[sclug] Asus minibook. was Re: Fujitsu

[Alex Butcher]

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, Mike Mallett wrote:

>> From people I've spoken to in education RM seem to have a general
> reputation for being proprietary and expensive !

They used to, in the days of their 80186-based machines. Now they're just
Yet Another PC Vendor. What's left of their proprietary tendencies tends to
come out of the fact that much of their target market doesn't have the
expertise to manage their systems easily, so RM make some decisions for them
(which may well be distasteful to those who /do/ have the expertise to know
what's best for them!)

My employer uses Viglen, about which similar things get said. But we find
them useful as a UK-based education-focussed supplier of generic-as-it-gets
PC kit, unlike the likes of Dell, HPaq and so on. And smaller vendors just
don't have the business stability or long-term product roadmaps that help us
plan our IT spending.

Back on topic, RM are actually the cheapest source of eeePCs in the UK, as
far as I can tell, *if* they'll sell to you (i.e. you have /something/ to do
with education).

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

"[T]he whole point about the reason why I think it is important we go for
identity cards and an identity database today is that identity fraud and
abuse is a major, major problem. Now the civil liberties aspect of it, look
it is a view, I don't personally think it matters very much."
  - Tony Blair, 6 June 2006 <http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page9566.asp>