Acer laptop with Ubuntu ?
Ivan Garcia informed about the disponibility of the Acer 5710z laptop, with Ubuntu pre-installed instead of Windows Vista Home premium, at MemoryWorld shops in Singapore. Pricing of the Ubuntu model is quoted as 128 $US lesser than the Windows model in this article of Asia CNet. This article also tells that Acer Singapore was not offering any official support for Ubuntu systems. Support for Ubuntu is provided by the shop retailer itself. This is indeed a good and courageous step forward and will help to determine the market demand for Ubuntu (Linux) based laptops.
The Asia CNet article offers some details on how the shop retailer did to offer Ubuntu based Acer laptops at a very interesting price (about 660 $US TTC) : a 1,73 Ghz duo Core, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB SATA, DVD burner, 1 GB LAN, WIFI, Intel video card, card reader, weight : 2.8 kg, 6-cell battery, etc. (see detailed configuration of the Windows model here).
I think that laptops manufacturers/retailers in Vietnam could easily do the same as that shop retailer in Singapore… but is the will here, and most importantly, is there a market ?
About 8 months ago, when I bought 3 Acer laptops with Linux installed (Linpus, only terminal-based, no graphical environment !!!), I wished there would have been such an offer ! For sure when I would need to renew my equipment, I’d be looking for such an offer in Vietnam.
August 14th, 2007 at 03:56
Well I go to the ACER showroom from time to time and talk about that with the vendor, they simply don’t know. For them all linux is Linpus linux, so Linux is unusable !
A petition, a letter ?