[tlug] Many thanks!

[Joseph Essertier <essertier@example.com>]

Well, I took the plunge and bought a PrimePC computer at Dospara in
Akihabara, and so far so good.  Everything I have tried in Ubuntu seems
to work.  The display resolution has a little room for improvement, but
it's quite clear and relatively fine print can be read.  

I was about to give up for the time being, until a future date when I
could find some computer which was totally compatible.  All the
motherboards and/or chipsets that I saw on Dospara's web site that were
in my price range had some kind of glitch.  The glitches were explained
on various web sites I found through Google.  (I wasn't sure whether
Google really was my friend; seemed more like an enemy).

But I found one that had few complaints--at least the complaints didn't
jump out at me, like the others--so I decided to go with it:

Prime Knight VM
Main board: VIA Chipset Micro ATX
RAM: 512MB DDR SDRAM
Processor: Intel™ Celeron™D 325 (2.53GHz)
Graphics card: OnBoard VGA Graphics
Audio: On Board Sound Enhancer
HDD: 160GB Ultra ATA HDD

Nothing fancy--classified as "entry level"--but seems like a good value.
I spent as much on the monitor as I did on the box because I needed to
have clear print.  I tried out some photo editing today.  The photos
come through nicely and can be edited at a reasonable speed.  For my
purposes it's just fine.  I installed Ubuntu "Breezy Badger" (5.10).

The Knoppix live CD came in handy.  The guy at the store was nice enough
to let me try out everything with it before buying.  There are probably
some things I didn't try out, but...

I really needed a desktop, so it's a big relief that I have one now.

Thanks for giving me abundant advice just when I needed it.

Joe