it with Linux?  Sheesh!  Anyway,
> I'm in the process of looking if anyone has any comments.
> 
> Kevin
> 
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-- 
 Richard Knechtel
 email: krs3 at uswest.net
 Web URL: http://www.users.uswest.net/~krs3
 (Aspiring AS/400, Linux, Visual Basic GURU)
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