In message <20050208174018.23003.qmail@mail.metta.lk>, "elliot" writes:
>I have a brand new 700 dollar dell computer, is there a good chance netbsd 
>and windows will run on it?  How can I be sure?  Thanks 
>

There are no guarantees, but the odds are pretty good.  That said, there's 
some chance that you'll have to fight something.  A NetBSD installation
CD will test access to the disk and the Ethernet card.  The remaining 
issue is the graphics card for X11; the only easy way I know to test 
that is via a NetBSD Live CD.  (There's a package in pkgsrc to build 
one, but I haven't tried it.)  I have a new Dell Dimension 8400; I did 
have problems with the graphics card, but switching to xorg instead of 
XFree86 solved it.  Everything else, including the GigE and the SATA 
disk, just worked.  (I'm running -current on this machine.)

		--Prof. Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb