Is this Sub-$260US PC Worthwhile?

psychosis asks: "At a recent computer show, I came across an interesting bare bones system. It measures only 10.7" x 11.6" x 3.2", and includes a CD-ROM (or DVD), floppy, 2xUSB, lpt, RCA and S-video outputs, sound card, modem, and 10/100 NIC. It just needs a PPGA Celeron 300-500 CUP, RAM, and HDD. All this for about $160 as listed on pricewatch.com. A review of the (admittedly cheesy) customer comments on the first site show that someone claims to be running Linux on it. Someone else mentions the tasty idea of a car-based DVD/MP3/GPS implementation. A good friend of mine brought up a cheap clustering solution. Does anyone have any credible (i.e. not directly from a dealer!) experience with this hardware? What kernel modules do the integrated components use? If this particular one doesn't fare well with the penguin, are there similar ones that do?" And if it doesn't run Linux, how about FreeBSD or Be? I mean, if these things aren't pure crap, these would make a great small computer for the home.

Comments

They're great for print servers

[twstdpear]

One of our clients recently came to us with a request to build a number of print servers. Since these things have such a small footprint, they're ideal for this.

We've only noted two problems with them so far. Out of the 20 or so we've built, a couple had problems with going to sleep and never waking back up (making changes to some of the BIOS settings seemed to fix this). One of them was dead, although I don't know if we received the machine that way or if the guy putting the CPU/memory into the system might have zapped it.

A couple of us suggested that they would be great Multimedia machines for home (I think that's the market they were aiming for anyway). The price is reasonable, and when equipped with a DVD, use the S-Video or composite connectors to pipe the video to your TV, and it has four-speaker stereo. With a big enough HD, rip all your CDs to it, and then listen to your music via Sonique while piping Sonique's visualizations to your TV (assuming windoze).

Re:Bad aura

[starslab]

Well, your something "Quite similar" can't really exist. For starters, you can't call something with a "nonstandard ethernet wiring configuration" "ethernet". You'd have to call it "fucked-upnet". Your software is fucked in the head, as ethernet drivers shouldn't (granted, only a shouldn't, not a can't) affect the IP stack.

Now for the coupe de grace : there's no expansion slots in this thing, so i'm really wondering how you dropped in a PCI NIC.

In short, you sir are FUDDING quite strongly.

I have personal experience with one of these BookPCs, as i've set one up for someone and am teaching them how to use it. Granted, i'm only using Win98 on it, and it's no steller performer, but it runs quite well. The only problem we've had with it is that they used a really crummy socket. The processor has become unseated once. And yes, the sleep has *problems*. But as I never use that, and I consider it useless for non-laptop systems, I don't really care.

And the built in modem sucks badly, as you'd expect with any "host-based" modem. I've got a real USB modem on it and it flies! The ethernet seemed to do okay, though I've never done anything stressful to it.


"Binaries may die but source code lives forever"
-- Unknown

SkyHawk
Andrew Fremantle

What about sound?

[Ledge Kindred]

with any old CPU that would fit and 64MB of RAM, this would make an awesome network-bootable MP3 player.

If Linux supports the sound chip on this weirdo thing, that is.

And anyone know if it has "line out" or just "speaker out"?

-=-=-=-=-

Hmmm.....

[god_of_the_machine]

I have some minor problems with this computer.

1) $260 price is distorted by not including CPU or hard drive. Is this a good trend? OOH.. I can sell you a computer for $60 -- but it doesn't include a CD, CPU, mobo, video adaptor, hard disk, or anything else. Oh, wait.. those are called "cases" not computers!

2) Socket 370 support only? ACK -- probably related to point #3.

3) 100W Power supply? Can anybody give me insight about how much power the required components. My guess is not much power left over to be made available to other peripherals. Good thing they support USB otherwise this would be a serious problem.

4) I didn't see much info on the video adaptor... except that it supports DVD playback (which is nice). But I wonder what it is!

Anyhow, it has good potential for a replacement for a DVD player, and as one of the first "home theatre" computers. I'm looking forward to version 2! =)

-rt-