10 Nov 2008

Can't Find New Non-Windows Machines

Image representing Windows as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

I was looking for some non-windows machines for my development team. My development team all use Ubuntu. As hard as I tried, I couldn't really find anything pre-built that didn't have windows on it.
I really don't like the idea that I will buy machines with windows on them just to have them formatted and have linux installed over them. And what really gets me is that windows will add to the price of the machine (at time when I'm trying to cut down on all my department's spendings).

I was considering to order computer parts and build the machines myself. But after getting flashbacks of my youth, trying to find the right CPU to fit the right motherboard, I decided that my time could be better spent on other things.

In the end, I found that the best option would be to buy servers for my developers instead of work-stations. I found a nice 'HP ProLiant ML115 G5 AMD Opteron 1352 Quad Core'. It was extremely cheap. It comes with 512mbs of ram, but I can add up to 8gbs of memory. Which I fully intend on doing for my own work-station, because I am trying to play around with our MySQL databases on my laptop (I copied dumps to my laptop, don't worry) and it takes forever to do the tiniest alterations.

So all in all, it is a good deal, but it's not very conventional. I was kind of hoping that Dell would do something with linux work-stations, but the only thing I could find with linux (or no OS) machines was those (cute) mini-netbooks.


Conclusion
Linux Machine with 8Gbs of Ram is much better then (>) Windows Vista machines for the same price.

4 comments:

  1. agmonr11 November 2008 at 13:31

    Hi Jonathan,

    What about:

    http://www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu

    What do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jonathan Levin11 November 2008 at 13:35

    Hey Rotem :)

    Problem with dell is that they charge you more for Ubuntu :(
    I can get a much better machine and install Ubuntu on my own for less money.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11 November 2008 at 13:43

    I don't know in what country are you trying to buy these servers but in some countries companies are required to allow you to choose what kind of operating system you want your pc to be with. I suppose you don't have that..

    Instead of buying computer parts just say the requirements of your pc's to the computer store and ask them to construct the boxes for you .. I bet they even would agree to install the operating system you want ;)

    Because really .. You sound like. "I can't get a pc without windows. Constructing a pc is rocket science. I'll buy servers for my team"

    Good luck with your purchase ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. qhartman12 November 2008 at 17:25

    If you are looking only at top-tier vendors, you will have a hard time. There are a number of smaller vendors that specialize in Linux systems though. System76, ZaReason, Penguin Computing, Advanced Clustering, Emperor Linux... And those are just the ones off the top of my head! For example: http://www.advancedclustering.com/products/horizon-workstations.html

    ReplyDelete