I know some concerns have been expressed here about Zareason.

Yesterday, I received a new computer (Mediabox) from Zareason. I called them on the phone twice with with questions, and both time the phone call was answered promptly. I called in the afternoon because they're on the west coast.

I did express my concern about lack of communication. I did receive the automatic email when I placed my order, but had no other communication until I phoned them to ask why the order was taking so long about two weeks after placing it.

I suggested in both phone calls that they needed to work on communication, such as an email saying "We're starting on your box," especially if there was a delay in processing the order. I also made sure to compliment them, because I have been very happy with Zareason computers.

By the way, the holdup was not getting the wireless working in Debian. I told them to forget the wireless, I was wired. (It appears to be an Intel chipset, so I'm guessing it's just a bit too new for Stable.)

Anyway, the new computer works very nicely and Zareason is still there.

Zareason recently relocated to a newer, updated shop. I am way passed my warranty date on my Strata 7440 laptop that I purchased for Slackware 14.1. The support still answered questions I recently had a few months ago about some hardware upgrade I made to the laptop. I know most would rather build their own machine, but Zareason is top notch service and provides hardware that is dependable.

I must quibble. I know that some persons are fanatical about building their own machines and I say more power to them. But I don't think it's "most" by any means.

I have purchased four Zareason devices and have quite happy with every one--I find the quality of the hardware to be excellent. Heck, my Zareason laptop has the best laptop keyboard I've ever used.

I was quite glad that that outfit seems to be still alive and well, despite the concerns of a few posters here at LQ.

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I agree. When I first started college and my A+ certification years ago, I always built my own rigs. At this point I just want hardware that is Linux compatible. It is much more valuable to know that my hardware will work out of the box on most, if not all, modern Linux distributions. ZaReason provides hardware that is new enough to be competitive with other manufacturers, yet extremely stable.

Except for my old Logitech G15 gaming keyboard and Zowie gaming mouse, most of my peripherals are from ZaReason as well. Their external USB 3.0 SATA drives are very reliable.

For quite a while now I have been wanting to replace the 6 SBCs I use for various services (File and print server, backups, distributed compilers, and software mirroring, etc) here at home with a single virtualized home server. The Breeze 860 looks perfect for such a job, but I digress. Being on a fixed income makes it difficult to rationalize a dedicated personal server in a world with VPS hosting and rapsberry Pis.

Back where I used to live, there was a marvelous second-hand computer shop. The lead repair tech had a sideline of building machines and selling them on Newegg. My favorite was one that he built in a Tidy Cat cat litter tub.

I don't like to link to my own website in these parts because I'm not here to promote myself and it seems like bad form to me, but, in this case, I'll make an exception. (If I was wrong to do so, I will welcome guidance from the mods.)

Here are some of his creations.