From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 24 19:36:52 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D66916A412 for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:36:51 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from stapleton.41@gmail.com) Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com (ug-out-1314.google.com [66.249.92.170]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2539143D5F for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:36:44 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from stapleton.41@gmail.com) Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id m2so1428950uge for ; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:36:41 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=BE67vaaBm9QjGsMv28mvEFPC5NpGrvCp7Dp+R7locFKvxSK30bR4dKPhERsiEykeWUftDrdiacHJVGaJa7p3hfouYSY3OqTH3RTb7Vncf7lroZ2KqEUPBnObSd7WEge5zacHydFVHe8BvCnaMRCNrCgHq2OjQ34IL+t6RACRwoA= Received: by 10.67.30.6 with SMTP id h6mr8033879ugj; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:36:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.67.86.18 with HTTP; Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:36:41 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <80f4f2b20610241236y353eb397u87c4bed8fbce2cf2@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 15:36:41 -0400 From: "Jim Stapleton" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Some old fashioned assistance requested, and some oppinions wanted. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:36:52 -0000 Ok, to start this off, and so you know where I'm coming from - I do a lot with comptuers and I'm visually impared. This makes notebooks a royal pain in the posterior - to the point where I NEED a few features in KDE/Gnome,a nd cannot use Windows. However, add to that a lot of manufacturers don't support their customers very well, not even if it is plain and simple hardware, and you suddenly have a *very* restrictive list. I I've had bad experiences with many companies, and good experiences with really only two. One of which, while BSD/Linux friendly, is out of the picture for reasons of exceptionally immoral and frivolous lawsuites (in my oppinion), the other, while their support is surperb, does not provide drivers for anything but windows, and does weird stuff to their hardware. The latter company is Toshiba. I'm putting this here on the questions and not the mobile forum because I believe that they also make non-mobile machines, and this is a slightly more wide ranging question that normally is found there. My question: 1) If Toshiba were to provide open source drivers for it's "weirdities", would you purchase their machines? 2) If "yes" to #1, would you join me in a snail-mail writing campaign to them to request they provide drivers for BSD and/or Linux - preferrably open source for one, or closed source for both, if it must remain closed for whatever reasons. 3) Off the topic of the main post, what are your top 3 vendors if your main consideration is the combination of (1) FreeBSD compatable hardware, and (2) Reliable/Honest/Intelligent and Customer Friendly tech support for hardware issues. Thanks, -Jim Stapleton