When I read the article on Slashdot & OSNews that Linare was putting out a sub-$500 notebook, I immediately jumped on the deal. I purchased a laptop directly from Linare in early February. Their site stated that I would receive the laptop in 2-4 weeks. I waited in anticipation.After the third week and no information received I decided to e-mail Linare and find out when I would be contacted, and more importantly when I would receive my laptop. I got an e-mail that said “Your laptop will be shipped in 1st week of march and will be notifying you the Tracking Numbers Via email “. Great I thought, that’s not so bad and still within the four week window promised.
By March 7th, 2005 I still had not received my laptop, I decided to e-mail Linare again and see what’s going on. On March 8th I received an e-mail that stated “Thank you for your interest in Linare products . your order will be shipped on or before 14th march with out fail . Sorry for the delay , due to heavy back order we were not able to ship you earlier.” I decided to wait and see how this played out, so I sat back and waited.
March 14 came, and I still had no tracking information so I decided to e-mail again and get a status. The usual reply followed “Thank you for your interest in Linare products .your order will be shipped on or before 22nd march with out fail . Sorry for the delay , due to heavy back order we were not able to ship you earlier”. By now I am getting really frustrated. I figured they were a small business and cut them some slack. I decided to wait yet again. I mean it’s a decent speed machine at a good price, maybe they were just overwhelmed.
I decided to take a pre-emptive approach this time and e-mail on March 21st to ask for numbers. Since this would ship the following day without fail I expected that they would just reply with the tracking numbers. Instead I received this gem “Thank you for your interest in Linare products . your order will be shipped before this week end . Sorry for the delay”. Ok, the weekends coming up. I’ve waited this long, what the hell.
On Monday, March 28th I informed Linare that the laptop had not shipped yet and that I would turn this matter over to my credit card fraud department if I did not receive tracking numbers immediately. Their reply was not very astounding with “Thank you for your interest in Linare products . your order will be shipped before this week end . Sorry for the delay?” I took Tuesday to mean March 29th.
By now I was pissed so I decided to e-mail Linare with a letter explaining that I would do the following things if I didn’t receive tracking numbers immediately:
1) File complaints with the BBB and The Federal Trade Commision
2) Hand this matter over to my credit card fraud department
3) Release the details of my experience to the Linux community
The next morning I received a call from the company asking that I wait 1 more day, which I agreed to. I was informed that I would get a check for $50 dollars for my patience and that I would have tracking numbers the next day. I called back the following day to get the tracking numbers and was informed that they were having problems with their distribution facility and that I would receive tracking numbers by Monday. I was also told that my laptop had shipped. On Monday April 4th I received the laptop and tracking numbers. I had assumed that this would be the end of my woes, but this was not the case.
The laptop shipped with a pre-installed Linare copy and manual. No recovery CD was included. I decided to give Linare a try, I opened up the manual and read that the Linare OS is shipped with the default root password of “password”. After trying that a few times, it was obviously not correct. I booted into single user mode and changed the password myself, this allowed me to get into the OS. Shortly afterwards I recieved an e-mail from Linare (without me contacting them) saying the default password is “123456”.
The theme was ugly and too Windows’d out for my tastes. I decided to wipe and load FC3, in addition I wanted to upgrade the ram from a meager 128 MB to at least 512 MB. I opened up all of the compartments on the bottom of the laptop, and found nothing but empty compartments and the hard drive. I figured I’ll e-mail Linare and ask about a manual or instructions on upgrading RAM. In addition I wanted to get my $50 refund from Linare, so I thought it was time to e-mail them again.
I explained that I wanted to find out the status of my refund and I wanted to get a manual or instructions on adding ram. I received an e-mail explaining that this laptop could only accept 512 MB sodimms. I tried again stating that I know what type of ram to use, just need to know where to put it. The reply was classic Linare with “Thank you for your interest in Linare Products . you can upgarde only till 512 MB of Ram. so please do kindly select a Ram Module of Hynix and upgrade it by fixing it in the DIM slot”.
After my third back and fourth on this subject, I sent a very angry e-mail asking if they had anyone with the comprehension level higher than a kindergartener or am I stuck with YOU! I never got a reply. Calling their number now leads to an IRV (press 1 for sales, etc.) that hangs up when you select anything. It is now May 5, 2005 and in conclusion I am stuck without my refund, I waited two months for a product that should have shipped within two weeks, and I still have no clue where to add more RAM. To all who think a sub-$500 notebook is too good to be true, you are right. In hindsight I should have got a Mac Mini. The notebook is pretty speedy, although it swaps like a beast (editor’s note: Fedora Core 3 requires at least 192 MB and it’s pretty unusable with Gnome and 128 MBs (been there, done that), but Linare’s strip-down FC2-based Linux runs ‘ok’ on 128 MB with KDE). Anyways this is what I think of the whole deal:
Pros:
Athlon XP Mobile 1800+ – Pretty fast processor
100% Linux compatible – ships with Linare Linux
Standard USB & Firewire
Cons:
Standard CD Drive on low-end model
No copy of the Linare OS (if you delete it, you can’t recover it)
A bit on the bulky side
Took 2 Months from order to ship
Doesn’t come w/ manual (No idea where to add more ram)
Linare’s support!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is absolutly TERRIBLE. For a $500 laptop I’d accept 4-6 weeks delivery, low quality support, and only the bear minimum of included CDs and extras, but it appears even this was a lofty goal far to high for Linare to reach.
A horrendous way to run a business.
Thanks for the info, I was excited about the price but it will be Mac Mini for me too.
all I can say is LOL
Sorry for being blunt, What do you really expect? everything in this world is usually cheap for a reason…
$500 for a laptop is peanuts, it’s hardly like you paid for premium service.
The delivery time was also excessive. I’m guessing they’ve been swamped with orders, but they should have said that straight out instead of keeping you guessed.
That they failed when you complained is pretty shocking though, I’d expect them to have sent out the cheque with the machine. Likewise the setting for the root password was fairly shoddy.
I’m not sure what the details of the agreement was, however I’m pretty sure if you asked Dell support for instructions on installing RAM (especially into laptops) you would find it equally hard.
You’ve been messed about, but you should stand back, calm down a bit, and realise what a good deal you’ve got: a laptop for $500 ($450 should you ever get your rebate).
For people looking for laptop, that’s pretty sweet.
Get this instead:
http://linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2210d.html
I’ll remember to never deal with them. Personally, I would have just gone with a lower end Dell laptop instead. Right now the cheapest is $550, so its a little more expensive. Atleast you are dealing with a large comapny that can get you your product in a reasonable amount of time, and has decent service.
That may be, but their cheapest model cost more than TWICE that of the linare laptop. With going from sub-$500 to $1100 or more, better support don’t come as a surprise:-)
Any decent laptop has a manual available from the distributor for replacing all hardware and getting the casing apart. It may not be in “lay man’s” terms, but they often read like lego instructions.
If there be no manual, there be no reason to pay for the laptop. I’ve even read through the manual on my 5 year old laptop to take it apart before.
I’d give them another month so see if they declare bankruptcy and then I’d file with BBB and maybe FTC as well. They ripped ya off.
I found that if you can get used to window-managers like fluxbox and windowmaker you’ll find 128MB of RAM to be as much as you need. My laptop used to have 56MB of RAM (64 -8 for video) and I could run gaim, firebird (yea, it’s been a while), and an editor at the same time with a bareable amount of swapping.
If I bought a laptop (the finicky pieces of junk they tend to be) I wouldn’t get one without a 3 year parts warranty. I’d happily put an extra 200-300 USD into having a warranty to replace that $400 screen when it randomly dies or $350 motherboard when the intentionally badly engineered power connector breaks.
The Ram is most likely underneath the keyboard. I have worked with tons of laptops that place the RAM in there, when it’s not on the bottom of the laptop.
Stop whining. You got bad customer service but one heck of a laptop. Take the linare distribution out of it, put something more decent like Mandriva or Kubuntu or Suse and enjoy life.
“Stop whining. You got bad customer service but one heck of a laptop. Take the linare distribution out of it, put something more decent like Mandriva or Kubuntu or Suse and enjoy life.”
I agree. He got what he ordered
“The Ram is most likely underneath the keyboard”
How do you normaly remove the keyboard in laptops ?
Ewwwwww. I would never buy a ‘new” laptop for such a cheap price. Every cheap laptop I’ve dealt with was not worth its meager price (especially Dells, there budget laptops have given me more trouble than all others put together).
If you really need a cheap laptop that works with Linux get a quality used laptop (like IBM, Toshiba, or HP especially Toshiba) from Ebay. For $500 you can get something that is better than the Linare “deal” and will hold up longer.
Life is too short for cheap laptops
I would have settled for a Dell with XP Home, $399.
WoW so much for supporting OSS. You could have assembled a laptop yourself in 2 months time. Its so sad these startups get publicity because of the OSS community however they know nothing about Business. You would have been much better getting a Laptop from e-bay and loading a freely available Linux on it.
all I can say is LOL
Sorry for being blunt, What do you really expect? everything in this world is usually cheap for a reason…
I had 3 distinct expectations from this purchase in addition to the laptop.
1) Delivery time that corresponded with the stated time on the web site
2) Manual w/ basic instructions
3) Restore CD
I don’t think my expectations were unreasonably high.
For all that will flame me, I’m not talking shit. I am not bitching or whining. I am just writing my experience with Linare. Perhaps others have had the opposite experience.
I just feel more information should be out there about this company since there currently is little (aside from their press release for $500 notebook) out there.
By the way, thanks for the warning. Now I won’t even recommend Linare to people scared of ebay….
I think most people on here wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole, the good price only adding to the suspicions. Its like cars, if there is two identical cars for sale but one is 2,000 cheaper then the other, theres always a reason, the people selling these things arn’t dumb, they know the market worth of these things, to offer it cheaper something has to give. You say there should be more information? I agree but that is why most people wouldn’t have dared send of money to a total unknown. I agree you should have got all those things, but that was the risk you took, I’d have cancelled the order way, way before you did
One more thing. If you can’t upgrade the RAM (its possible, just start taking screws off and see where you lead) then try XFCE 4.2. It LOVES 128mb of RAM.
With bad customer support like that, you might as well stick with Windows.
Doesn’t help the Linux community when members like Linare are clearly so administratively weak.
I don’t think that $500 is cheap for a laptop, I think people have just been trained to think it is by companies looking for higher profit margins. Considering the hardware in these things I’d say $500 is what they are worth, and thats with reasonable service from the manufacturer, the OS on CD and the manual.
I share the authors sentiment on the delivery time, it was unreasonable and every time he tried to contact the company about it they sent him a “canned” reply, probably without even reading his original message.
Its interesting to see that the author mentioned the inclusion of USB ports, its something that was often believed to be left out on these laptops. There was no mention of the USB ports in the laptop’s decription online and in former articles about these laptops many people on this site have commented that they didn’t see any indication of USB ports. Now we know for sure that there are some.
Speaking as a student in Canada, USD $500 isn’t cheap. It may be for people in the US where their currency has a higher value, and I figure most people in this list are adults with jobs; but for a student with no time for a job, USD $500 (CAD $619.80 + extra shipping cost) isn’t cheap.
It would be interesting to see what this author thinks of the USD $499 Linspire laptops, Linspire has a better reputation and is located in the USA.
Both my Toshiba Satellite 320 and my TiBook keep the RAM under the keyboard.
The Satellite’s keyboard is held down by a little plastic strip along the top of the keyboard that you can pull up without the aid of any tools – it’s held down by three or four relatively loose clips.
The TiBoook’s keyboard is held down by a more complicated mechanism. You have to turn a small screw to release a locking tab, and then simultaneously push two spring-mounted retaining tabs back while prying the keyboard up with your teeth or your feet or your third hand or something. (The spring tabs are too far apart to hold with one hand.)
Andre: “I would have settled for a Dell with XP Home, $399.”
Where? I checked Dell’s site, and no laptops were available for $399.
You are not alone:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/307888
You really don’t pay attention to the world at large do you?
Give it till the end of the year, and the Canadian dollar will be higher than the US Dollar.. If not they will be close.
it’s already down to 1 us dollar to 1.24 Canadian
I can see the long wait(aka slashdot a store? not pretty) but at least customer service could say what the fsck is going on.
also where is the recovery disk, or at least point where you can download the iso of it. instructions for upgrading should also be on their website.
$500 IS a very low price for a laptop. The reason companies charge “high markups” and maintain a profit margin is to be able to provide customer support, warranty repair, detailed manuals, recovery CDs and a competent Shipping and Receiving department along with the standard marketting costs and overhead of running any business.
When you get a good deal on a product, you have to consider whether the price is disproportionate to the direct competition and if not – ask yourself why? Why is it so high? What after-sales incentives are there to justify the higher price? Why is it so low? What might I be missing out on?
While $500 may seem like a lot of money for a laptop – imagine how you’ll feel if you get a lemon and can’t get the unit replaced. Now you’ve just lost $500 and you have no laptop to show for it, rather than spending, say, $800 and being happy with your purchase.
No recovery disk. NO problem.
Pop in a KNOPPIX disk see if all your hardware is properly found, or try the XFCE 4.2. live CD at http://www.os-works.com also based on KNOPPIX.
Nice one 😀
Perhaps so in this case, at least… It seems to me that Linaire is one of those companies that outsourced just about everything. The hardware manufacturer, the support personelle, and probably the shippers as well. You can tell from the poor grammar in the e’mail quotes. I’ll tell you though, unless you are Mr Deep Pockets Corporation, Dell’s support is identical if you have a problem with their consumer line products. In short, nothing gained in spending 2x as much on Dell laptops as their consumer support department is in India.
People say “you get what you pay for” and I’ve seen a lot of that in the comments section. But the author payed his good money in good faith for a product that came late and incomplete. It should have come with recovery CDs, manuals, and they should have honored their own promises. No company that acts this way will be in business long. Linaire certainly will get no business from me even through third parties like Walmart. Guess I’ll just save my money up for a Powerbook w/ extended warranty sometime in the future since my favorite laptops have been sold to Lenovo…
hmm.. if they go for IP, they may as well as join bestbuy as their attitude matches bestbuy attitude
I’d be quite interested to see some pics of the insides of that laptop.. Especially to see how ’empty’ it is, and where the ram is supposed to be, etc… =)
I bought a refurbished IBM ThinkPad for 700 bucks off of overstock.com Good customer service from overstock and since it is ibm certified i deal with them for warranty etc. It came looking and acting like new and is a great machine. p3 700mhz (doesn’t sound that great but it is more than enough) 256mb ram 30 gig harddrive not to mention it is an ibm.
The slots for upgrading the RAM are either (a) on the bottom side of the laptop under a metal cover (like on my Dell) or (b) under the keyboard (like my sister’s Toshiba).
The price you paid was rock bottom. Don’t think you’ll find anyone else selling a laptop with those components for that price. I’m sure they got flooded with orders (overwhelmed) & not set up to handle them. Maybe even had backorders.
At the very least they should have provided a manual for the laptop. No pdf version on their site either.
Can you also specify what onboard video chipset they use? (only other thing that matters but isn’t listed – I believe it to be VIA video; S3 Chrome?).
Just saw it on their site:
“AGP V2.0 Compliant with AGP4X support;S3 Graphics ProSavage8x high performance 128-bit 3D engine with up to 64MB DDR memory”
Too bad they don’t use Nvidia or ATI graphics. Still, a very good laptop.
its real sad how the author got serrvice
but then again these things are cheap for a reason
I would suggest author to go into consumer court against the company, cause u might not be the only one having such bad experience which will also encourage others who have had same experience & will teach company a valuable lesson
Not the first one to have trouble with Linare… I signed up for an @linux.net e-mail with them. Suddenly overnight they stopped the service with no message whatsoever. They just changed it to @linuxtimes.net. No money back… No official message from them. No sorries. I have tried calling them several times, sent e-mails… no answers at all. They are a shame to the Linux industry.
However bad support like this aint that uncommon. Ive gotten little or bad reply for players like Dell. Yeah…Ive had big problems with them aswell… Almost had to go to court to come to a reasonable agreement with them. I’d actually rather go with Linspire and their offers. They seem to do the right thing. In addition to the Linspire desktop looks much better. Linare must be the biggest mockery of GUI design Ive ever seen.
I have a suggestion , why dont u mail this to the guy it self the owner of linspire, hmm. and tell him how much he sucks and the service too
.
thats why i always buy, stuff from shops and never pay if they say like they would ship longer as out of stock, take yur money and run from their
.
Rather misgiving title by the way, since it was a review of Linares customer support and delivery routines. Why don’t you give a real review of the laptop, the things that actually matters. How good it works, benchmarks, quality of the assembly, quality of the display, battery life etc. You know the real important things when buying a laptop.
I got one of the Linspire sub-$500 WalMart laptops back in January. No problem on the shipping, and it came with a Recovery CD and manual. I didn’t keep Linspire on it since I didn’t care for it (v4.5 Linspire), so I reformatted and installed XP Pro, Fedora Core 3, SkyOS, and AROS on it. XP Pro and FC3 run surprisingly well for only having 112M of RAM (112M system / 16M video), but I have a 512M SODIMM coming in next week. I can’t play DOOM3 on it as it is (not enough RAM), but it plays Quake3 (and derivatives) just fine.
If you google for the Balance CN4949, you’ll find more about it. It’s no powerhouse, but it’s worth $500.
Seeing how it was submitted by DR-Smithy, a poster on the forums and a linux user and not actually written by OS news, I think you should really take that back, seeing how its bull
DrSmithy is someone else, I am drsmoothy. In addition, I have copies of all e-mails, and other posters have linked to further horror stories involving Linare. Believe what you want. I’m just posting one persons experience.
Ha I thought it was drsmithy but the reply was to someone called da truth, something unrelated. Yep you had bad customer support, but then I wouldn’t have touched them in the first place
Better get a cheap IBM R50e. Runs quite well with linux. Just the modem doesnt. Keys for keyboard light, display brightness and audio are working.
Ha I thought it was drsmithy but the reply was to someone called da truth, something unrelated. Yep you had bad customer support, but then I wouldn’t have touched them in the first place
At one point I was determined to cancel, but sometimes I just like pain (incidently I just downloaded Solaris 10
. After a while I really wanted to see how long it would take, how bad their service would get. If just to legitimately pass the information along.
I bought a Dell Latitude 110L for $699 Canadian. It’s a fantastic notebook. Very solid design and works with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 great.
It came with a 1.3 Gigahertz Intel celeron processor, 256 gigs of RAM, a wireless card, and a CD-RW/DVD drive. Very happy with the quality I’ve gotten with the price.
its not just that type I wouldn’t trust, but anyone outside a major manufacturer especially if it meant sending money to a relatively unknown sources, usually buy from a shop so I can touch what I am getting, I’ve only used my credit card on major sites, eg apple and Amazon, I’m very wary off things like this.
I bought one of these as a gift for my father. Nice, full of features, small but solid, good support (repaired it after a lightning strike fried the modem), cheap. Only downside; Windows XP or XP Home (restore CD not a installation CD; typical Windows PC BS). Runs Linux fine, though.
I’m so impressed that I’m looking at some of the other models they offer when I replace my aging and failing Dell.
Check here for setup notes on the Averatec and other brands of laptops;
http://www.linux-laptop.net
Wow, this actually looks like a good deal.
I’m surprised they didn’t include a link to it: http://www.linare.com/ladbs200.php
And for $100 more you can get 256MB of RAM: http://www.linare.com/ladbs250.php
I bet there are distros that run very nicely under 128MB and support all this hardware.
Here is a great link for low cost computers.
http://www.laclinux.com/en/Start
Or for $50 you could get a 512M SODIMM and upgrade it yourself. That’s why I NEVER go for memory upgrades from dealers. It’s normally at least twice what it would cost to do it yourself. In the case you pointed out, twice as much for half the memory, or four times as much for the same amount of memory.
I may agree with the rant about shipment delays, but that the “review” is mostly only that rant? I would have appreciated a more detailed description of the laptop and of Linare (the OS). You didn’t like it so you reinstalled the laptop? That’s it?
This review is crap.
You pay next to nothing and you get next to nothing. If you can afford it, things like IBM’s ThinkPad or Apple’s iBook/PowerBook will be very GNU/Linux-friendly and are extremely reliable. Plus, IBM (Lenovo now?) and Apple are known for their excellent service and tech support, so if something goes wrong it gets fixed.
If your machine underside has a dozen or so large bolts/screws, it is likely 1 or 2 of them may be reaching all the way through to other side to retain the KB plate.
Unscrew them all out and gently pry the KB away from surrounding but it will be attached to a wide and flimsy ribbon, do not remove from that. You should be able to view the internals quite well, the SODIMM socket is often there.
If this doesn’t work, there may be 1 more screw under the silver DONT REMOVE sticker.
I recently had the pleasure to fix a dell laptop with coffee inside so I opened it up not knowing what to expect. I found nothing inside but a clean tight design and no trace of coffee but it still didn’t work. Then a tiny speck of brown stain a mm or so near cpu socket, some gentle scraping later and it fired up.
I still haven’t replaced my almost never used wonder 3G Laptop from 10yrs ago becuase I learnt my lesson, laptops are just too much trouble & lockin for a HW hacker. I wanted 4 OSes on it including BeOS and its stuck with W2K.
I am way tempted by the miniMac too and will probably cave in to the whole lockin deal for that.
But if I saw a credible miniPC format at that price size and spec, I’d probably go there aw well.
regards
I may agree with the rant about shipment delays, but that the “review” is mostly only that rant?
There hasn’t been much else to tell.
I would have appreciated a more detailed description of the laptop and of Linare (the OS).
A picture is worth a thousand words. Go to http://www.linare.com/ and click on the laptop. What could I provide that isn’t there.
You didn’t like it so you reinstalled the laptop? That’s it?
There are plenty of reviews on Linare the OS, some even on OSNews. It’s not like the OS is magically different on Linare hardware.
This review is crap.
Everyones entitled to their own opinion. While it’s no work of art, it is useful information that was not available to me when I searched for info before making my purchase.
Got an Averatec 3200H1-01 under $1000. Recovery disk and whatnot. Dual boot XP and Kanotix. Aside from getting linux on it, upgraded the ram to 512 MB. Sweet machine.
Everyones entitled to their own opinion. While it’s no work of art, it is useful information that was not available to me when I searched for info before making my purchase.
Since you thought it’s deserving to defend it, I have to conclude that this review is even more worthless than I thought at first. This information is useless as it applies to you only. It just shows that you had a bad deal. It also shows your character: you were told that the laptop will be shipped within 4 weeks, yet you felt the itch to send an e-mail after 3 weeks.
In any case, review it is not.
@drsmoothy:
hmm, what to do with this laptop?
Maybe you should wait a few weeks until ZetaR1 is released and give it a try. With the hardware on this sub-$500 laptop it should work like a charm. Check here: http://yellowtab.com/products/hardware/
greets,
BCC
Since you thought it’s deserving to defend it, I have to conclude that this review is even more worthless than I thought at first.
Defending it? I wasn’t defending it. I was just attempting to provide further insight.
This information is useless as it applies to you only.
True, but it doesn’t mean that no one else would have the same problem. Once again, I was just trying to put out more information out there. When I google’d before buying I found NOTHING!
It also shows your character: you were told that the laptop will be shipped within 4 weeks, yet you felt the itch to send an e-mail after 3 weeks.
The page said 2 to 4 weeks. My card was charged immediately. I had not recieved ANY information from these guys. The inquiry on the third week was just asking if I would get a confirmation e-mail or something. I don’t think I acted incorrectly in asking, I mean I had nerver heard of this company before the postings on Slashdot/OSNews.
In any case, review it is not.
You’ve been talking a lot of smack about my review without any substance.
Erm…a bit harsh, don’t you think Mario?
I guess not, though I don’t see where DrSmoothy deserved that abuse.
You’ve been talking a lot of smack about my review without any substance.
We see it…no need to stoop to his level. He’s an ___ ____.
I for one found this very informative, since I was also thinking of getting one of these, its nice to know that I should stay away.
You tend to get what you pay for. Windows would be the notable exception of course. 🙂
I was going to buy a Linare, but now have decided against it and will tell everybody not to buy it. I will stick with Dell.
You experience is exactly why I am using my 3rd IBM Thinkpad. No, each of them has performed flawlessly. Have even loaded an removed SUSE from one of them. Support is amazing. They even supported a very old 390e that wasn’t purchased from them. I would never buy anything else. I agree with others buy a used Thinkpad, you’ll be headaches and dollars ahead.
That is just CRAZY!
No restore CD for my ThinkPad express. It has a restore button, but if the HD goes bust, I am sunk!
Apple makes the best laptops (I have two Powerbooks, an older Lombard and a G4 Al). Even their least expensive iBook one is better than the best PC laptop, IMHO. Prices are not bad if you can get a Students discount or work in an educational institution.
Among PC laptops I like IBM ThinkPads (cost more than iBooks though).
Cheers
Thank you for the great review. I think this will have people thinking twice before ordering from the Linare company. I hate to be the odd man out, but I think you should have still reported them to the BBB. I know they eventually sent you the laptop but they didn’t live up to a standard user’s expectation.
Dude, your company sucks… btw. good job pretending to be a nokia employee.
256 gigs of ram? NICE! ;P
and I shouldn’t respond to moderated comments but…
Get a grip. OSNews is NOT about operating systems, it’s about technology in genera
So why name is OSNews? How about “miniSlashDot” ;P
Having it called OSNews makes people automatically think that it’s supposed to be news about OSes.. obviously thats not the case…
I hate to admit it, but Microsoft is right when they say these things get wiped and then have a copy of Windows put on them.
This sort of thing does Linux no favours whatsoever.
I hate to admit it, but Microsoft is right when they say these things get wiped and then have a copy of Windows put on them.
This sort of thing does Linux no favours whatsoever.
While I’m sure that happens, I’ve replaced Windows with Linux (not dual boot) on more production systems than I’ve put Windows on a white box system.
Personally, I have a couple systems (Dell laptop & destop) that are running Linux now that came with Windows pre-installed. On top of that, I’ve helped 3 other people switch to Linux — 1 of them a total novice who noticed I didn’t use Windows and asked if I would install it for him. (He’s happy with the switch for the past +6 months; no requests for old Windows programs, mostly asks questions about the web in general such as ‘how do I find _____?’.)
I don’t think that the % of people buying this or other Linux-pre-installed systems are wiping Linux out just so they can rip off Windows. I can see them buying a full copy of Windows, though, because the @!#$!#@$! restore CDs are just about useless — expecially when dual booting.
It’s interesting how people jump fromt he fact that one Linux company sucks and is in over their head to the fact that now all Linux companies suck etc and MS is better?
I mean when is the last time MS sold a laptop? Never. When is the last time MS sold a PC? Never.
I am confused as to how people make that leap.
While I am certainly not complaining about cheap hardware purchases, I must say that I am definitely glad I bought my iBook. Everything worked out of the box the way I expected it too. To me, that’s worth the $500 more that I payed for it.
I would say, for the most part if you want to use linux,
use a live cd and put windows xp on your hard drive.
laptops and linux, often dont mix.
The best things in life are free so is Linux but Linare sucks.
I’m dual booting FreeBSD 5.3 and SuSE 9.3 Pro on my Vaio and they both work great. *nix tends to lag behind a bit on features on laptops because of all the closed hardware, but if you’re willing to get one that’s a little older and not “state of the freakin art” you can get your *nix of choice to run just fine on it.
Linare always seemed to me like freeloaders that leech off the OSS community to make a quick buck. While there’s nothing wrong with that, I think you are morally bound to make a honest good faith effort to put out something decent or at least add value at some point. Linare just take FC2, change the theme, and stick it on white box machines, and then fail to provide adequate support. Hardly a good faith effort.
WHAT?! Linare is NOT based on any Redhat product, and never has been. It’s debian based, and while their support may be crap they have done a TON of work to make the OS an OS that stands out.
You are wrong. Linare IS based on FC2.
http://distrocenter.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/04/08/208208&from=r…
The installer is most definitely Anaconda.
while we are on the subject of laptops, I am gonna go ahead and say the Dell XPS Gen2 is the best laptop money can buy. Not IBM and not especially Mac. Sure there is no biometrics but hell I can use a password. And sure there is no fiber optically lit keyboard but I can get a USB powered fiber optic light. While not inexpensive the performance is mindblowing.
that was a good troll. I know you fell for it CharAznable.
😛
A friend of mine who also has one of these, says it’s an ECS G320.
He said to check near the Serial Number and see what it says there on the label.
If so, you can get the latest drivers and manual from:
http://www.ecsusa.com
A friend of mine who also has one of these, says it’s an ECS G320.
He said to check near the Serial Number and see what it says there on the label.
If so, you can get the latest drivers and manual from:
http://www.ecsusa.com
I think you may be thinking about the Linspire laptop, not the Linare laptop. The Linare laptop is based on an Athlon XP-M 1800+, unlike hte Linspire and ECS laptop you pointed me to.
My Linare has no serial number or anything at the bottom. In fact it came in a big box that simply said “Notebook”. In addition, it has no distinguishing marks as to who made it.
@Al Hartman: No, it’s definitely not an ECS G320 – the Balance CN4949 is a ECS G320. The ECS G320 has a VIA C3-2 Nehemiah CPU and Castle Rock video (variation of UniChrome). The Linare laptop has an Athlon XP Mobile and ProSavage video. They’re not remotely close except in price.
@CharAznable: Ignore Anonymous. He is just trolling. The link he gave to Debian offshoots doesn’t even list Linare, so he’s obviously just trying to make trouble.
@CharAznable: Ignore Anonymous. He is just trolling. The link he gave to Debian offshoots doesn’t even list Linare, so he’s obviously just trying to make trouble.
I don’t think Anonymous may have been trolling. A lot of people are confusing Linspire (Debian based) with Linare (FC2 based). The fact that both distros are targetted at newbie converts from Windows and both have a sub-$500 notebook.
Just to confirm:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=3504708
Linspire loaded Balance Laptop – Price $498
http://www.linare.com/ladbs200.php
Linare Loaded Linare Laptop – Price $498
I have no experience with the Linspire loaded Balance laptop. As someone who has used the C3 processor on a desktop, it’s just too slow. The Linare laptop ships with an Athlon XP-M 1800+.
I did confuse them, but it was a good troll after I realized it.
Thanks for the review. Consumers should stick together and wave a red flag when things go sour. I don’t think we can automatically assume that if something costs more it’s better. Most of the time yes, but there are lemons out there at any cost for sure.
– or at least, no big deal.
I’ve got agree with the sentiment of the “bad deal” poster. To me, a $299 laptop would be a shocker. I’ve seen new laptops for $499 before, and I see new laptop for $599 and less, all time.
So what do you save for giving up windows? $50? Whoop-de-do.
How about overall build quality, keyboard, suspend to disk, etc? This was informative but not much more than a legitimate rant about a company. I miss Eugenia’s in depth, honest reviews.
You can run it with all your favourite Gnome apps and it won’t suck up your RAM like Gnome/FC3 does. Call it a window manager+ or a lite DE (I think of it as the lite little brother of Gnome) Xcfe4 really does rock! And it will run great on that laptop of yours.
…I would have called the BBB and a laywer to draft a nice letter after two weeks of that crap. That is no way to run a business and is no way to treat customers.
And if they KNEW it would take that long, they just should have been up front about it. When I ordered my mini I went ballistic when I found out that my 2nd Day air was going to take at least a week because it was coming from China. Got the money refunded for shipping the next day. That kind of stuff just really irks me.
It would have been a good troll had you meant it to be that way!
What did you expect for a $500 notebook? It’s pretty obvious exactly what corners Linare cut.
A simplle/decent manual & restore CD would probably kill off at least 50% of their support requests. e.g. My macs/powerbooks/ibooks come with decent manuals and I’ve NEVER used their support line, but then again, I’ve never used support line for any computer product…
(Did you try google?)
They could have included a SINGLE black & white sheet of paper with basic instructions, FAQ and troubleshooting AND have downloadable restore CDS and Manuals in PDF or text; on the cheap.
They could have even offered the option to purchase a restore CD and Manual as a “premium”. Instead they did nothing.
Good money was paid for this laptop and if Linare needed an additional $5-$10 to provide BASIC consumer information, then that’s what they should do; but to say you only paid “X” and therefor we’re not going to give you “Y”, when we know you need to know “Y”, is bad and stupid business.
It allows people to believe that Linux companies are run by hobbyists, living in their mother’s basement.
It’s unacceptable, no matter what the cost.
Linare Corporation
2018, 156th Ave, NE
Bellevue, WA 98007
US
Phone: 877 77 LINUX
[email protected]
I too was frustrated by the way Linare was handling my order. After about 6 weeks I simply cancelled my order. I was tired of their staff telling me “it will be shipped on such-n-such day” and then being disappointed when I didn’t receive a tracking number. I remember having to call them over and over, plus send unhappy email messages to them, in order to get an explanation. I do NOT RECOMMEND purchase from Linare.
It allows people to believe that Linux companies are run by hobbyists, living in their mother’s basement.
they’re not? ;P
Thank you for writing this. Hopefully this will prevent other people to have this horrible experience. Please do yourself a favour and stay away from Linare/Walmart laptop.
I wanted this laptop, it was cheap and fast. I thought that I’d never have to deal with this company once my laptop arrived.
I never expected to have it missing both restore media and a manual. All I want is this machine + 512mb of ram. Shouldn’t be that hard to achieve, all things considered.
The fact that they promised me a $50 for my patience was a nice gesture, too bad they never delivered.
Thank you for writing this. Hopefully this will prevent other people to have this horrible experience. Please do yourself a favour and stay away from Linare/Walmart laptop.
Thanks for the heads up, just want to note the following:
This is the Walmart $498 laptop.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=3504708
It comes with a Via C3 Processor. According to quite a number of posters, this is a good laptop, aside from the slow processor.
This is the Linare $498 laptop.
http://www.linare.com/ladbs250.php
It comes with an Athlon XP-M 1800+. This is the troublesome. Currently Linare resells their desktop line through Walmart, but thus far they are the only one who sells the Linare laptop.
Just want to make sure that people realize that this is not the same machine. I would hate for any undeserved negative trolling happen to Balance because of something I wrote with regards to Linare.
Please be careful when making statements like yours to ensure they are accurate. Linare is NOT AFFILIATED WITH WALMART. The PCs sold at Walmart are supplied by LINSPIRE. The names are similar enough to be confused and retail for the exact same price, but they are completely different machines from different companies:
* Linare has an Athlon CPU, Linspire’s counterpart is a VIA C3
* Linare has S3 graphics, Linspire uses a Unichrome-based chipset
* Linare uses a Fedora-derived distro, Linspire is Debian based
While Linspire has its share of critics, it has done much more to add value to its distro, is more established as a ventor and supporter of Linux and has a much better reputation than Linare has managed to create for itself. Keep in mind that if Linspire conducted business anywhere near as bad as Linare seems to have done, tehn Walmart would’ve dropped them very quickly–or spotted the signs before even letting them sell their goods through Walmart.