aru Posted July 3, 2003 Report Share Posted July 3, 2003 Good news for mandrake: HP Delivers Affordable, Reliable Microtower PC to Small- and Medium-sized Businesses HP (NYSE:HPQ) today introduced an affordable, high-quality desktop PC for small- and medium- sized business (SMB) customers: the HP Compaq Business Desktop d220 Microtower. [...] HP Compaq desktops are available with the latest operating systems from the industry leader, Microsoft, as well as a robust Linux offering from Mandrake. The HP Compaq d220 offers a choice of Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows XP Home or Mandrake's Linux v9.1, providing customers with the versatility needed for today's mixed-use environments. [...] ... at the end seems that GNU/Linux is ready for the Desktop, and guess what, is through our beloved mandrake :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted July 3, 2003 Report Share Posted July 3, 2003 Good news, seems they haven't been sitting still after all. But wasn't HP the one offering Mandrake before (at that time only on high volumes)? Now on nice laptops and I'm buying! Go Mandrake! Go! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 3, 2003 Report Share Posted July 3, 2003 Hey aRtee, You didn't have to wait, theres a company in France (Keynux) being doing this for a while. On HP, I'm not sure. HP once really screwed me. I bought a scanner advertised as (on the website) compatible with and Adaptec AHA-2940(UW) SCSI controller. I had the controller and it was worth more than the scanner (at the time) so it really pained me that they wouldn't work together. Anyway, upshot was I called their support line (which for 'other devices CD's,Scanners) was a Dutch number for the whole of Europe. I got someone who didn't know the difference between a SCSI ID and SCSI termination. So I wrote it down and emailed it for her to pass on. The email I got back said that HP wouldn't support it with anything but the supplied symbios very cheap win-scsi card. (win-scsi like win-modem or win-printer) I wrote back saying but its SCSI, how can it not work. They replied HP SCSI is may be different ... Now I hate anyone who corrupts standards .... Really HATE. So I phoned Adaptec. Although the support went through to Belgium it was a UK number so I didn't have to pay (as I did with HP) for an extended international call. Adapectec basically said, OH - HP - yeah ... look buy the Adaptec UW->SCSI II converter and cable, throw away the HP one and if it still doesn't work well refund the cost. All in all it was about 30$ so no big deal. They also sent me a bios upgrade, just in case. Aparently the pins weren't terminated on the HP converter ... Adeptec were used to doing HP's support for them. I plugged in the Adaptec stuff, and voila --- the thing worked straight away. A second example of HP is their printers. OK its fairly common knowledge that the cheaper printers are built with a single point of failure to stop people using them commercially. Its also usually designed (very well) to fail just after your warranty runs out. My HP LaserJet5L for instance. Its just one wheel different from other more expensive models in the drive mechanism but they just subsitute a very soft plastic wheel. If you have access to plasma or laser cutting tools (what not everyone does) you can make a new wheel out of steel. Everything else keeps working, its designed to be easy to relace because HP WANT it to fail and either you buy another or they charge you to replace it. They already know what's wrong ... they built in the fault. Still not convinced. Back in the UK I have an official HP reseller maintainance book. The more expensive lasrer printers have a special software failsafe. You can set the printer to just die in software after a certain number of prints. Then it flashes and says CALL HP maintainance engineer. So engineer comes out, switches off machine, holds dowbn some keys in cryptic order, dials in the number of copies until he wants paying $500 for the same job again and leaves a $500 invoice. I'm sure its illegal to do that, in at least one country HP markets so its a closely guarded secret. So: I'm glad Mandrake are getting a mass distributer. I rather hope they won't follow their business practices though. Luckily I learned a lot in my scanner relationship with HP. Thatis their customer care SUCKS if you don't take out a service pack or in my case your a personal customer. I took great pleasure in turning down a contract for HP to supply just under 600 PC's for my company on technical grounds. My logic, if thats how they treat a customer I don't wanna be a customer. Coming as it did with getting rid of a load of HP-UX machines which needed replacing anyway that really stung them :-). We could in principle have upgraded our HP Unix stuff but hey, they should have been nice when they had the chance. I won't even go into how the salesman tried to bribe me when I told him why he wasn't even considered for the contract. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted July 3, 2003 Report Share Posted July 3, 2003 I won't even go into how the salesman tried to bribe me when I told him why he wasn't even considered for the contract. Awww... come on, give us the sweet stuff! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 3, 2003 Report Share Posted July 3, 2003 It was more in the form of a replacement scanner to apologise for the 'inconvenience' which I took as a bit of an insult to my integrity. Not very exciting i'm afraid. He more or less offered to get me a newer, better scanner and printer when I mentioned my problems with HP. Actually I should say the professional stuff is actually really good quality, its just the deliberately built in servicing needs that bothers me. I actually installed e-smith last night on a 10 year old HP that is still running faultlessly (even overclocked from 100-166 Mhz.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted July 7, 2003 Report Share Posted July 7, 2003 Here's a follow-up by MozillaQuest http://mozillaquest.com/Linux_News03/HP-Ma...PC_Story01.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeoneil Posted July 7, 2003 Report Share Posted July 7, 2003 The difference in price between a preloaded XP PC and one with Mandrake must be quite small. I hope that HPs advertising notes that for an extra $0 the Mandrake option will give you virtually all the applications you could possibly need, and that the same applications with XP will set you back $100's if not $1000's extra. M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted July 7, 2003 Report Share Posted July 7, 2003 The difference in price between a preloaded XP PC and one with Mandrake must be quite small. I hope that HPs advertising notes that for an extra $0 the Mandrake option will give you virtually all the applications you could possibly need, and that the same applications with XP will set you back $100's if not $1000's extra. M. If they gave me a nickel for every time windoze made my life a hell... why I'd be richer than Billygoat himself! They're still making my life a hell: 1. I'm on a WinNT 4.0 workstation with rediculous restrictions and stuck-up administrators (not like in unfriendly, more like 'we know what is good for you') 2. Plus I'm a webmaster ... :'( Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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