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Three LindowsOS PCs Reviewed
Eugenia writes "Not one, but three LindowsOS-based PCs (in the value range of $199 USD) were reviewed online by WashingtonPost. A TigerDirect PC, the traditional WalMart/MicrotelPC and one from Nova Computech. The reviewer says that these PCs while are very low-end today, compared to PCs 2 years ago, are actually pretty good solutions for home usage. The reviewer found them lacking in the gaming (no respectable 3D gfx card included), expandibility departments and while he mentions that Linux-based LindowsOS is affordable, is not a panacea as it lacks in good USB support and other demanding areas of our modern times."
For the price you get a good deal. $199 for a pc with OS, that is the same price as Windows XP alone. For $199 nobody should expect good 3d cars in the machine because a new 3d card designed to run modern 3d games costs $199. these machines are good for what they are designed for, inexpensive pc's to read email and browse the web.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
All through the complaints on what they are lacking one point is missed... THEY COST $199.00! they are basically a bare-bones PC. hell add another $59.00 and you can get a low end Geforce 4 and make it scream for games.
for $199.00 these things are great.
and the fact they are windows free are even better.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I got the impression they were biased from the beginning.
'they cant perform' due to the fact they are not cutting edge technology.
So what? most people don't have brand new stuff and get their jobs done just fine.
In business 99% of the computers are idle, waiting for the user to do something. Even in home life ( games aside ), the computer is NOT being taxed.. its mostly just a expensive heat generating device.
The idea you HAVE to keep this current cycle of upgrades going is really irritating. Efficient programming and some commonsense goes a long way.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And then...
"The reviewer found them lacking in the gaming, expandibility departments... lacks in good USB support and other demanding areas of our modern times."
Now maybe I'm just being picky here, but at least based on the headline, it would seem that this reviewer is contradicting himself.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Or... You plugh in the Lindows tinies as work stations in your kitchen (to access your recipe database) and bedroom, next to your server. When the Wall Mart stuff support Wi-Fi, that is...
What part of These computers sell for $200 did you miss? This isn't the late 90's era of "best bang for under a grand", this is a review of "best bang for an average lower-class can be paid for in a pay check" system. These computers aren't designed to be top of the line, these are a super happy medium between price and performance. If you want a gaming machine for less than $200, got get an PS2, XBox, or GameCube, these computers are meant to do what computers cheaply do. Surf the net, write papers/emails, dink around, etc.
What USB support is lacking? These computers are meant to be useable for Joe Average computer user. You can still visit slashdot with the damned things, no one thought to mention that as a high point. Lindows with a low price system makes a perfect computer for folks wanting to get on the internet and type up some christmas cards. This isn't meant to play Doom III, please remember that, there is a market that wal-mart sells to, and that market is designed for this computer.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
The machine is agonizingly slow because of its tiny 3GB drive, which the manufacturer said was recycled from an old notebook computer
Apparently the reviewer doesn't understand all that much about PC hardware. (S)he claims that the machine was slow because of the size of the hard drive!? The only way I can think of that mattering is if it causes you to have less swap space. Yeah, that drive is deinitely too small, but that won't make the machine slower! If it's a slow drive, then that will cut back performance, but when it comes to the speed of access "size doesn't matter". You could make a 3 gig drive that spins at 7200 rpms, and has 8 mb cache, and could be blazing (almost) and still small. That comment discredited everything (s)he said to me. Also, if it's taken from an old notebook, does that mean it's a 2.5" drive?
I have one more question that (s)he never answered. (S)he said that all but one of them didn't have a monitor included, but never said which came with one. Either I mis-read it, or there's some important information missing here. A 1 GHz system with a monitor for only $199 is incredible. Anyone have any info on that?
This space for rent, inquire within.
Yet another disappointing review whose title should really be âoeA review of the barebones hardware you can get for $200 at Walmart.â There are two, count em, two sentences about Lindows in the whole story:
All three came preinstalled with Lindows, a version of the Linux operating system designed for home users. But Lindows has drawbacks, notably poor support for USB peripherals such as digital cameras and scanners.
Dissapointing that they missed the opportunity to really talk about if this is the PC for grandma, or the other novice users who would be buying a PC so low on the dollar spectrum.
I wonder how many people will catch on to the quote at the end where the author mentions that Windows XP Home costs as much as the entire PC + Linux. With luck, it'll make some folks think.
And don't forget another hundred or so for a new hard drive that can hold said games, and a few hours to replace the old video card and HD and install the OS on it, and figure out how to install the NVIDIA drivers, and oh shit, this just went WAY beyond the capabilities of Joe Sixpack.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Hmmm
A drive that size would not matter in a small office environment either, where all data (in theory) would be held on a server, not on the machine itself. These machines run OpenOffice and would do well enough for a SOHO environment, which is where Linux needs to move into the Office market.
The SOHO market typically has tighter profit/loss margins, so it will make sense to move towards an Open Source solution (as most SOHO's allready employ outside Tech support) as the most cost effective.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Also, look at the target market. All they're trying to do is provide a system on which they can send e-mail and browse the web. Most of these machines don't even come with decent video cards or a cd-writer; so, clearly they're not intended for gamers or people who save a lot of digital photos.
And as long as the Linux community maintains this elitist attitude, it will NEVER replace/defeat Windows.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
The trick is to NOT use KDE/Gnome and kill openoffice, gimp, acroread, realplayer, xine when you do not need it.
For YOU and a lot of us Geeks around here (myself included), those are accepted options. But this is about the average Joe Six-Pack home user. They need to easily type up a letter to mail Aunt Sally on her birthday and not have to learn vi. They want to watch movies sent to them. They want eye-candy. They want to stream audio and video.
This is stuff I'm sure you're aware of, but that sentence just doesn't apply to someone like my grandma for instance.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
"And as long as the Linux community maintains this elitist attitude, it will NEVER replace/defeat Windows."
And as long as Joe is reluctant to understand (not even learn) Linux, he doesn't deserve it. It isn't elitism, just practical wisdom.
If Joe depends on hotmail spam to get his education (free diplomas), his money (free credit checks) and his wisdom (sponsored study reports), he deserves what he gets from the present owners of said e-mail service.
Linux helps those who refuse to believe all they hear.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Just what I expected. The review barely qualifies as such, but its overview covers what most suspect -- that these are low power machines built for low power work. That being said, I think the concept is fantastic. For the starving students out there this can be an utterly cheap solution for having a PC to type stuff up on. This would also be good for having "dumb terminals" for other rooms around the house.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
computers run on AMD Duron 1.0- or 1.1GHz processors,...The machines aren't fast enough to do intensive work like... playing Quake III,
So I guess I was just imagining it when I played Quake3 on my Celeron-533? Even if it's got a crappy graphics card, a Geforce2MX would be plenty good enough and costs like $30 or something. Finally, cheap computers with "good enough" performance.
Lindows reviews? Somehow this just seems counter-productive. The very name "Lindows" just tells you we don't really want ANYTHING to do with it. Hence, it will never catch on. I think nearly all us folks who actually READ slashdot's articles are well aware of how crappy Lindows boxen tend to be. I mean, when is the last time you saw an OEM or retail computer vendor advertising an uber-box with GNU/Linux? They only want to sell the crappy machines with Lindows (or any other ~linux)... Great way to leverage your product, guys! Now all the consumers will only know lindows is similar to windows in the important ways: It's clunky, it's slow, it's bloated, it's overpriced (don't even go there), and it's just a vehicle to serve you more ads, more spam, and more junkware. If we wanted the features Lindows offers, we'd burn a copy of win98 and still be able to play games.
/. honestly want to get rid of the M$ pigopoly, shouldn't you be encouraging people to use something else? PUT YOUR D4MN MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS! Do you honestly think this is going to happen on it's own? An OS model this free and powerful will NEVER catch on as long as there's no money to be made by selling it.
When the big 5 OEMs start putting out SuSe and RH boxen on their big advert campaigns, we may see progress. You want linux (or whatever your favorite free OS happens to be) to become more popular? How about all us geeks and techs and admins start encouraging folks to use *NIX instead of obfuscating the issue? When we all help our MOTHERS and SISTERS, and our FATHERS and BROTHERS and FRIENDS learn to use Linux without acting like it's some kind of obscure and bizarre cult for geeks... perhaps then we'll see a shift from the insane strongarm tactics of M$ and their cronies.
So go convince a relative or friend to switch over to linux... do it one at a time so you don't get swamped with "support" calls. DO YOUR PART! We'll never get everyone to migrate all at once. They may be fed up with M$, too, but it's all they know. If you slacker geeks here on the
ok, it was a nice thought though, wasn't it?
So far a lot of the comments have been of the following types:
1. Hey, that's a really shitty review.
2. What great/terrible hardware for $199.
3. Lindows is/isn't a good choice for home usage.
I think ya'll are missing the big picture - the fact that a Linux based PC even got reviewed in such a mainstream news source! Its not posted to Slashdot because it is a complete technical review, nor to let all you l33t fuckers know about the crazy good hardware inside to make your little coder jaws go slack in awe. It got posted to slashdot because, holy shit, its a review of a Linux-based PC in a very prominent online news source that the majority of readers who visit have probably never laid eyes on Linux before. Its called EXPOSURE (and not the bad, get registered to a sex offender database type, either.)
Especially in the face of all the FUD surrounding Linux cuz of those SCO bastards, its really nice to see an average Joe type news source with an average Joe type reviewer gving space and consideration to a rather new, highly feared and doubted, but otherwise relatively UNKNOWN (to most people, not geeks) solution to the problem of a new PC costing too much money.
And if mom and dad or grandma and grandpa can send email, surf the web, use their digital camera, and play some Sims, what the hell are they missing? When was the last time your grandma bragged about her frag rate? That doesn't count if your grandma is Italian and runs hits for the mob.
Anyway, my 2Â.
I did word processing at 2.5 MHz. No Internet available to me at the time, though.
Who exactly is joe service pack?
My girlfriend doesn't understand tech, but she would be just fine with one of these Lindows PC's. she writes papers and checks her e-mail on her computer, and that's pretty much it. She doesn't need to understand tech, nor should she have to. She doesn't understand how an internal combustion engine works, nor do most Americans, but she can drive a car just fine (in fact, she's a better driver than most people I know, myself included).
Your attitude is not simply just why Linux hasn't caught on, it's also why people at large hold geeks up to ridicule and scorn.
my pet machine
# The Post article said shipping costs $80. I'm guessing that's for overnight. I paid $25 for UPS ground.
Between the misreported shipping price and assuming the one PC was slow due to the size of that 3GB drive, the review is irresponsible and probably done by a journalist operating at the boundaries of their experience.
Reviews that misreport information are worse than useless, because uninformed readers are hungry for information to make decisions. In this case, unfortunately, a retraction is too late--the damage is already done for many readers.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
If you're making a system for Grandma, it would be better if it had a CD-RW drive instead of a regular CD drive. That way you easily back the system up for Grandma when you come to visit.
I did that for my parent's P133 system just this past weekend with the drive we got my Dad for Father's Day.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
... so? All they have to do is the same as everyone else does - buy another hard drive when they need more space. The money they save by not paying the M$ tax will buy them another 80 to 120 gigs :-)
Yeah it would be nice with a bigger drive. So would a LCD monitor, a 128MB 3D video card, 3 piece subwoofer, 512DDR memory, a faster processor, firewire, 10K rpm drives. Of course it would no longer be a $199 computer. As with all computer pricing, there is a price to performance factor. The difference between bottom of the barrel PC ($199) and a decent performer $300-400) is not much but still $100-200 more or 2x the price. $199 is still a very decent price for a full computer.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
if people don't "understand" their cars, Pep boys et all are sure in for a huge wakeup call.
It boils down to this: learn things and save money (and get smarter as a side bonus)
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Of course, simply because it's in the manual doesn't mean the manual entry really answers the question, or that it makes any damn sense. Many times I've helped users simply be rephrasing what is in the manual (that they've already looked at) and translating it to english.
Manuals try to pack a lot of information into a little space (mainly because there is a lot to document, the things being documented generally don't lend themselves to it, and most of those doing the documenting don't want to do any more typing than they have to.) so generally this isn't very readable to your average user.