[sclug] Fujitsu Siemens Amilo laptop - any good for Linux?

[Alex Butcher]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, John Stumbles wrote:

> I've seen one of these with a fairly good spec at reasonable price but don't 
> know if there'd be problems with it running Linux (especially things like the 
> wireless interface: my only previous experience trying to get an external 
> wireless card running on a laptop were that it'd boot and see the card in 
> knoppix but hang when I tried to use it).

Is the model listed here:

<http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/fujitsu.html>

That site is always my second stop after finding out what laptops are on the
market.

> Anyone know if they have a reputation for reliability, or otherwise?

Only a few companies manufacture (some of) their own laptops. I only know of
Lenovo (who used to manufacture for IBM, of course) and Toshiba (high-end
models only).

Everyone else (Dell, HPaq, Sony, Acer, Apple, all the second-tier vendors
like Viglen, Rock and so on) has their models designed and built by
Taiwanese ODMs such as Mitac, TwinHead, Compal, Wistron, Arima, Uniwill,
ECS, Asus, Clevo or Inventec). Some (Apple, Sony) exert a greater degree of
control over the design and QA than others. Superficially, F-S's machines
appear to be somewhat unique, which suggests that may also be in this group.
By contrast, the smaller vendors were almost exclusively selling Clevos when
I last looked in 2002. Reliability is always going to be hard to quantify,
since non-specialist/non-expert reviews will probably conflate hardware
reliability with software reliability (i.e. Windows).

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher, Bristol UK.                           PGP/GnuPG ID:0x5010dbff

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