Comments on: Review: ZaReason Makes Desktop Linux A Breeze

By: home made wind generators

home made wind generators — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:29:09 +0000

Great stuff:) will definitely visit soon!!

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:16:40 +0000

WogFootman: Thanks for providing valuable perspective. As the author of the blog entry, I’d like Takla to know that I saved several old Windows laptops and desktops from certain death by moving them to Ubuntu. And I’ve also blogged about installfests, where volunteers bring old PCs back to life, install Ubuntu, and route the systems to non-profit organizations. But for those who are looking for new starter systems, the Breeze is a nice choice.

By: WogFootman

WogFootman — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:09:47 +0000

@Takla

take a deep breath and relax. I agree with you entirely that a person should make the most out of the hardware they have I’m running ubuntu on an old PC quite comfortably (a 6-7 year old PC with minimal upgrades incidentally). Still, there’s a time and place to buy a new PC, and maybe that’s what someone is opting to do. You certainly shouldn’t be condemning towards them. Instead encourage people to donate their old PCs to charitable causes or find a community PC recycling center. All screaming at people about their recycling habits does is alienate them and make you look like a nut, or perhaps “a quasi-religious maniac”.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:40:26 +0000

A tip: For those of you attend open source conferences, ZaReason often offers some great on-site deals to attendees. I nearly made some ZaReason purchases during OSCON and LinuxWorld (now OpenSource World) in 2008.

By: LP

LP — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:21:49 +0000

I bought a laptop from ZaReason in August and I couldn’t be happier with it. I opened the box and was up and running literally in 10 minutes. Because I run wpa2 at home getting the wireless working took a bit longer, but with the release of 8.10 even that has become simple.

I’d recommend them without reservation.

By: davesnyd

davesnyd — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:02:37 +0000

I purchased their “home” system about a year ago.

I couldn’t be a more satisfied customer. It arrived before they said it would, it worked great right out of the box, it’s quiet, efficient, attractive, small.

Contacting them by email is easy– they usually respond in a matter of hours. They answer technical questions, “what ifs”, and general suggestions about upgrading or new machines or what have you.

By: Zac

Zac — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 04:12:37 +0000

I sent ZaReason a few questions via email, and I received an intelligent reply from them the next day. I would like to buy from them but they don’t sell in Australia.

By: Another Guy

Another Guy — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 03:25:06 +0000

Yes, Some Guy, we bought one where I work and it uses the MSI Wind barebones (even comes with the driver disk). OK, looking at Newegg and taking the cheapest of each part to match the $299 configuration, my shopping cart came to $230 with shipping. In the small town where I live, every computer repair shop has a minimum charge of $75. For only $69, ZaReason is taking these three parts, putting them in case, imaging the hard drive, and testing it, before packaging it in boxes custom printed with their logo and slogan. For a person who doesn’t build their own computers (like you and I do), I think this is a pretty good deal.

By: Some Guy

Some Guy — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:09:57 +0000

It looks like this is based on the MSI Wind Desktop, which I own. I use it as a server, but it’s a great low cost computer for a basic desktop Linux system. Unless you really need the support contract, and the hard drive, RAM, CD drive and OS preinstalled, $300 is a bit steep.The MSI Wind Desktop costs aroudn $140, not including RAM, optical drive and a hard drive. Add those, and the price is around $200. You can also run the OS off a compactflash card, for nearly silent performance, and low energy use, which I do. I wouldn’t recommend doing this for a desktop system though – CF is slow, and the file system and OS need to be carefully tweaked to prevent excessive writes. All in all, the MSI Wind is a great platform for this sort of thing, and it looks like ZaReason is selling a nice product based on it.

By: Takla

Takla — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:08:18 +0000

“Surely, millions of consumers have aging Windows hardware that they’re ready to abandon. They’ve got keyboards, mice and LCD screens — and for about $300 they can swap out their aging desktop and get the Breeze.”

Ubuntu – Linux for Human Beings who hate recycling and love toxic landfill.

OK, I’ll paraphrase the article: “Millions of people have old hardware which runs Windows XP OK, and could easily run Debian, Slackware, Vector, Zenwalk or several other free software systems, or even keep running XP (honestly, it’s true!). However, I’m a quasi-religious maniac with an urge to persuade them all to use Ubuntu and Ubuntu won’t run well on older computers* so they’ll have to throw away their perfectly good functional hardware and consume consume consume.”

* https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

“Ubuntu should run reasonably well on a computer with the following minimum hardware specification. However, features such as visual effects may not run smoothly.

* 700 MHz x86 processor
* 384 MB of system memory (RAM)
* 8 GB of disk space
* Graphics card capable of 1024×768 resolution “