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Linuxwatch Budget System of 2001
A reader writes "Linuxwatch.org has posted their Budget System of 2001 in response to LinuxHardware's 2001 System of the year. Boasting their system is 13% of the price and plenty of power for "normal users". Running at 1.4Ghz with 256MB RAM, it doesn't seem to bad for "normal users"(whatever that means)IMHO."
The "average user" is someone who surfs the web, sends the occasional e-mail, and writes letters. And that user does not significantly benefit from a ghz-class machine. Put them on an "old" 700mhz machine from a couple of years ago, and they do just fine. More and more individuals and businesses are realizing that the computers that they already own work fine for what they do. People no longer drum their fingers waiting for programs to load, files to compress, and spreadsheets to recalculate.
Sure, there are a handful of people who really do need fast machines, but, as Apple has realized, you don't need to have ghz+ machines to satisfy the average user.
Oops, I thought they meant a watch running Linux at 1.4Ghz with 256MB RAM.
Booya! I'll take one of those.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
I'm glad they highlight the budget system. As a software developer, I find most of my desktop cycles are spare. Even builds I do on a server. Budget systems can do more now than supercomputers a few years ago.
What the computer industry really needs are some breakthroughs in software development to enhance stability and usability.
for the same price you can get a turtle beach - santa Cruz. nice linux support, and it beats the tar out of the soundblaster live in specs reliability and system stability. (SBLive is NOT PCI2.1 compliant and does leak noise onto the PCI bus. link about it here
Otherwise, couple that machine with a nice 15" Flat panel display and you have a nice Lan-party Box.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's interesting to see how prices for hardware continually drops while software prices (Non-free as in beer software) maintain or increase in price. The total system cost for machine listed in the article is $399..Now, let's add Windows...$99, an office suite $150, anti-virus software, $59...We've almost immediately doubled the price of the machine by merely adding functionality. This is quite possibly why people accept paying extragavant prices for software; it's a trade-off..lower prices for hardware, higher prices for software = maintain status quo of computer system pricing.
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
...if their budget system is 4 times faster than my system?
*blush in shame*
And I consider myself a geek...
My sig hates me. That's ok, I never cared for it much anyway.
... because even the webservers don't feel like working. Linuxwatch.com has been successfully slashdotted. Anyone who got through mind posting the hardware configuration of this wonderful budget beast?
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
It's just like the AC on the site asked (paraphrasing), "Great box, where's the vendor?"
I know that the place I work for would probably buy lots of these for an appliance app we've designed and sell, if we could get decent no-hassle quick-turnaround warranty service on them.
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
I know some people hate eMachines, but my two have been problem free, including one which is now more than 4 yrs old.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
I like really fast systems; I simulate brain areas for a living (or, well, for a PhD), and like lots of speed. The reality is, however, that even with an application like that, I spend a very small time actually running the simulator, and most of my time in an editor, writing code, writing papers, or writing grant proposals. This system, overall, would probably make me just as happy as a biggest-bang-of-all kind of product.
The only app I can think of that would require the best PC available (and that does not simply require the fastest system) is games. You want to run really serious simulations or hardware design apps? Well, get a big workstation or a PC cluster or something. You want to run smaller stuff? Run it on an ordinary PC, maybe get a cup of coffee while it churns - or get some text written while the simulator is working.
We're approaching the inflection point where it simply does not apply to get steadily faster, more potent computers. Last years machine - or that of three years ago - will do pretty much everything you throw at it. Not even MS has been able to increase system requirements at the same speed hardware has improved for the last couple of years.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I tried to post a comment at that site, but it seems their comments system is down (slashdotted?). Anyway, I'll post it here:
I miss a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a floppy drive and a cpu cooler (you'll need a good one with that CPU: it will not burn out your pocket, but WILL burn out itself and your motherboard if you don't cool it properly).
Furthermore, keeping a cdrom drive out of the equation isn't really honest. Almost any desktop box needs one. I don't know whether a NIC is included in the "system of the year", but this is the same as for a cdrom: almost any desktop box needs one.
I guess we can double the price for this so called budget system, because working without input and output devices (silly unneeded things like a monitor/keyboard etc) is a bit difficult.
However, the Soyo (and your ASUS) board use the Via southbridge POS. After upgrading my system to a SiS based performing I realized how poor my Soyo and Abit systems where performing. the DMA and PCI implementation on the VIA chipsets is just bad.
See The Register for one example of problems with Via Chipsets. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/23502.html
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Looks like they're /.'d, i guess it just goes to show that a budget desktop isn't a budget server.
$55 for a radeon? Are they ... nuts?
Last time I checked, you could get a ATI Radeon video card starting at $39.
--"pine in gap" is NOT an innuendo
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nice idea, and I'd buy one if they were on sale, but it does seem to be missing a few things such as a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and most importantly a power supply (I doubt that $40 case comes with a $300 Athlon power supply). No CD-RW or DVD either, but I guess that's OK for a budget box.
Does anyone actually sell these type configurations for $500 ?
I think there system lacks any creativity. Now that you can buy all the processing power an average user needs very cheaply, why do they just make a budget system centered on performance ?
They should made a system centered on low noise or one that has good look or something other that isn't found in every system now.
What about making a small and quite system using a shuttle sv24 barebone with a passive cooled c3 ? Or a dual duron ?
And why did they just use 256 mb ? Now that ram is that cheap, they should brought at least 512 mb while that 1.4 ghz athlon isn't really needed. Or what about ECC sdram ?
Jan
I'm running 750 Mhz Slot A Athlon [classic] on a windoze box. This is a smoking machine even with the huge over head of XP. All the fluffy things don't seem to slow me down.
The difference seems to be the amount of ram. I've went from 128 to 384 and cut my boot time in half, so it seemed. When I dual-booted from this box, linux smoked and I've never seen a faster machine.
My linux box is simply a 333Mhz K6-2. Nothing seems to be slow there. I must admit that I don't run X, quake or etc... but it seems to be enough.
A budget system at 1.4Ghz seems to be a little much. But while we are on the subject, the amount of RAM seems to be low considering that RAM is so cheap.
I could be wrong, I can access the page.. or any page at Linuxwatch.
Get your Unix fortune now!
One weird thing that I saw, I was looking up the mobo and some of the stats on the motherboard say that it supports up to 1.2ghz cpu's and yet they're trying to put a 1.4ghz cpu into it?
Now, let's add Windows...$99
full official version of Red Hat 7.2...$70. It's as easy to install as any version of Windows I've tried.
an office suite $150
Even a Windows office suite doesn't cost $150. You can get OpenOffice.org suite for only the cost of downloading 48 MB (three hours over a 56K modem).
anti-virus software, $59...
Don't overpay. Here's Norton AV 2002 for $20.
We've almost immediately doubled the price of the machine by merely adding functionality.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I noticed the circular for my local Fry's advertised a desktop (w/o monitor) for $299 this morning. 900Mhz Celeron, 128MB RAM, 20GB HDD. When I looked closer, it said it was linux 1.3-based (whatever the hell that means, aren't we on the 2.4x kernel now?). The ad declared that it supported "e-mail, web browsing, and word processing", and that "Windows [was] available for additional charge". So it really does appear that these sorts of machines are being sold retail.
on such a system, because that would explain why it's /.'d all to heck. ;)
No chance of a mirror, eh? How about a Google cache?
My sigs always suck.
Relax, it's just a joke.
Where are the classic MIPS ratings? It's a simple but fairly accurate statement on how fast a processor will go. A 486 100MHz and a Pentium 100MHz has the same MHz, but not the same MIPS.
Zodiac Survey
My Dad threw it out last year, A P75 with 32 MB and an 800 MB dirve. Its headless, but it runs slackware 8.0 and is my dns, mail server, web server, ssh server and pop mail client for the whole family. For style I spray painted it green, but ran out 3/4 of the way. Gotta love it.
And I thought we were slash.
But, Hemos you should give them fair warning before you post a hardware realted article. You know we're a bunch of OCP junkies
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
That's what porn videos are
You would think they could have at least beowolfed them...
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
This argument gets thrown around all the time, and it's never made much sense to me.
Obviously, the reason hardware prices have gone down is because the cost of building computer components goes down over time. On the other hand the cost of expert software programmers has tended to go up because you're paying for a salary rather than a physical component. You really can't compare physical processes to intellectual resources.
Obviously, the reason hardware prices have gone down is because the cost of building computer components goes down over time.
.. company sells enough to cover costs, and (slowly) starts dropping the price because now they only have to worry about manufacturing costs.. If they didn't drop their prices, their competition begins to steal their marketshare.
No, the reason hardware prices go down is because hardware companies have competition
Cost to design and engineer a CPU or video card costs $X
Software company releases an OS or Office Suite, and sells enough to cover programmers time. They then see they have no competition, and decide "well, we'll just keep the price the same - we have no reason to lower our prices, because we have no competition."
Don't be fooled by mhz ratings, pure and simple.
I was benchmarking systems back when 4mhz Z80s were fast. I'm not "fooled" by mhz ratings. That's why I just used a generic term of "ghz class" rather than getting into pissing contests about whether a 1.66ghz Athlon XP was faster than a 2.0ghz Pentium 4.
But, no reputable benchmark in the world, whether MFLOPS, SPECmarks, Whetstones, Dhrystones, or something else, is going to show the new 800mhz iMac or a 700mhz PIII to be in the same class as a 1.4ghz Athlon XP.
And that's why I used a fairly generic term that everyone would understand rather than saying "the average user does not need a 2500 Dhrystone class machine."
(The article is slashdotted, so I'm assuming by your post that they chose the SBLive for the machine).
The Linux support for the Santa Cruz is nowhere near that of the SBLive.
First, the SBLive will give you hardware mixing in Linux, so there's no need to worry about which apps use which sound daemon. The CS4630 driver doesn't do this.
Second, The sound quality of the SBLive in Linux is much better than in Windows. Chalk that up to the Linux emu10k1 driver guys who have created better DSP patches for the emu10k1 than the guys at Creative.
Finally, there's no evidence that the SBLive's non-compliance has had adverse effects in any OS other than Windows, at least not that I've seen or heard. I've heard many testimonials from people with the SBLive/686B combo who have no problems in Linux.
Your gripes would've been applicable had this been a Windows box, but it isn't.
an office suite $150
Here's an interesting little secret for Mac OS and Windows users looking for a good office suite. AppleWorks 6 is only _39 dollars_ from the Apple Store for Education. Runs on Windows, Classic Mac OS, and natively on OS X. That's what I'm running on my home and work machines. And the filters for MS Office are top notch.
Come to think of it, you could buy AppleWorks instead of MS Office for your machine now, and use the money you saved on the license to buy this _entire_ budget system. And a monitor. And a NIC. And all the other parts people mention are missing from the currently Slashdotted article.
--saint
Well, you already have a monitor, or you might have trouble reading the article mentioned :) No need for another... I have several computers all running through a KVM switch... makes life easier and cheaper.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Jorge de Burgos: Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith, because without fear of the Devil there is no more need of God.
Jorge de Burgos: Laughter is a devilish whim which deforms, uh, the face and makes men look like monkeys.
William of Baskerville: Monkeys do not laugh. Laughter is particular to men.
Jorge de Burgos: As is sin. Christ never laughed.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Value not only refers to cost of the machine but the quality within.
That's why I buy Apple gear. But try explaining the concept of a price premium for value to a bunch of 1337 h@x0rs living in mom's basement, running a system cobbled together from CompUSA free-with-rebate parts, an untested bleeding edge kernel grafted onto the TurboLinux install from the CD they found in the dumpster behind Barnes and Noble's.
Yeah, I know, Flamebait. I've been at the cap too fucking long anyway.
--saint
then what do you think the odds are of getting Apple to port this to Linux? I'd buy it in a second. from reports at MacExpo, it seems like Apple is cozying up to the Linux community.
I've said it before, I'll say it again...instead of XP, go get 2000 Pro before it's all gone. Those "suggested requirements" for XP will make 2K Pro VERY happy. 2K has all the advantages of XP without the lame-ass crap that slows XP down and makes it a security nightmare.
Of course, Linux will make a 133MHz Pentium with 64MB sing...that is, unless you're running Gnome or KDE as your GUI.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Since AMD stopped production of the K6 line of CPUs quite some time ago, finding older CPUs can be a bit hard. And even so they are still about equal in cost to the Duron line of proccessors.
/nearly/ cheap enough to be a better deal then a seperate video card. Integrated sound is doing good on the platform though.)
A local middle school recently got a bunch of K6-(2/3) 555mhz systems for $269 each, the best that can be done with Durons is ~$450 each.
The main advantage to the older K6 line though is the wide variety of cheap integrated Super Socket 7 motherboards that were made.
Computer prices could drop another $100-$150 if some more companies made some cheap OEM-ish integrated motherboards for the K7 line of CPUs. (the few ones that are out there are not in large supply for third party buyers and they are not
Prices would drop even further if a cheezy 1 IDE channel Make Stuff Work style Motherboard was made. You know, 2 RAM slots, 2 or 3 PCI slots, integrated AGP, etc. Heh. Yah it would suck for many causes, but damnit, I have had quite a few requests for such systems! (I do custom build jobs, most of what people want now days are e-mail terminals with a wordproccessor)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
...that the monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc, are meant to be reused from your old 486.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
RED HAT REALLY CHOKES BADLY AUTOPARTITIONING SMALL DISKS. It likes to keep things proportional and make sure there's lots of room in
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I really don't see what the big deal is with slashdotted servers. I've had two of my own articles posted on slashdot, and rode the wave just fine....ON A CABLE MODEM.
:)
Yes, it's true. I hosted a review / editorial site on a Cox@home cable modem for around a year and a half. Never had a problem. It maxed at 30k/sec upstream. Images might have been slow to load, but the entire page always loaded in less than 10 seconds (and rest assured, it had plenty of images, screenshots, and data to load). I think the problem lies less with the amount of visitors going to the site, but with the inefficient page designs with inefficiently placed and uncompressed images.
But then again, maybe I'm just blowing my own horn.
We switched to SuSE at version 4.0 of RH (the one that broke glibc) and have never looked back. That was some 4 or 5 years ago. SuSE is not as pricey as RH - and we *always* buy a new set of disks, books, and registration for our customers - and it is the easiest install IMHO.
I am still installing routinely on 500mb drives and 16mb of RAM using machines thrown out by other clients. These make dandy firewalls and printer servers plus I have one P133 running my mp3 box and doing my file serving.
SuSE rocks... just did an install on a Dell server using ext2 for boot and ext3 for files... dual 18gb ultra scsi, dual P933, hot swap drives and power supplies and 1mb of ram. I think he paid about $2k for it. Gonna replace his ancient NT4 box and no one will ever notice!!! Gotta love it!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
How do I get to the store for education? Even at $79 (the regular price), it's reasonable, but I couldn't find any mention of a Windows version. Is that only available through the education store?
I noticed, as you did, that the PC requirements are missing from the normal store but present in the regular store. So I called 1-800-MY-APPLE to ask about that, and sat on hold for a while listening to truly shit music. I gave up after a while without getting through, but they ought to be able to answer the question for you.
--saint
Please, when can we get just a little bit of simple code in the bootrom to do that initial installation over the net?
When you get pretty much anything but an x86 architecture machine. I installed OpenBSD on my iMac and on my ancient Sun IPC without any media at all -- just netbooted them from the firmware, picked up the software from my NetBSD box, and took it from there.
It really is pretty surprising that the whole boot ROM / BIOS setup for the Intel architectures hasn't changed a whole lot since I built my first 286.
--saint
Hi, I have a suggestion : you could mirror the text of the story in your journal.
On a related note, we need some kind of peer-to-peer mirroring system.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel