I was roaming around Sim Lim yesterday and came across a LG X110 netbook. These days I tend to carry around with me my “desktop” all in my trusty 60GB usb drive and with the permission of the salesperson, plugged the drive into the USB slot and viola, had Fedora 11 all running. Every single thing worked including the built-in camera (used Cheese WebCam). Could not test the wifi (duh! you’d expect Sim Lim of all places to have the tax-payer funded Wireless@SG crap).
The machine come standrd with 1GB RAM, a 10″ WSVGA LED display (was rather bright, running off power), and Intel’s GMA 950 video. The drive is a 160GB installed with the flash-based (I think) splashtop and the virus windoze eXPloder. The price was S$699 and for about $40 more, 1GB more. The model I looked at did not have the 3G broadband option – which I think is a shame. Apparently they have one, but is about S$100 more.
I asked him if I can get the machine without the preloaded virus, but it was a no go. I choose not to buy it for I don’t want it to be registered in some MS sale statistic that there is another netbook running their OS. Is there a way I can get this machine without windoze? I can certainly go through, and have fun doing it, in getting a rebate for returning the OS. Maybe I should just do that. Publish every step of the way on how they might choose not to respond to the contractual terms etc.
I might just go ahead and get the machine. The LED display was really attractive.
I hope you meant “without” here: “Is there a way I can get this machine with windoze?”
You are indeed right. I’ve fixed the post. Thanks.
orlando
“I might just go ahead and get the machine. ”
if you do, please try the refund way !
I don’t want to be labeled as a conspiracy guy, but suddenly Asus, MSI and Acer don’t provide any more netbooks with Linux … and their sites have big banners that read “xxxx recommend Windows Vista”.
May be they got a phone call from Steve telling them “Hey people , stop the “linux game” or we will take action”
Re: orlando
Yes, I am planning on doing just that. I am waiting for the salesman from the store to come back to me with “how do I ask for a refund”.
Legal eagles to the rescue?
Hmm, X110 – nice shiny exterior, keyboard with the arrow keys in the right places and readable non-glossy screen… what’s not to like? oh yes, the “operating” “system”… and also some reviewers found the battery life too short (<2 hours).
Being as how the “get a refund” scheme still increments the wrong vendor’s sales count, what would be the chances of success in filing a complaint with our Competition Commission (they can’t have too much to do these days) to find out and fix the reasons why Linux has mysteriously disappeared from netbooks offered in SG?
One could give them some hints in the right direction. Perhaps it was predatory OEM pricing for XP on netbooks (some guy called Shuttleworth has alleged this before). Or maybe some inappropriate suggestions made to certain OEMs (RIP the Asus/Qualcomm ARM demonstration “smartbook” that somehow vanished from Computex Taiwan after just one day on show – http://www.tweaktown.com/news/12339/eee_pc_spotted_running_android_qualcomm_1ghz_cpu/ and then http://thing2.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9314113479.html – ARM of course is a no-fly zone for W32 but just a recompile away for Linux).
I once worked at a place where the local bosses’ pay packages were indexed to the base pay of their workers – so if they squeezed their workers’ pay too much, they ended up hurting themselves. In this vein, if predatory pricing turns out to be the problem a fun remedy might be to require all products in the same family to be sold at the same price to OEMs and retail, kind of like a “most favoured nation” clause for the customer. So if netbook OEM XP is $5 (say) then all other W32 non-server OSes would have to be priced the same. Wouldn’t that be a Win-Win solution for tough times? [*ducks hailstorm of flying chairs]