[ILUG] machine advice

[Colm Buckley]

> I want to buy a machine, c. £1000 inc vat, for linux use (with a couple
> GB of win). Hopefully 17" mon, >=10GB hdd, 128 Mb ram, supported
> graphics (nothing fancy required). main use will be working from home
> (LaTeX) and some programming (python, maybe c).
> first preference on experience is dell. gateway appear to give better
> value for money. I have a suspicion that quality is poor/variable. is
> there any advice?

One's MMV, of course, but I have had universally good experiences with
Dell systems.  The newest Optiplex and Dimension boxes are very
high-quality, IMO (there are about 20 of them here, and I've used them a
lot before here, too), and are decently-priced.  You can usually put
together more-or-less exactly what you want on the web page, or else the
folks on the other end of 01-2860500 are usually able to help.

I was talking to a sales person there a few minutes ago, and they've
been badly hit by ILOVEYOU, so it's probably not the best time to call
them...

Dell's after-sales support is miles better than Gateway's, in my
experience.  So much so that I don't think I'll ever buy from Gateway
again.

           Colm

-- 
Colm Buckley BA BF | NewWorld Commerce, 44 Westland Row, Dublin 2, Ireland
colm at tuatha.org (personal) | colm.buckley at nwcgroup.com (business)
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All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.