Slashdot Mirror
Wal-Mart Sells PCs Preloaded With Sun's Linux
badboy3062 writes "Wal-Mart this week started selling Microtel PCs preloaded with Sun's Java Desktop System. Prices start at under $300 for a system without a floppy drive or monitor. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software, says this move is just another step in its plan to gain new audiences for its technologies."
here you go
as low as $288
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Actualy Floppy drives have gotten expensive around $10 a unit in modest quanities. Add the cost of installation and repair and it's 3.33-5% of the total cost of the system why bother?
No sir I dont like it.
No, in fact, I got a Sun Java Desktop "livecd" thingie with an issue of Linux User & Developer that I bought the other day...haven't really tried it out, but I'm pretty sure it's free
Setec Astronomy
I just had a client order a PC from Walmart 3 weeks ago, and I thought the cost (with Lindows, not the Sun offering) was more like $215, though that was with 64M RAM. I thought it was $265 after shipping.
Oh well. Still better than paying the Microsoft tax.
is the fact that you can't walk in to Wal-Mart and pick one of these up. They're only available online.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
What's the big deal here. If you go to Dell.com and click on Small Business you can get a Poweredge server for $279 with the following components:
Intel P4 2.4 Ghz
40 GB Hard Drive
128 MB Memory
Floppy Drive
48x CD-ROM
($379-$100 mail in rebate) I hate mail in rebates!!!!
This is basically a low-end desktop with no OS. Load your favorite distro and there you go!!
I think it's great that a company is selling computers preloaded with Linux but this really isn't news.
Man I have bought a bunch of these boxes. I normally buy the cheap 200 dollar not loaded model and throw fedora core on them and give them to our customers. In the two years now of running them I only had one that had the power supply give up the smoke. For non power users that just want to surf the web and do a occasional spread sheet the box is more than fast enough.
Got Code?
No, you guessed wrong. Well, I suppose you can't prevent a naive user from doing this, but JDS is based on SuSE, and SuSE requires you to define a non-root user at install time, telling you noisily that this is the account you should be using most of the time. So chances are good that most novice users will end up doing the right thing (it seems to work for SuSE, at any rate).
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
WalMart is not strong arming suppliers--the suppliers don't have to supply WalMart if they don't want to. What WalMart is doing is telling suppliers that they must have low prices and good service, if they are going to remain a supplier. When I say good service in this context it means that you supply the correct quantity, meeting spec, and on time.
My plant supplies WalMart and they suddenly wanted us to supply in (much) more expensive packaging and told us it had to be at the same price as the old packaging. We went to the Wal Mart buyer with the facts of what the new packaging would cost and they were OK with a price increase representing the increased cost. My experience is that they are good business people and they expect their suppliers to be good. If you can't supply quality product on time and at a competitive cost, you won't be a WalMart supplier.
A solid piece of hardware - I now have three operating in various capacities around the house - but noisy like you wouldn't believe. I've become accustomed to some minimal amount of acoustic engineering going into boxes these days -- all of the name brand boxes have an average (low) amount of noise. Not so with the Microtel. The power supply has a whoosh to it, and the CPU fan a bit of a low whir. You may be able to remedy this with a replacement low-noise PS.
Not bad for under $300, but, as always, you get what you pay for.
Why don't we have boxes with external (fanless - noiseless) power supplies? Everything that goes on inside the box is low voltage DC, right?
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
I'd expect some of the technology worker bees and programmers not to have much difficulty moving to something like this, but how about further up Sun's management hierachy that lives and breathes things like Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations?
I hate to burst your bubble, but having worked for Sun for the last 2 years, I can tell you that Sun does a pretty good job of keeping their own employees using Sun software. This includes Star Office and Solaris. Most Sun offices use SunRay terminals hooked to a Sun Enterprise server. They run StarOffice 7 on top of Solaris 9. This makes it pretty easy for a Mac geek like me to open work documents using OpenOffice on OS X. In fact, up until very recently it was a fireable offence to even install Windows XP on any work computer. They were pretty worried about all of the privacy issues in XP and didn't want MS stealing corporate secrets through some unknown backdoor. Now, they allow you to run XP only if you run some script called XP Neuter first.
If anything, things are the other way around here, simply because of the NIH (not invented here) syndrome. Sun employees tend to be extremely anti-MS and anti-IBM, and most would not run MS Office or even Internet Explorer unless they were forced to by some management directive.
About the Java Desktop rollout: I can't speak for those in large Sun offices like Broomfield, CO and Burlington, MA; they may be running it already, but out in the small field offices it hasn't been rolled out yet. I haven't had a chance to preview it yet with the LiveCD thingy, but I would imagine within a year or so everyone will be running it.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Dell does sell computers that don't require the microsoft tax you know.
As if the closed circuit TV systems that monitor every square inch of the store aren't enough.
Actually, not all of the camera domes you see in the ceiling have cameras in them.
That being said, I once had one of the Wal*Mart greeters chase me out into the parking lot and demand that I return inside the store because I apparently set off "Wal*Mart's inventory control system!". She refused to tell me why I needed to go back inside, so I shrugged and walked away. A plainclothesd LP came up to my drivers window as I was about to pull off. I told her she was free to ask her question in the parking lot, but I would not be inconvenienced to return inside the store unless she could give me a good reason. She told me they were calling the cops. I handed her my driver's license, said "Write down my name, go watch your videotape, and decide if you need to call the cops", took it back and drove away.
The funny thing was the reaction of the cops when I called them warning them that Wal*Mart was going to call them, and I gave them the full story. The copy who answered the phone had kind of an exasperated sound. "Yeah, they do that sort of stuff all the time", he told me.
Go figure.
Speaking of cameras, some Best Buy stores actually track 1 in 50 or so customers from entrance to exit for marketing purposes. You won't see the typical big black camra domes, instead there are little white camera domes on the trusswork, very, very inconspicuous. They're a few meters apart and completely blanket the store. (You should see the racks they go back to, it's insane) It's not in every store, but they tell me that the watch where you go, what you pick up, what you actually buy, etc.
Kinda scary really.
Sun's Java Desktop Linux distribution is SuSE 8.something with Sun logos. YaST, RPM, no little green chameleon. Format, install SuSE 9.1 with kernel 2.6 once it is released.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
ugly, underpowered, outdated? Why, because dad bought you the latest dual Intel Xeon with a $500 video board so you can frag away with your friends?
I'm writing this from one of those ugly, underpowered, outdated 1.3 Ghz Duron, 128 MB Microtels right now. 1.6 Ghz comparable to a postage stamp? You've been brainwashed by the gaming/hardware industry, my young friend.
While no one I know has purchased Microtels from Walmart, I'd say that's because there aren't any Walmarts in the area. I have, and business associates I know have, purchased Microtels from TigerDirect. I've been run Apache on several of them for about 3 years, with uptimes exceeding a year. Business associates have been using them for file/print, dns, apache, and desktops. Yes, desktops. Instead of spending $600 to $1,000 for business desktops (just the hardware and Windows operating system), they can spend $200-$230 plus shipping, and get a fully functioning computer that is more than sufficient for their offices, and to replace lesser powered, older systems.
Of those that need faster systems for some reason, they are still using the Microtel systems, but are forwarding X over the lan from a more powerful server (still under $1,000, including memory upgrade).
Walmart doesn't sell bath soaps and cereals to your mom, young man. They sell whatever consumer goods to consumers that consumers want or need. And through their wholesale division, they also sell to businesses. But their wholesale division is not located at every location where a regular Walmart is located, so Walmart relies on their Walmart stores to also sell to businesses.
Small businesses far outnumber medium (500+ employees) and large businesses. And small businesses are far more likely to have retail versions of software licenses, including Microsoft server licenses. And they are far more likely to run out and pick up a new desktop or three, on a spur of the moment, or over a weekend, than big businesses (though I've known techs from billion dollar companies do this also).
You may think a Microtel is ugly, outdated, and underpowered, especially if running a Microsoft operating system, but according to some of your fanboy tech enthusiast sites, my 1.3 Ghz Duron powered system will run rings around a 2 Ghz Celery powered system, especially against office productivity testing programs.
One problem was OpenOffice taking long time to load, but that problem was removed with OpenOffice optimizations to memory settings in the 1.0 release, faster startup in the 1.1 release, and the fact that in office settings on a server/client setup with X forwarding, OpenOffice can and often is left running on the server. While KDE is bloated compared to Windowmaker or Xfce, and KDE is often activated as the default environment, it can easily be switched to another lighter desktop, and in that case, can run even on a postage stamp. But the Microtels have no problems running KDE and OpenOffice on them, without a memory or processor upgrade, I should know, I'm doing it now.
Another fact that you or your dad may not have considered coming from a Windows environment, is that because a large number of small businesses are running old systems, dating back to the first generation of pentiums, 486s in some of the small businesses I know, and even Intel 8086s, and 8088s for custom written calculations in DOS that they 1. don't want to pay to have rewritten, and 2. aren't aware that Linux has DOS emulation. The last time I suggested moving off WordPerfect for DOS and onto Linux/OpenOffice, the response was, "why?" "It works". "Why mess with it, if it works?"
Business owners, especially small businesses, are very conservative. If something works, they don't want to upgrad