Looking for Linux, but sold out
I had an interesting time scouring the Internet for the right netbook for my wife, who’s got a birthday coming up, is due for a new computer and is anxious to use Linux more regularly. While there was the usual difficulty in finding the right specs and color, the biggest hangup was trying to find an Acer Aspire One netbook with Linux on it. It’s not that they aren’t made by the manufacturer, it’s that all the Linux netbooks seem to be getting gobbled up. What was widely available in all of the color, memory, hard-drive and other forms was Windows XP. There were loads and loads of Windows XP netbooks, and even though I’ve had experience paying the ‘Microsoft tax’ and just throwing on the Linux distribution of my choice, my wife wasn’t on board for that. I guess all of my struggling to get sound and WiFi working on my four-year old laptop gave her some reservations. Besides, she wanted a new Linux netbook, and I’m all for buying the Linux pre-installs so manufacturers see and feel the demand and keep making them.
The message for Acer and other manufacturers: up your ratio of Linux netbooks. While North America seems to be the main market for these machines, about 30% of which run Linux by most accounts, among my dwindling options for obtaining the right Linux netbook were in Canada and the UK. However, the shipping costs added onto my minimal netbook expense of ~$350. While there were a number of online outlets that were sold out of the Linpus version, most of these same places had hundreds, sometimes thousands of XP netbooks in stock. It became quite frustrating to have to skip over all of those XP listings, and it reminded me a bit of the penguin chase for Linux PCs that I experienced years ago.
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