Paying the Microsoft Tax
Since I’m always keeping an eye out for good deals on Netbooks, I stumbled upon this great little budget Toshiba laptop. It’s a Toshiba Satellite Pro L300 (PSLB9A-02L001). Not exactly what I’m looking for, but I decided to order one for my folks. For just $600, you can’t really go wrong. Here’s the specs…
- Mobile Intel® Celeron® M 585 Processor (2.16GHz, 667MHz FSB, 1MB L2 cache)
- Mobile Intel® GL40 Express Chipset
- Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium 32bit SP1(OEM)
- Hard Drive: 160GB 5400rpm 2.5″ SATA
- RAM: 1GB DDR2 667 expandable to 2GB# (one slot used, one slot free)
- Video 15.4″ Widescreen XGA TFT Active Matrix 200NIT (1280×800) resolution
- Video Card Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator GL40
- DVD SuperMulti Dual / Double Layer (DVD±R±RW,DVD±R(DL) DVD-RAM) Read: CD-ROM(24x), DVD-ROM(8x) Write: CD-R 24x, CD-RW 4x
- 10/100Mbps LAN
- Integrated Atheros 802.11 b/g WLAN
- Express card slot, RGB, 3 x USB 2.0, Headphone & microphone port, Bridge media Reader/Writer slot (SD, MMC, Memory Stick/Memory Stick Pro), Integrated microphone
- Integrated Web Camera
- Intel® High Definition Audio Sound
- 6 cell Lithium-Ion battery (up to 3 hours)
- Dimensions 362mm(W) x 267mm(D) x 33/37.7mm(H)
- Weight 2.6kg
The processor and video card are lame I know, but considering Mum is currently using an 8 year old PC with Windows 98 on it, I don’t think she’s going to notice. Still, this thing is badly under spec’d for running Vista. All the reviews I’ve read indicate this thing is going to be pretty hit and miss as far as getting a fully functional distro installed without too much bother, so it’s getting delivered here and I’m preparing to have some geeky fun with it. I’m also getting an additional 1GB of RAM delivered, so plan B is to just revert to Vista and surgically remove the guff to get some reasonable performance out of it before handing it over. Having successfully avoided ever touching Vista thus far, I’m actually curious to give plan B a go.
The main reason I still bought it despite the bad Linux reviews was some guys down in Melbourne who offer support services over the phone for this model and have listed “Linux Compatibility” as “Excellent”. My plan is to install the latest Ubuntu and then what ever doesn’t work, I’ll contact them and ask them to book me some time for a phone support call to sort out the rest. I’m happy to pay $40 for 1/2 hour of support, that’s more than reasonable if it saves me half a day.
What really bugs me is that I’m still sponsoring Microsoft out of all of this. I’m still indirectly paying for the crappy OEM Vista which is no doubt the main reason these laptops are now so drastically reduced in price. There is no refund available to me if I don’t want to use it. Hell, apparently I can’t even downgrade to Windows XP. Microsoft was advertising that as an option, but apparently it only applies under very strict circumstances. So this poor laptop has to suffer Vista on the consumer electronics market and hence it’s doomed to perform horrendously. Ok, I’m making a few assumptions based on very little at this stage (considering it hasn’t even been delivered yet). I certainly smell a follow up post or two.
Tags: Conspiracy, Laptop