Hi, On 1/17/08, Noah Slater <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 09:55:10PM +0000, Jon Grant wrote: > > Anyone know if it is possible to get a refund for Apple's Mac OS X..? > > I'd love to buy one of their "Air" laptops if there is a way to get it > > pre-loaded with GNU+Linux or a refund... got a USB stick with Kubuntu > > ready to go.. ;) > > My advice is don't bother.
Good advice, bad reasons ;-) AIUI, OS X is significantly cheaper than Microsoft Windows, so the refund is likely to be negligible compared to the cost of the machine. Actually, I find the whole refund thing slightly curious - you wouldn't go to Ford and say "give me a refund, I want to install my own car radio". If you can't find a supplier who unbundles [hardware from software|cars from stereos], that is pretty much your problem. Apple hardware is: > > 1) VERY expensive, Not particularly. The price/performance of Apple vs. others has long since been in favour of Apple. I've bought both Apple and non-Apple hardware, and so far the TCO of the Apple hardware is way lower than the non-Apple. The Apple stuff has proved more robust for me. YMMV. > 2) not upgradable/tweekable, Tell that to my laptop running a bigger hard disk and more memory than Apple shipped it with! If you want to put new gfx cards or processors in, sure, go buy a noname intel box. 3) not officially supported by Ubutnu However, I know lots of people running Ubuntu on Macs. If you're planning to upgrade or tweak your hardware, I don't think "official support" is going to be a problem. The upshot of this is that: > > 1) you could get a similar spec laptop for WAY under half the price, Really? 2) when you want to upgrade or repare you HAVE to use an apple > registered repair shop using official apple parts No. > 3) all manner of subtle things will break with Ubuntu because the > hardware simple doesnt get as tested as regular i368 machines. I don't think "i368" (sic) is supported either ;-) To go into further details: > > 1) I am the (once proud, and long suffering) owner of a PowerMac G5 > 2) I have run Ubuntu for 3 years on my PowerMac > 3) I regularly have to rescue the system after a dist-upgrade because > Xorg suddenly doesn't work with my Macs slightly custom video setup pshaw, I've hard that problem on my non-Mac laptops. 4) I am now fluent in OpenFirmware (trust me, if you don't know, you > don't want to know) because of the amount of times yaboot has > messed up or my firmware has got confused and I've had to tweek > settings or bless drives or figure out OpenFirmware device paths OpenFirmware is awesome, and it's a real shame it got ditched in favour of EFI (or whatever it is) in newer machines. 5) various applications will segfault or similar due to obscure > hardware differences > 6) all kinds of problems with the keyboard/mouse (when I say > problems, I really mean differences with what is assumed to be a > standard setup by application designers) will cause you to become > fluent in the likes of `xmodmap' and `xrdb' just to get your > system usable to any standard degree. Weird. In what way is yours a non-standard setup? Do you have mouse buttons missing, for example? 7) you will be frustrated by little hardware tweeks apple have made > to make the thing look nicer while significantly breaking some > fundamental function of you computer. An example would be my Mac's > lack of a CD eject button. When my OpenFirmware decides to b0rk > it's self after an upgrade because yaboot got the wrong device > path to my primary hard disk (did I mention I hate OpenFirmware?) > I literally have take my computer appart and manually force the > CD draw out of the drive, which I cant imagine is healthy for it, > just so I can put in a Live CD and rescue my system. Your frustration is other people's elation. Personally, I love not having a fugly hardware eject button. Finally, and most importantly for me, or at least, this was the final > straw on the camels back which made me vow never to purchase Apple > again so long as I might live: > > 1) When my PSU exploded one night (!) (yes, things like this do > happen to computers after a while, so you may as well plan for the > eventuality) it took out my PowerMac's mainboard. I had to take > this to the Genius Bar (in Sheffield!) to have it fixed with > Apples proprietary hardware, this being my only option. It cost me > close to 600 pounds to replace the PSU and mainboard. > > I could have bought a new computer for that money, a good one too. Perhaps you should have - a Mac Mini is a good buy at that price point :-P If I had been using a standard computer, lets compare prices: > > http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Motherboards-Intel > http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Power-Supplies > > Motherboard, average cost about 80 quid? > Motherboard, average cost about 50 quid? "Standard computer"? Heh. "If I had been running a standard operating system like Windows, my word processor would have been able to print". As for the costs: if you buy a BMW, you pay more for parts than if you buy a Ford. When you bought your Mac you knew you were buying a "premium" product that would cost more because it's got a smaller share of the market. This flame brought to you in the interests of balanced arguments and asbestos underwear sales. A.
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