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Slashback: Newton, Wal-Mart, Eats
Honestly, where would they have unloaded that anyway? yorgasor writes "Yahoo reports that the stolen copies of Newton's Principia have been successfully recovered. The thieves are also suspected of other thefts from several Moscow and St Petersburg libraries."
They have everything. An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Lycoris joins Lindows and Mandrake in being preloaded for walmart.com: 'The new $199 Desktop/LX Certified MicroTel PCs include the Desktop/ LX operating system. Desktop/LX also includes the following incredible software features without any additional downloading:'"
Who needs a war? Krieger writes "I found this link to the definitive browser wars at HardOCP, where you get to play checkers to prove your browsers superiority. Taking the browser wars to a new high/low?"
Here's the hook, can you pass that sinker please ... JoeWalsh writes "According to this article, earlier this month RMS visited India and tried to convince them to use Free (as in freedom) Software. Then along comes Bill Gates this month, handing out free (as in beer) software, and suddenly India isn't interested in RMS's message. A choice quote: "We are a poor country. We cannot develop operating systems and platforms on our own." Did RMS tell them they couldn't use GNU/Linux, or is this more Microsoft propaganda at work?"
What they don't tell you in the advertising is that many of these cheapie Walmart PC's run a processor from Cyrix that VASTLY underperforms Intel/AMD chips of the same speed. Another example of how MHz/GHz are not a good measure of system performance. Also, another example of how there's no such thing as a free lunch.
They are having some server problems so I have included portions from the article here
Via wins big Wal-Mart Linux PC order
C3-Cyrix-Centaur selling 300,000 PCM?
By Mike Magee: Tuesday 19 November 2002, 09:58
TAIWANESE SEMI firm Via has secured an order from massive shop Wal-Mart for two of its C3-Cyrix-Centaur X86 based processors. The Economic News reports that Via and Wal-Mart will create two budget machines running flavours of the Linux OS. There's also a plan for the chip company to make low cost sub $300 machines running Windows Eyecandy. The article claims that Medion is also set to clinch a deal with Via, while Legend and the Founder Group also use some of the C3 processors.
Help fight continental drift.
That article doesn't say that Wal-Mart is selling 300,000 Linux PCs per month. It says that Via is selling 300,000 C3s per month to buyers including Wal-Mart.
Where did you find office for $90? last I looked you were looking at over $200 for the small buisness editions and more yet for professional.
A pretty good indicator of what people are surfing with. It seems that "other" has leveled off recently. It's doubtful that Moz is making any more headway into IE6's massive browser share.
For all intents and purposes, there is no browser war.
You may be surprised but:
1. my DIY desktop with cheap all0-in-one PC chips 810LMR motherboards runs Linux great: Windows 98 and 2000 even do not want to install - they crash during installation
2. my toshiba notebook came with XP, there was no problem with installing Linux. Installing win98
was not really possible as it worked only in 640x480 resolution
So it is not true that if hardware is not
OK for Windows then it is not OK for Windows.
It simply depends on the hardware.
Regarding cheap machines: one can get
PC CHIPS810LMR - fully Linux-compatible mobo
with soubd/graphics and network built in
together with fan and 900MHz Duron for $69
shipped - just look at www.pricewatch.com.
With such prices it is easy to build much
better sub-$200 machine than Wal-mart ones.
but of course Wal-mart onesa are not for people
who can do it.
You mean the Dilberito.
My uncle wanted a computer as cheap as possible (as a 2nd PC in his house). I had him order a walmart PC with Mandrake. What he got was a decent PC with an AMD Athlon processor, 256MB Ram, 20GB hd and onboard video/sound, along with a PCI ethernet card and modem, all assembled. When I came over to help him set it up, I just plugged in the keyboard and mouse and monitor (which he already had). It was much easier than building him one, and it only cost $400. Then he said he wanted Win2k instead of Mandrake... well guess what. The walmart PC cam with a single CDROM that had drivers for all the hardware for every version of windows! So 40 minutes later, he had a full Athlon system. I didnt have to install any hardware or hunt down any drivers on the internet. Walmart is doing a good job with their PCs.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
What a dumbass post. How will they buy them? See, there are these things called stores. Walmart has a few. In fact, Walmart has a lot. In fact, Walmart is the largest retail company in the world.
Walmart sells a wide range of products to the 'lowest comment denominator' customers. They may not have the money to buy high end but they're not dumbasses; they know if they buy a computer for $200 while Dell advertises computers for $1000, their computer is not going to be the newest and fasters and it's not going to run everything.
Leaving aside the traditional Walmart customer...
Many Linux geeks I know run multiple boxes, often on old hardware. A cheap no-frills box you can pick up with a 20 minute trip and use for a mail server, firewall, database, etc isn't a bad deal.
*******Attention: FUD ALERT********
Let's see Windows XP run on a 386 with 8M ram. Nice FUD Bill.
You, sir, have won an express ticket to my foes list. Sure I *could* run Slackware 3 with Linux kernel 2.0 with barely any drivers loaded and just running c-shell (really slowly I might add) on that hardware, but not much else.
Of course you could just run DOS 6.22 on there as well.
By the way, I can get XP running faster than you can ever get KDE3/GNOME2 running on an identical system. That's a fact, not uninformed FUD.
Now, the dumbass post called the article: "This exciting new $199 Desktop/LX Certified MicroTel PC will be available for purchase exclusively from the WalMart Online Lycoris Catalog."
So Joe Blow thinks : "I want to be able to access the internet. I will buy a computer. I will buy the $200 computer from Wal-Mart. This computer is only sold on the internet. I want to be able to access the internet. I will buy a computer."....
Maybe the dumbass poster assumed that you would have read the article. I guess he didn't think you would be a dumbass.
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We are not amused.