Recent Laptop experiences sought

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Usually I just buy from ZaReason, have them pre-install whatever distro I need,
with whatever options I want (they'll flip whatever switches are available via the installer--
want full-disk encryption? LVM? Software RAID? Some combination? Just ask them).

And these laptops are just *brilliant* when it comes to being able to self-service them:
remove a few phillips-head screws, pop open one big hatch, and everything is right there
if you want to add/swap components... or just clean your CPU fan sometime down the road
(and if you ask, they'll even include a nice little ZaReason-branded screwdriver in the box).


BUT...:

ThinkPenguin relocated to New Hampshire (Keene!) a few years ago.

And Showtime PC in Hudson also started doing custom-built laptops a while ago.

And Showtime and ThinkPenguin presently seem to be using the same ODM laptop kits
as ZaReason are using.

On the other hand, I hear that if you buy a Dell with the "corporate" support plan,
supposedly you can call Dell and have them send someone same-day to fix your laptop
if you break it (and I've heard that support plan is actually remarkably cheap,
though I don't remember the specifics or have a URL handy...).

ThinkPenguin is a lot more active upstream in free software and open hardware
(the ThinkPenguin USB Wi-Fi module is an atheros chip has a nice story behind it, for example
 <https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/04/30/2251252/fsf-certifies-atheros-based-thinkpenguin-80211-n-usb-adapter>;
 and LibreCMC is run by the same people who run ThinkPenguin...).

Showtime on the other hand is a brilliant I-wish-there-were-still-more-of-these local computer shop.


Sorry, I don't know if this is even close to helpful to Mark ("short list" might have meant
"really, needs to be one of these").... But I figured if the thread was already wandering...,
maybe someone would like to know that list of options existed.

ZaReason: https://zareason.com/
ThinkPenguin: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/
Showtime PC: https://www.showtimepc.com/

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