Those of us in the market today for a Linux laptop, particularly if our distribution of choice is Ubuntu, are really quite lucky to have so many good choices. Dell currently offers a number of laptops (and a desktop) with Ubuntu and there are a number of independent Linux PC sellers such as System 76 and ZaReason. Yesterday, I wrote about my frustration that certain Dell coupon codes worked on Windows models but not Linux models. Commenter Mikey responded, saying that I should:

“Forget Dell and get your laptop from Zareason.”

I though this deserved an answer, so here it is:

There are basically three reasons why I will probably (yes, you may still try and convince me to change my mind ) choose to buy a Dell laptop over a System 76 or ZaReason laptop.

1. Price You just cannot escape the fact that Dell offers better prices. I configured three laptops, one from System 76, one from ZaReason, and one from Dell, as close together as I could (see the bottom of this post for the exact specs) and the Dell turned up $200 cheaper than the System 76 model and $550 less than the ZaReason model.
2. Special Options Dell’s laptop have a number of special extras offered. For example, on Studio and XPS 15″ laptops you can get a 1920×1200 (really, really high) resolution screen. The XPS laptops also come with a fingerprint reader and a slot-load DVD drive. The later two are not essential, but they are nice and I do consider the higher resolution to be a major plus.
3. Software Modifications Any user’s experience with Linux can be made a lot smoother by installing DVD playback support and media codecs. Dell offers DVD playback standard, but no one else offers anything that I am aware of.

Specification for the three laptops:

System 76 Pangolin Performance (15″ Laptop) – 1280×800 Resolution, Core 2 Due 2.26 GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB 5400 RPM HDD, Bluetooth

ZaReason MidLap 1512 (15″ Laptop) – 1280×800 Resolution, Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB 5400 RPM HDD, Bluetooth, Dedicated Graphics Card

Dell Studio 15 (15″ Laptop) – 1280×800 Resolution, Core 2 Due 2.16 GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB 5400 RPM HDD, Bluetooth