How Cheap Can A PC Be?

geoff lane writes "Ballmer wants a $100 computer. OK, can we build a reasonable PC for just $100 and a copy of Linux? The rules are: It's assumed that a monitor, keyboard and mouse are already available. Ethernet connectivity must be provided. All components must already have Linux support. All components must be new and currently available. The result must be electrically safe for the home. Is it possible?"

Comments

the Xbox

[WormholeFiend]

is at 149$... no dice with that suggestion I guess.

Re:the Xbox

[MadBiologist]

Didn't somebody hack a Gamecube to run Linux? I forget who hacked what to whom... I do remember that the Dreamcast could run Apache on Linux, and that's probably the cheapest console to get to run something like that.... if you can find one.

Re:the Xbox

[Anubis350]

yes they did, there's a website for it here

looks pretty cool, and prolly fulfils the reqs for this article

Re:the Xbox

[Yolegoman]

Yes, but recently they have had brand new Xboxes on Half.com, Ebay's child company, for $105 with shipping. I'm currently saving my meager allowance up to turn one of those thing's into a Linux Server; I don't even need a monitor / keyboard / mouse, as I'm going to SSH into the thing with my Windows Laptop.

- Yolego

Re:the Xbox

[Covener]

A joystick sends coordinates, while a mouse sends changes in position.

Even if that were true of joysticks, it's not exactly a chore to translate between the two.

Re:the Xbox

[Bachus9000]

The Gamecube costs $100 IIRC...

Re:the Xbox

[coldguy]

Er, maybe you didn't hear, but they dropped the price on the GameCube to $99 a long time ago.

Re:the Xbox

[McKinney83]

Only $69 Used!

Re:the Xbox

[drinkypoo]

In fact Xebian, a distribution of debian linux for Xbox, loads an onscreen keyboard and has a joymouse driver, by default. It would be horribly painful to get anything done with the onscreen keyboard using a game controller but it is not impossible. Xebian is free, and an Xbox is $150, although it's hard to get a 1.1 through 1.3 Xbox new these days - most of them are 1.5 and 1.6 versions, either of which will require a modchip in order to run unsigned code, because you can no longer flash TSOP. However, you can get a used Xbox for about $119, most of them are old versions, and they can be flashed as long as you know someone with the hardware. (I live in Marysville, CA and I will provide this service for free, but I will not load or provide any software, I accept no liability for any damage to your Xbox, and I will not provide the BIOS code.) I have a conductive pen, 007:AUF, and a Mega X Key, and I'm not afraid to use them.

Re:the Xbox

[10101001 10101001]

Three things. One, you need a buy a broadband adapter for the GC, which puts you over the $100 limit (the article says you need ethernet). Two, you need to buy PSO 1, 2, or 3, which puts over you the limit even more. Finally, you need another computer to actually load gclinux on the gamecube. There's no HD and no has has managed to make a GC disc with Linux on it. So, clearly the GC fails.

Re:the Xbox

[Jonny_eh]

No xbox requires a modchip to run unsigned code.

You can load a 'soft-mod' onto the xbox hard drive using a save game exploit.

There are few advantages to using a mod-chip, and one big disadvantage: You have to open the machine. (That may be an advantage to many though)

Check out http://www.how2xbox.com/ for more info.

Re:the Xbox

[maitas]

There's already a U$S:100 computer with display!! http://www.palmone.com/us/products/handhelds/zire2 1/

No

[lightdarkness]

No, it cannot be done at todays day in age, unless you want a really bad computer. I mean, what do you want to do with the computer, just be able to turn it on? Cause thats all you will be able to do with 100 dollars. Even for word processing, you will need a decent size ram, hard drive, motherboard, ethernet port, case. That alone is already at 200 dollars.

Re:No

[AndyChrist]

Only if you want to run today's bloated software (even open source), which as far as word processing goes doesn't do much now that a well-developed product 10 or 12 years ago didn't.

A 100 dollar computer, hell a 50 dollar computer doesn't seem out of reach if it doesn't have to run all of today's windows and linux apps, but only has to be capable of running more svelte applications which do the same things.

Re: No

[jjh37997]

No, it cannot be done at todays day in age, unless you want a really bad computer. I mean, what do you want to do with the computer, just be able to turn it on? Cause thats all you will be able to do with 100 dollars. Even for word processing, you will need a decent size ram, hard drive, motherboard, ethernet port, case. That alone is already at 200 dollars.

You don't need decent size ram, a super large hard drive or an ethernet port for word processing.... unless by word processing you mean Microsoft Office. I remember a great word processor called MultiScribe from BeagleWorks for the Apple IIc that did everything that 95% of the public use Word for. Sure.... it was on a 5 1/4 disk that you had to flip over whenever you wanted to spell-check but it was fast and didn't have Clippy.

Re:No

[Cromac]

Frys sells PC's for as little as $179 (no monitor) that is more than enough for word processing and enough for the vast majority of games. From memory, that PC was a 2.x ghz Celeron, 128 meg ram, integrated sound, video, NIC, 40 gig HD, CD-ROM. Not a bad system at all except for some games.

You may not be able to find a decent PC for $100 today but it won't be long until it will go for $100.

Re:No

[djdavetrouble]

I saw an apple 2 gs go for 35 bux on ebay last month.. bastard sniped me at the last minute. It came with a monitor, 5.25 and 3.5" disks, a dot matrix printer, and a box of software. That computer can do word processing, spreadsheets, AND play hundreds of classic games! (aztek, threshold, wizardry, wolfenstein, karateka, sigh I love apple ]['s)

We sell pentium 2 and 3 cpu computers to employees for $75 at my company when they get swapped out. These computers are able to run all modern business software, browsers and email. They just don't have the speed and snappiness that we are all used to. Everyone wants flat panels and small form factor PC's these days, so they just sell of these old computers and do some wacky accounting magic to write it off or depreciate it or god knows what.

New $100 computer? Only if you are a manufacturer. Used $100 computer? totally do-able.

Re:No

[AnonymousKev]

Thanks for pointing this out. I have two of those Fry's specials (both have Athelon CPUs). They both use 19" monitors I got for $20 each when my previous employer went belly-up. (I would recommend paying more and keeping your job, if that is an option :)

The firewall (GQ 50042) was purchased in March 2003 for $179. It is 800MHz, 128Meg RAM, with a 40Gig HD. It's currently running RedHat 7.3 with a boatload of patches. I had to spend $20 for an extra NIC

The boys' computer (GQ #escapes me right now) was purchased in July 2004 for $179. It is a 1.2GHz, 128Meg RAM, with a 40Gig HD. It's running a legal copy of Win98SE because, well, because our school system pretty much requires Microsoft products to do homework. I also bought one of those cheeeep $20 (after rebate) CD burners so they can take their PowerPoint homework to school.

They're not bad computers. My ultra-nerdy friends give me grief about having a "Great Quality" brand computer, but I didn't spend a ton of money (or a ton of time to build it), and they are both great workhorses.

Re:No

[bcrowell]

I've bought three of those Great Quality machines (one for home, one for work, and one for my Dad), and I've been perfectly happy running FreeBSD and Fluxbox on them. But if you look at the documentation that comes with them, it's all about how to wipe the Linux distro that comes with them (was ThizLinux, then Lindows/Linspire) and install Windows.

And that's really the issue: software. The reason my present computer has 1000 times the clock speed of my first computer from 25 years ago is not that I really need 1000 times the processing power today. I mostly used that computer for word processing, and it was plenty quick. I mostly use my present computer for word processing, and it's not noticeably slower or faster. I press a key, and the character appears on the screen without any perceptible delay. The only reason I need 1000 times the CPU today is that, today, programmers write their code under the assumption that I'll have a CPU with this speed, so they code accordingly.

People chase the CPU performance curve because they want to run what they perceive as the latest and greatest software. And I haven't seen any evidence that the typical Linux user is any less hung up on vroom-vroom than the typical Windows user. Actually, one of the reasons I run Fluxbox rather then GNOME is that the GNOME of year x has always been much too slow for the hardware I was running in year x. But your average person simply isn't going to run Fluxbox, mutt, slrn, etc.

Re:No

[jawtheshark]

Look around for people that bought a new PC. If you're lucky they still have their old one. If you're really lucky, they think it is a piece of crap because it runs so slow.

Case in point, my girlfriend (there goes my /. credibility) bought a P-IV 2.4HT with huge flat-planel screen, DVD burner, 512Meg RAM and I'm surely skipping things. Her brother bought something similar (but slightly lower-spec) at the same time. Now, well, they bought this before she knew me.
So, I find out they didn't throw away the old machine. I ask her to show it to me, expecting a later P-I or even a P-II (it was running slow after all). My eyeballs nearly fell out! The fucking this was a P-III 500MHz, 10Gig harddisk, CD-Burner, 64Meg RAM. You can already guess why this felt slow...

Anyways, a 256Meg RAM stick later (which I always have lying around somewhere) and a 10Euro 10/100NIC later, I have it back up on full-speed. Nice little machine, really...

Oh, and you want to know what she does with her über-PCs? Surf the web, write letters in Word and ehm, burn the occasinal CD. That P-III would have done for the years to come.

So, in the end: look out for people that have bought new PC's and check out what they have in store. Anything from a P-II on is worth collecting. I have made P-II desktops for people without money from spare parts (which I collected from people thowing away "crap machines").

Re:No

[timmyf2371]

I think this is a more common thing than you might expect. As people ("geeks" in particular) replace computers with new boxen, older machines will be pushed into other roles - even those with a relatively high specification.

I use a 900 mhz Athlon, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB HDD as my main machine at the moment, but come the end of the year I'll be laid off from my current job and intend to invest in an ex-business laptop as a replacement since my current box is dying - the monitor is on the blink, sound card doesn't work, and I don't have the time nor resources to put into a 4-year-old computer anymore - yet, if it boots (which it does) and is connected to my network (which it is) then it'll be a perfect solution as a firewall/router/file server - despite its "high" spec.

that's without windows

[fmorgan]

he wants something windows only and to sell windows-lite for $40 for it.

Re:that's without windows

[mrwonton]

Jesus, all he's talking about is a stripped down X-Box, and they don't cost much more than $100.

They don't cost much more than $100 for the consumer, but thats because Microsoft is losing money selling them for that price. They rely on revenue from the games to recoop the cost. What Ballmer was talking about was a heavily government subsidized computer. He isn't interested in selling the hardware, only the stripped down version of XP to go with it.

This is easy.

[Power Everywhere]

If we got a major manufacturer behind this, we could have a 400 MHz Pentium M on a 400 MHz bus (1:1), 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive, and Linux on there for $99.

If we didn't have a major manufacturer behind it, we're talking old stuff which. Not quite as fast, not as efficient, and more liable to breakage.

Re:This is easy.

[bhtooefr]

We have a major manufacturer making a cacheless 1GHz/400MHz Pentium M with mobo for (estimated from insider sources) ~$100. However, no RAM, no HDD, no optical.

Re:This is easy.

[Paladin128]

We could do this today with no problem. The key is economy of scale. The Via EPIA platforms would be ideal, but they are too damn expensive.

Honestly, if some inexpensive Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer wanted to, they could do a 1ghz C3 EPIA platform, and really cut it down. One IDE channel. No floppy, serial, parallel, or PS/2 ports. Kill IrDA support. Basically, give it only the following:

1x VGA
1x IDE
4x USB
1x audio line out

The CPU and RAM chips could be soldered onto the board. Bundle it with a cheap mass-market OEM hard drive, a case with a 40W power brick, and you've got a PC.

Rather than VIA, one could use Transmeta Crusoe or AMD Geode. This could be done for $100, but the margins would be razor-thin. Hell, I'd pay $100 for one of these sans hard drive with a smaller power supply -- I'm a big fan of LTSP.

Re:This is easy.

[barawn]

One IDE channel. No floppy, serial, parallel, or PS/2 ports. Kill IrDA support.

The problem is that virtually none of this saves money.

Legacy support costs virtually nothing. The only expensive parts are the connectors (the interfaces are all integrated: if you want IDE at *all*, you basically get everything else) and you can just put them on a pin header if you want.

IrDA, serial, and PS/2 are all the same thing - parallel, floppy, and even IDE are usually supported on one chip. They're so cheap that there's no point not to put them on. For one thing, they're useful enough to the people testing the board that they earn their keep just that way.

The CPU and RAM chips could be soldered onto the board. Bundle it with a cheap mass-market OEM hard drive, a case with a 40W power brick, and you've got a PC.

RAM prices fluctuate too much for this to be succesful. CPU integration makes sense, although again, the price drops quickly enough for you to be left with a platform that's far overpriced in just a few months. Keep in mind, that's one of the main reasons you don't integrate the CPU and memory - price concerns.

For one thing, in the time it takes the system to get to market, the board will be a bit overpriced/underpowered for its price point. Systems that have socketed CPUs/memory are viable on the market for a long enough period for people to sell off their supplies.

The way you make a cheap motherboard is to only use the integrated peripherals in the southbridge, and then volume, volume, volume.

Re:This is easy.

[Paladin128]

Via already puts the CPU package on the mobo; it saves PCB space and power leakage. We're not going for a powerful system; just a cheap one.

Fair enough about your statement with the RAM chips, although if bought in big enough batches, stuff like PC2100 DDR is already absurdly cheap and isn't fluctuating too much.

And yes, you do save on the connectors. If the volume is high enough, you can design a southbridge that doesn't have the legacy support. Or, you could go the route that nVidia went with the nForce3 -- no southbridge. Just one chipset with everything integrated. With no legacy stuff, that just means you need an ethernet MAC, and audio CODEC, IDE (or better, SATA -- fewer traces), video, memory controller, USB and FSB. That's it -- it can be a pretty small and cheap chip. Use PCI express for everything -- you only need like 16 rails -- 8 for the video, 2 for the SATA and 6 for the gigabit NIC. Or better yet -- no PCI type bus -- just have everything tightly integrated with local like nVidia does thier ethernet, and offer open-source drivers.

The board could also be small with no legacy stuff -- smaller than ITX form factor.

Re:This is easy.

[barawn]

Via already puts the CPU package on the mobo; it saves PCB space and power leakage. We're not going for a powerful system; just a cheap one.

The Via systems with integrated CPU chips are more expensive than socketed counterparts, partially for the reasons I stated. They have to make them more expensive because they make less of them - they make less because their shelf life is shorter.

Note that there are two sets of Via integrated CPU boards - there's the Eden set, which exist for homebrew PVR and somewhat of the embedded system market. But they have a higher feature set - this justifies the fact that they're underpowered. There was also an older one which sold disastrously (Syntax is the only one I knew that actually sold it - the S8601MP and similars).

The point is that Via can't expect to sell them very cheap, because if they've got the CPU and memory integrated, then the product depreciates much faster than the board without an integrated CPU. It should also be noted that if you buy the chips in solderable packages, you're buying more specialty parts rather than commodity, though if you're the chip manufacturer, it's not such a big deal.

And yes, you do save on the connectors.

For a company which buys connectors in volume, you save nothing on connectors. Even when I've bought in very small volumes, I've been able to pull DB9s down to under $1 per. In the larger volumes, you can get it much cheaper. In fact, if you make things other than the motherboard, then they're virtually free, as it's just a fluid item. Unless you do it for space concerns, the cost of a DB9 is just too cheap to even bother not putting on. Which is, of course, why it still exists on most things.

One other thing is the fact that the LPC port is very useful for debugging and board testing/prep, as well as hardware monitoring. There's enough of a demand for low-cost motherboards that if you could save money by dropping the legacy ports, you would.

Even the several legacy-free motherboards have the legacy ports on the board.

The board could also be small with no legacy stuff -- smaller than ITX form factor.

You'd be better off, cost wise, sticking with the largest market - micro-ATX. Volume, volume, volume rules all.

If the volume is high enough, you can design a southbridge that doesn't have the legacy support.

That's the problem - it's not the volume that's important, it's the volume*margins - that is, the profit. If you're starting off by saying "this is going to be a super-cheap platform", your margins will start off being thin, and as the platform ages, either the demand falls off, or your margins get thinner as you drop the price. Now, half the problem is you still need to pay for the development cost.

I don't think you're going to see someone come out and design something like this to be cheap. It wouldn't become profitable. We're almost at the point where the commodity items are near that price point as it is.

Basically, I don't think you're going to shave much cost off from any of the methods you're suggesting. You might be able to get it started on a size argument, but I think the small form factor PCs have shown that that design can command a premium, and so they'll charge it.

One other concern that you do fail to note is that the smaller the motherboard, usually the more expensive its design, regardless of how simple it is - you simply crowd the design, and the routing becomes very, very complicated. I have no doubt that the nano-ITX boards took a few iterations to get the signal integrity reliable enough.

I think VIA might do it - but I think you'll see far more of a commodity PC than you would expect. If it's specialty, it's expensive - if it's commodity, you don't have to pay the development, and risk having stock without any demand.

Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[skoda]

Why should the hardware profits be sacrificed to support high software prices?

Perhaps Windows should be cheaper to support high hardware prices. Cheaper software might also reduce piracy since the it would be more affordable.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[Naffer]

Huzzaa~!
I for one would much rather spend my money on hardware then software. $100-200 for a piece of software is rather pricey. When I'm looking at pieces of software and seeing prices over $60, I get a bit suspicious. A boxed copy of Nero Burning rom cost $100, Intervideo's WinDVR is $80, and ever tried pricing a piece of data recovery software? The prices are so absurd you'd think they were just joking.
It's really weird. My secondary computer is a gentoo box, and installing software is as simple as "emerge _______." I don't even have to pay anybody.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[Ummagumma]

$100-$200?

Have you priced Office 2003 lately? Absolutely REDICULOUS pricing model MS has.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the hardware profits be sacrificed to support high software prices?

You clearly don't understand economics. Hardware is like a public good -- you have to pay a certain amount upfront to design and build the hardware, but then the cost for helping each user becomes trivial. The marginal cost of hardware marketing is so low that the hardware makers are really price-gouging by charging us $1000 for a PC.

By contrast, software (like MS Windows) has to be carefully customized for your hardware. Adding a 128mb DIMM? Well, then Bill Gates is gonna have to recompile the user interface. Want to move the mouse across the screen? Bill will have to manually edit the binary codes in your kernel. Of course, no two users have the same amount of memory. And all these things like moving the mouse or typing or sending an IP packet... this is what makes the user experience unique. So Bill's work for one user doesn't help any of the other users. That's a lot of stress for Bill, and it naturally keeps the marginal cost of software very high.

So, I ask: why are PC's so expensive? How can we reduce the cost and get PC's to poor people? The software cost reflects a labor-intensive process, and it can't be reduced. Hardware is a public good, so the expense must come from price-gouging by the hardware makers. Therefore, to enable the poor people of the world to catch up with current technolgy, we must tell those over-priced Taiwanese hardware makers to stop ripping us off. (Why, I even heard that FIC makes more than $1 profit off each motherboard. That's outrageous!)

Maybe you should read an economics textbook.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[Hawkins]

MS gets away with this because they sell the majority of their Office licenses to business users, and tons of businesses remain firmly convinced that something you pay for is always better than something that's free. A worldview that makes sense, given that a business usually makes money by selling some product and/or service. The more money something costs, the higher quality and/or more useful it must be.

Flawed but understandable reasoning.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[Monkelectric]

Its a trick... 99% of people only need Word. So the only way you can get word is to buy: Access, Publishier, Power Point, Front Page, Info Path and Excel. Same thing with your cable company: you *WANT* sci fi, but you have to buy a "package" and get it with 10 other channels you don't want.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[blastedtokyo]

The most common MS Office sku (Students & Teachers and you could be a student of the school of hard knocks for all they care) at Costco and elsewhere in the US for the home is

And it includes a pretty good spell checker.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[BobWeiner]

The Student /Teacher Office suite ($150) is a great deal - it includes 3 licenses. $50 per license is more than fair.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[nathanh]

Have you priced Office 2003 lately? Absolutely REDICULOUS pricing model MS has.

But Office 2003 comes with a spellchecker. Could be the best investment you've ever made.

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[Anne_Nonymous]

+1 Ensitefull

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[strider44]

Though I know (or at least I think, I'm not actually sure) that's a joke, I just want to back you up with monetary values.

When you pay the couple of hundred dollars for a good CPU, you pay mostly for the cost of research not the cost of production. If you look at AMD's revenue vs. profit, net revenue was $1.26 Billion for Q2, while profit was $32 million. In other words that's about a 2.5% profit ratio.

NVidia was in a similar situation. $456.1 million revenue. $5.1 million profit. That's just over 1% profit.

Contrast that with Microsoft, last quarter they earnt $9.19 billion with a profit of $2.9 billion! That's over 30% profit for software!

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[clifyt]

"Well, if they only charged $30, ppl would go, it's only $30, so i'm not "stealing" that much from mega-corp. If it's priced at $100, it could cause ppl to rethink and not make copies."

Well, my company does a lot of 3rd party sound design for different synthesizer companies and all that.

Several years back, we were doing a lot of Kurzweil support...folks were complaining after spending $5k for a synth, the sounds should be free and were pirating everything they could get -- even though it was clear that most of these sounds were designed by separate companies not related to the original company.

At the time, normal sound disc for around a cd's worth of samples were $99 for an Akai format disc. Akai is the bare basic format one could get...nothing more than mapping the sounds across the keys. The same disc on a Kurzweil was generally twice that much because of all the programming that went into it. Kurzweil developers took pride in their sounds so that if you were playing a piano sample, not only did you get different velocity levels sampled, but most of the programs were smart enough to filter the samples so that there wasn't a distinct anomaly when you hit another velocity zone. This made the sounds as much a part of the synthesis realm as it did playing back pure samples.

But people *STILL* couldn't understand why a few dozen bytes of added data to each patch caused the stuff to double the price. The fact was, it took at least twice as long to convert this stuff and the man power cost more than the equipment to record in the first place.

Ok, where am I going with this?

We ended up doing a sound disc that got scrapped as the company we were under contract went under. So, we decided to sell it ourselves and share the data with the rest of the companies we had worked with before (lots of competition in the realm, but we are all friends -- except when we release products that compete directly, which rarely happens).

To make this a true experiment, and at the same time support our community, we decided that instead of selling it at the standard $200 range, or even the $99 range the standard no-frills discs had, we decided to go $30 and included shipping worldwide (which turned out to bite us in the ass for a few overseas shipments as a few cost more that $30 to send out -- but it was important we do this for the community and not go back on our words).

Sadly -- within a week of this, we found users selling dupes of this on eBay for half the price. We found folks submitting the data to Kazaa and eDonkey. We found FTP sites with all of this. One of the pirates we caught and knew by name claimed that at $30, it probably wasn't worth much and thus he wasn't hurting us. He also said that it wasn't as professional as the other stuff as we burned the discs ourselves (as opposed to getting them printed and stamped) and thus not worth it...its not like the data suffered any from this as we gave them the same exact product we would have given them at 4 times the price.

In our field, if a sound disc sells 200 copies, we are doing well. Everyone claimed if someone lowered the price, sound companies would make far more than the 200 copies sold. I can tell you, we got just under 200 copies -- and the fact the price was lowered did nothing. The next release we did for the $99 range sold MORE copies as people expected more...and it was actually a crappier disc because it was intended to work at a base level on several platforms, not just the high end (though our buyers almost all claimed they were buying it for these high end synths).

The fact of the matter is, if you price something lower, you are not going to increase your sales. You might sell less copies because of it. Price something for what its worth in the industry based on what others have already shown they will pay, and you will be in a much better position to sell. So, this isn't just a PHB theory...its the fact in many parts of the industry. No matter what you sell for, it will al

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[pnatural]

$50 per license is more than fair.

Is it fair to the guy who pays full retail price because he's honest?

Is it fair to the teacher in a developing country who gets less than US$50 a month in salary?

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[mike3411]

Ridiculous + Redmond = Rediculous

Re:Sacrifice hardware for the good of software?

[Lonewolf666]

Yes, it is an amazing fact that sometimes higher prices make people think they get more for their money. I've noticed this a few years ago when looking for a new job:
After a few unsuccessful attempts with demanding moderate wages, I followed the advice of a personnel consultant and raised my price by 10%. Soon after, I had a job ;-)

Reasonable Computer

[r2q2]

Sure with a free operating system you could probally pull of a computer with reasonable specs. I bought a 35 dollar computer that is a pentum 2 at 333 mhz. Then I upgraded the memory for about another 35. Then you upgrade the processor to a 733 for about 10-20 bucks. Well under a hundred dollars and still reasonable.

Re:Reasonable Computer

[Myuu]

Try your local state surplus. If you find out what day they get their inventory, you can get the craziest shit.

*Typing this on a 21 inch monitor he bought at North Dakota State Surplus for $20*

Re:Reasonable Computer

[Mr Smidge]

Typing this on a 21 inch monitor

I tend to find that monitors are better off as displays, rather than input devices..

I bought one

[Anonymous Coward]

When a Fry's Electronics store opened up out near Chicago, I picked up and AMD Athlon 1.3GHz, 512 meg of ram, 60 gig HDD and paid $99 for it. Of course it had Lindows installed on it, but after a quick reformat and poping in a redhat distro it was up and running in no time.

Dump...

[PaintyThePirate]

You can go to the average garbage dump and find at least one computer that will run something like Debian without a GUI. If you're lucky, you might find a Pentium II or faster, and be able to run something like DamnSmallLinux. Chances are, you'll be able to find a monitor, keyboard, and mouse there too. That accomplishes the task for $00.00.

Re:Dump...

[avalys]

Yes, and the rat you find living inside the case can become a new family pet!

Re:Dump...

[nate nice]

My friend and I actually do this. You would be amazed by the hardware we find. Usually we will grab things (clean things, they are sorted so all computer things are together, in a neat area) and bring them back to test and examine what we want to keep. Generally we find P2's and many floppy drives as well as some great CD drives and the occasional great find like a P3 that was dumped for some reason. We've gotten a few decent hardrives larger than 10 gigs. Not to mention many good cases and monitors and SD-RAM chips.

With this you can throw together a linux router on the cheap, like you said: $0.00. With the free software and hardware we put together Cisco 2600 comparable routers for free, MP3 servers and have created various other uses.

We even got a Mac G3 once.

We plan on moving our operation over to a ricer part of towns dumps to see what we can find.

Re:Dump...

[Ohreally_factor]

Yes, and the rat you find living inside the case can become a new family pet!

Or use it to operate your flight simulator

Re:Dump...

[Trespass]

That assumes that your time is worth nothing.

Re:Dump...

[FUF]

Or that rat could actually become a *really* bad mouse problem :-p

Re:Dump...

[servognome]

NOOOOO put him back in his wheel, the rat is actually the power supply.

Re:Dump...

[aldoman]

Apart from the fact you will be paying a good $$$ in power costs.

Assuming $1/W/yr (which seems pretty reasonable), and assuming it uses 75W, 24/7, that's $75/year. Or you could get a $15 linksys router which would do it all nearly, and pay $10/yr in power...

Re:Dump...

[tooth]

After work, and instead of the hundred other things that need to be done around the house? Sheesh, that's why I work: to be able to afford good-quality tools that will save me time.

Reminds me of the joke about the mexican and working to buy a bigger boat:

The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, "Only a little while."

The American then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?"

The Mexican said, "With this I have more than enough to support my family's needs."

The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life."

The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you will run your ever-expanding enterprise."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"

To which the American replied, "15 to 20 years."

"But what then?" asked the Mexican. The American laughed and said that's the best part.

"When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions." "Millions?...Then what?" The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

i doubt it

[gyratedotorg]

i think if it were possible, walmart would already be doing it.

Re:i doubt it

[MoonBuggy]

Purely from looking on newegg.com I've just priced up an Athlon 1.3, 128MB, 40GB machine for ~$150. I only chose those components because they were the cheapest in stock; a Duron 800 and a 20GB drive would be quite adequate - do a bit of shopping around and work in bulk discounts and I'm sure it's possible.

Absolutely

[shoemakc]

Absolutely; They're sold by a company named "used".

Seriously though, do we really need a $100 disposible pc when there are so many functional used machines stacking up in corporate closets?

-Chris

Re:Absolutely

[dougmc]

Seriously though, do we really need a $100 disposible pc when there are so many functional used machines stacking up in corporate closets?

1) All PCs are disposable. Even your $4000 server. After all, a 10 year old $4000 server often isn't even worth $100 now.

2) To answer your question, it's a matter of labor costs. To make those corporate used machines usable, they need to be checked (half probably have at least one part broken), disks erased and a new OS installed. Once you consider the laber involved in doing this, it's not quite so cheap. To make matters worse, even if all the computers came from the same office, odds are good that each one is different from the others. Yes, a company may get the same box for every employee, but over time the favored boxes change, and so the back room is full of all kinds of old boxes. And let's hope these old boxes have enough RAM -- because buying old RAM for old boxes will cost more than an entire new box, including new RAM.

I've generally upgraded my PCs as time went on, part by part, and the old parts would accumulate in the garage. Occasionally, I'd take the old parts, and put together a PC for the relatives or friends who needed one. This worked, but I spent many many hours on it, often rememebering after many hours of frustration why I replaced that piece of hardware out -- because it was flakey! (yes, I do try to label things, but it does slip through the cracks.) And then once I gave it out, I had to support it. I may not do Windows very often, and maybe I didn't even put Windows on the machine at all, but often they end up with Windows, and so I end up supporting that.

Ultimately, it turned out to be not worth it. Now I just give stuff to Goodwill -- somebody else can deal with it. If I want my relative to have a computer, I'll give them $200 and let them buy one from Frys, already built. They even come with some tech support :) (Now, maybe if they're my favorite uncle or something, I might set them up with a computer. But I'll probably buy many of the parts news, just because it's easier than dealing with my old stuff.)

Re:Absolutely

[shoemakc]

1) All PCs are disposable. Even your $4000 server. After all, a 10 year old $4000 server often isn't even worth $100 now.

non "disposable" doesn't mean that it lasts forever. "disposable" means that if it breaks you throw it away and buy another one. If my $4000 server breaks in a year....you can bet I'm not going to throw it away. If my $100 computer breaks in a year.....then it may not be worth the hastle of having it fixed.

2) To answer your question, it's a matter of labor costs. To make those corporate used machines usable, they need to be checked (half probably have at least one part broken), disks erased and a new OS installed. Once you consider the laber involved in doing this, it's not quite so cheap

An hour tops of work if you've got a nicely tuned sysprep / ghost disc....@ 15/hr for your average tech....comes out to a total of about....$15. Support :::is::: an issue however, but I'll get to that.

I'll give them $200 and let them buy one from Frys, already built. They even come with some tech support :)

And how good exactly do you think the tech support on a $100 machine would be?

-Chris

It's already been done....

[wvitXpert]

Hasn't anyone else seen the movie "The First 20 Million Dollars is always the Hardest"? http://www.fact-index.com/t/th/the_first_20_millio n_is_always_the_hardest.html

ummm

[jjeffries]

yes.

Thrift stores

[ethan0]

while I realize this isn't really a solution for the populace at large, a lot of people give their computers to thrift stores after they upgrade. You can often find a halfway decent computer (or enough parts to build one) for $100. Not a wonderful computer, mind you. Usually includes keyboard, mouse, and monitor as well though.

easy

[GoofyBoy]

Get a 486 for $20. eg -
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=51096&item=5133469694&rd=1

Install;
http://www.ipt.ntnu.no/~knutb/linux486/linux486.ht ml

Re:easy

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

" All components must be new and currently available."

err

[FrO]

errr, doesn't windows itself cost more than $100?

Does that mean Microsoft will start giving away PC hardware free?

(heh, I wish)

My 8 year old pc runs W2K, in your face!

[gelfling]

My IBM PC300PL is worth about 100 bucks. It's got 288MB, a 40GB drive, a 40XCDRW, an Intel P3-450 and a free Ethernet card even though it's already built in to the MoBo. The problem is NOT NOT NOT NOT the hardware it's that Steve Balmer wants to sell you a PC that needs at least twice the hardware as that. If MS just gave us a secure efficient version of W2K we could all have 100 dollar PCs.

Re:My 8 year old pc runs W2K, in your face!

[Anonymous Coward]

A 1996 P3-450 computer? The P3 wasn't released until 1999 - in YOUR face.

Re:My 8 year old pc runs W2K, in your face!

[Inda]

I have the same set up (P3-450), bought at roughly the same time. I have more memory and recently added a DVD burner. Runs XP fine. I get 10fps on a lot of games. Gmail suffers from some 'lag'.

I keep meaning to upgrade but can never justify the expense... it burns DVDs in 12-15 minutes - the same speed as my friend's P4.

Re:My 8 year old pc runs W2K, in your face!

[stanmann]

If the SE has the old superdrive, it is possible to get zterm and stuffit onto it via a 3.5 floppy formatted on a standard pc.

Re:Well.......

[KenwoodTrueX]

Oh by the way, don't forget it has to be NEW (used PC's don't count).=)

Free Flat Screen HERE!

Let's try here...

[bhtooefr]

There might be outdated components, $20 case WITH 300W PSU combos, and some PC Chips crap, but it still falls under electrically safe... We're going to use NewEgg numbers, and not include shipping.

Case: MGE ATX case w/350W PSU $10 (one day special) (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?des cription=11-171-037&depa=1)
Mobo: PC Chips Socket A mobo $26 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?des cription=13-185-010&depa=1)
CPU: Athlon 1.33GHz $41 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?des cription=19-103-156&depa=1)
RAM: Rosewill 128MB DDR $21 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?des cription=20-223-007&depa=1)
HDD: Maxtor 40GB $45.50 (one day special) (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?des cription=22-140-133&depa=1)

We'll stop it here. We're using SHIT components, and we've got $143.50, without shipping, IDE cables, CD-ROM drive, etc., etc., and using one day specials.

It's possible, but not DIY.

Re:Let's try here...

[bhtooefr]

How 'bout you actually get a CPU that fits the mobo? It'll take a Pentium II, Slot 1 Pentium III, or a Socket 370-Slot 1 converter with Socket 370 P3.

32MB DDR RAM? WTF? DDR won't work on that board, I'm sure!

Also, this'll be USED components. That won't work. This needs to be all NEW components.

Re:Let's try here...

[Tyler Eaves]

Uh, no.

32MB of RAM? Are you *kidding* me? Even my minimal setup (X.Org + Fluxbox 0.9 + Firefox 1.0 + rxvt) is using 221MB as reported by free, with one instance of each running. (Not counting caches, buffers, etc). I'd consider 256MB the bare mimumum, MAYBE 192 in an emergency, but X alone uses 59MB. 32MB might have been enough to run XFree 3.x and fvwm or windowmaker, but it just doesn't come close for even a semi-modern desktop.

(I'm running Slackware 10.0 btw)

Re:Let's try here...

[Keruo]

Who says computer needs hard drive anymore?
Just buy 64 or 128Mb usb memory stick and run linux from it, and you save ~$30
If you need more space, just mount some more over network

Re:Let's try here...

[nathanh]

32MB of RAM? Are you *kidding* me? Even my minimal setup (X.Org + Fluxbox 0.9 + Firefox 1.0 + rxvt) is using 221MB as reported by free, with one instance of each running. (Not counting caches, buffers, etc).

You're doing something wrong. My Debian system (mixture of unstable and experimental) running GNOME 2.8 is using 71MB after I've logged in. That's with Nautilus and a Gnome Terminal running (plus all the silly applets in my panel). It's only just over 100MB after starting Firefox. Even after starting Evolution and OpenOffice I haven't broken 200MB. I've done nothing special to my Gnome setup. It's a plain jane installation from Debian apt sources.

You might be misreading the output from free, or your free might be misreporting actual usage, or you have something abnormal starting up in your session.

but X alone uses 59MB.

I'm also using X.org (from CVS) and my usage is far less than that. I suspect your tools are not matched with your kernel and they are giving you false figures.

Re:Let's try here...

[JamieF]

I think you're probably counting wrong.

A 1KB "hello world" app that links to a 1GB library and never calls it would have a virtual memory size of just over 1GB, but the 1GB library would never be paged in so that really doesn't mean anything. It's memory mapped as part of the process's address space, but it isn't pulled into memory and then shoved back out into the swap file, because there's no need to do that. The resident set size of that 1KB-on-disk program could be just a few kilobytes, and that's how much memory it's really using.

Necessary Materials

[mr_sfstk8d]

How many rolls of duct tape are we alloted for this task?

Newegg shopping

[rincebrain]

$26 - PCChips "M811LU" KT266A Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A
$41 - AMD Athlon 1.33 GHz, 266MHz FSB, 256K Cache Processor - OEM
$10.75 - POWMAX 320W Power Supply for Intel and AMD systems Model "VP-320ATX"
$14.50 - Artec Black 56X CDROM, Model CHM-56, Retail

= $102.25, ignoring hard drive or anything else.

So no, probably not.

cheap harddrive

[hedley]

Watch out, we bought some "Great Quality" GQ computer systems (~$150) and two of them had early HD failure. Somthing will give as these prices crater.

How valuable is your data and your time to keep good timely backups?

Hedley

Re:cheap harddrive

[afxgrin]

That's why you subscribe to a speedy internet provider so you can store all your files via some gmail/ms passport type service online. Screw the harddrive, that's whats driving up the costs. For basic document storage and information processing a harddrive is not necessary.

Have a very optimized Linux distro booted via Flash ROM. It automatically mounts your internet storage space on boot up. Let's say the data is stored remotely using an encrypted file system to satisfy the requirements of all those crypto geeks.

Here's some flash memory prices at TigerDirect.

Note: 256MB CompactFlash memory by Kingston, $23.99 before rebate ($10 mail in rebate).

Install the 50MB Damn Small Linux distro? 200MB for basic file storage. All your music could be listened to streaming...

Yeah - I'm just giving out some ideas ....

Sounds like a Best Buy/Comp USA employee...

[beejay54]

Ahh yes. Word processing, better get a top of the line box for that. Maybe set up a striped array, dual displays, and a couple of gigs of RAM minimum. Oh and you'll need to buy the latest version of M$ Office, oh and make sure you get the 'professional' version, cause the other versions don't have the advanced features you'll need, like 'undo'. Oh and did I mention there is a manufacturers rebate included in the price, so you'll have to pay $500 at the checkout today but if you fill out the forms immaculately you should get a rebate for the remaining $400 sometime next year. Thanks for shopping with us!

Re:Sounds like a Best Buy/Comp USA employee...

[gcaseye6677]

Don't forget the Best Buy Profit Protection Plan. Oh, I mean the Product Protection Plan, silly me. It's only 60% of the purchase price and covers almost nothing, but you wouldn't want that thing to break down now would you?

Re:Sounds like a Best Buy/Comp USA employee...

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no. When you're selling the plan, you say that it covers everything and that if something breaks they'll give you a new one right away. It's not until someone needs service that they actually say anything differently.

Re:Sounds like a Best Buy/Comp USA employee...

[Caseyscrib]

Homer: Umm ... I guess I'll take that one.
Salesman: Well, do you need a paperweight? 'Cause if you buy
that machine, that's all you're going to have, an
expensive paperweight.
Homer: Well, a paperweight would be nice, but what I really
need is a computer. How about that one? [points to
a second machine]
Salesman: That technology is three months old. Only suckers
buy out-of-date machines. You're not a sucker, are
you sir?
Homer: Heavens no!
Salesman: Oh good, because if you were, I'd have to ask you to
leave the store.
Homer: I just need something to receive email.
Salesman: [whistles] You'll need a top-of-the-line machine for
that. [shows Homer a top-of-the-budget machine]
That's the same computer astronauts use to do their
taxes.
Homer: I was an astronaut.
Salesman: Of course you were.
-- "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"

% Homer looks at the price tag -- $5,000 -- and does a spit-take
% (first drinking a cup of coffee so he'll have something to spit).
% Assured by the sales man that this machine "is the best computer in
% the world and always will be," Homer agrees to the deal, running his
% deed through a scanner to take out his fifth mortgage.
%
% Homer drags his new toy home behind the car.

Homer: Hey Lisa! Check out my new computer!
Lisa: Dad! You shouldn't drag that around!
Homer: [laughs] That's right, top-of-the-line.
[the car hits large pothole, Homer bangs his head on the
roof of the car]
Stupid pothole. Don't worry, head. The computer will do
our thinking now.

Re:Sounds like a Best Buy/Comp USA employee...

[Meowfaceman]

Don't diss the product replacement plans. With only a firewire connection to the iPod, Debian Linux, and the dd command, my friend got his third gen iPod upped to a fourth gen for about nothing.

You know, we did word processing before...

[Digital_Quartz]

I used to do word processing on a 4.77 MHz 8086, with a monochrome screen. It wasn't WYSIWYG, but it got the job done, and WordStar was quite quick and spritely. WordPerfect 5.1 ran just fine on all the machines in my highschool's lab, and they were, IIRC, 16 Mhz? (Possibly 8? It was a long time ago. They were IBM PS/2s, with MCGA graphics adapters.)

Kids these days...

Re:You know, we did word processing before...

[Reziac]

[laughing] My first PC was a 2-floppy, 2MHz XT, with Herc mono graphics. WordPerfect 5.0 was crisp, even running off a floppy. After a dedicated word blender, it was heaven. And when I replaced that with a 12MHz 286 (also with Herc mono, but it had a HD, and WP5.1 along with various other apps of the day), it was, like, WOW!! Everything ran like the wind. Well, Ventura Publisher 2.0 took a while to load, but it ran fine. I still have the 286, and in a pinch... it still does everything I can't live without.

Nowadays... we struggle to get decent performance out of machines THOUSANDS of times faster than those relics.

BTW I'm writing this on a P3-550, somewhat slower than the average of what's now found on the curb. (Methinks I need to look at a better class of curbside. :)

But I still use WP5.1 every day. :D

Re:You know, we did word processing before...

[archen]

My first computer was a .00001Khz Royal Typewriter. It had two keys, a one and a zero. If you wanted to reformat the disk, you dipped the paper in white-out =P

Re:You know, we did word processing before...

[gl4ss]

* My first computer was a .00001Khz Royal Typewriter.*

man, you were a slow typist!

Re:You know, we did word processing before...

[_Hellfire_]

My first PC was also a 2-floppy Herc Mono XT. I had a 4.77MHz version with a turbo switch to get it to 7MHz. I remember running First Choice for word processing and Dr Halo for graphics. DOS 3.3 with NDos for long file names and other cool stuff. Ahhh the days.

I also remember getting my first hard drive fitted to that thing. Connor Peripherals 30Mb and I thought that was all the space in the world. I thought it was way cool that I could boot off the drive and install all my favourite games - F15 Strike Eagle II, Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF), and Zeliard. (Not to mention all the other small games like spacewar, elevator, frogger, yahtzee and boulder dash). I also coded in Turbo Pascal 6.

Like you I was in love with that machine, and that machine taught me most of the basics of computing.
It worries me somewhat that the technicians who are coming through the ranks now are not even aware of the heritage of computing, and have no inkling of anything past a GUI and a mouse pointer. Obviously the older readers will point out that before the XT there were things like TRS-80 and CP/M (neither of which I've had the privilege of using (although I would dearly of loved to have had that experience)) but all I'm saying is that computing around that time in the early to mid eighties (and before that of course) was raw and unfettered by the masses of clueless gumbies and spyware and spam.

I for one feel very privileged to have seen that era of computing and I can only hope that some of todays young geeks may stumble across an old dinosaur and decide to play with it to further their knowledge.

Re:You know, we did word processing before...

[HohlerMann]

My first computer was a rock. To partition, you dropped it from a cliff.

Re:You know, we did word processing before...

[CityZen]

Try 1.8 Mhz, Mostek 6502 (8-bit CPU). The Intel 8086 is a 16-bit CPU. The Intel 8088 is the version of the 8086 that was used in the IBM PC & PC/XT. It used a multiplexed 8-bit data bus.

Ok this kinda bothers me.

[headbulb]

"PCs are not selling to the lower end of the population in China and India. People buying machines there are relatively affluent. So...should the prices be lower? Not really. Until government and situational factors reduce piracy...those people...don't pay," Ballmer said. (article clipping)

Now an open letter to Ballmer
Ballmer

Shouldn't people in the lower end of the population spend their money on something a little more worthwhile then a computer.
Maybe just maybe they could spend that money on their family Before purchasing such a luxury item as a computer. Of course I am not going to be naive and say they don't need a computer for some reason. But to say that I want money from the lower end of the China/India population is selfish, Specially when they have better things to spend it on..

I don't do business with your company on those rash comments. I get by without using your software. Sorry if you feel that I am not being fare.

Not saying I haven't pirated your software before, instead of attacking me you're attacking someone who couldn't even pay you if they wanted to is just harsh. Oh and by the way I used your software to learn about and then go into computers so in a indirect way your company benefitted from it.. So the very thing that you are against has kept your company afloat, by customer awareness.

I no longer use any pirated software from your company. I get by with alternate platforms (Mac, Linux)

Daniel

Not for under $200

[lothar97]

I'm going to be really bold, and say that right now, no this cannot be done for under $200. You specified that all components must be new. That means you'll need:

power supply motherboard
CPU
CPU fan
CD drive
RAM
hard drive
case

You can get cheap motherboards with attached video/sound/LAN. You can technically build the PC without a floppy drive or CD/DVD burner to save more money. Looking for the lowest prices around (via Froogle), for new parts, you'll find:

motherboard-- Asus A7V8X-X, $48
CPU-- AMD Sempron 2200, $45
CPU fan-- Anything, $5
CD drive-- $15
RAM-- DDR-266 256 MB PC-2100, $40
hard drive-- Samsung 40GB HDD, $45
case-- $29, includes 300W power supply

Grand total: $227 (not including tax/shipping/hassle of ordering from a bunch of places)

Some stores, depending upon where you live, have some really decent deals on packaged systems. I'm in San Diego, and my favorite Chips and Memory (yes, I hate their frames too), has a nice package for $239.

AMD Sempron 2200
256MB RAM
80GB Hard Drive(7200RPM)
52X CD-RW
Onboard AGP (Up to 32 MB) and Sound & Game Adapter
Built-in LAN and Fax/Modem Module
52X CDRW (Yes CDRW Included)
1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive
Med Tower ATX Case, 300W UL/CE approved ATX power supply
1 Year Parts and Labor Warranty

To get the price lower, you'll need a used hard drive, CPU, memory, or motherboard. Then you might squeeze in closer to $150.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

[tepples]

What justifies the requirement for new equipment? In the era of reduce, reuse, recycle, I'd imagine that using used (erm, "re-certified") parts would be worth more than just the price differential, as one wouldn't have to pollute the environment in disposing of an office's previous generation equipment and making new hardware.

Re:Reduce, reuse, recycle

[magarity]

What justifies the requirement for new equipment?

I'll tell you what: Consumers who turn up their noses at anything less than the latest because they've seen an ad telling them that's what they need to get. Trust me, back when I was handling donations I got plenty of perfectly useable second hand PC's in the Pent2 category and had a hard time giving them away to nonprofits with no budgets. When even broke nonprofits sneer at free/nearly free second hand computers, there's no way in heck to get the average paying customer to use one.

Case? What Case?

[colonslashslash]

Even for word processing, you will need a decent size ram, hard drive, motherboard, ethernet port, case.

Cases are for whimps! ;)

Re:Case? What Case?

[L0stm4n]

I dont need no stinking case

I was bored one day....

Re:Cheap PC?

[ibullard]

Unfortunately, the total cost of an Xbox for use as a Linux desktop is:

Xbox port to USB converter - $8 x 2 = $16
Xbox off Ebay - $120 (seems to be average going price)
Xbox VGA box - $65
Renting MechAssault - $7 ? haven't rented in a while so I could be wrong here.

That makes it $208 and it assumes that the Xbox can be modded to boot Linux without buying a chip and you can find the right version of MechAssault.

Mind you, that's a hell of a lot closer than you'll get with almost anything else.

But he'll want one that can run Longhorn

[Elwood P Dowd]

And that's a whole hell of a lot harder.

Linksys shows it can be done

[geg81]

You can get a Linksys wireless router for about $70. It's a machine with 16M of memory, 4M of flash, and a 125 or 200MHz chip. It also comes with a hub, a wired Ethernet, WiFi, and a power supply. So, that shows you can ship a lot of hardware for fairly little money.

Replace WiFi with a simple VGA controller and give it a couple of USB ports and a little more flash instead of the hub and you would end up, at roughly the same price, with a usable personal computer that could run a light X11 desktop and some useful apps (browser, word processor, etc.). If you add a CF slot, people even have removable storage.

Another choice is the standalone file server appliance, also for under $100 AFAIK; it already has the USB port and also runs Linux.

And some of the game consoles also show it can be done, if you get the volume high enough.

Re:Linksys shows it can be done

[moontumbohotmail.com]

Yeah, but you have to keep in mind that most game consoles are sold at a loss.

Re:Linksys shows it can be done

[Razzak]

I assume the chip in the router isn't the same as a cpu for desktops, but someone else can respond to that.

The consoles are sold below-cost (many), and make up for it on licensing fees. That's like saying cell phones are now free.

I suggest a "kiosk" type system to be more affordable. all you need is the mobo/processor/usb card/IDE hub/ram/ps and a cdrom. Boot off a linux cd-rom and use USB memory sticks for different users. I think in this low-end of a system with low-end parts, a cd-rom boot might be more reliable than a HD. In all of my computers, the HD is always the first thing to go.

Of course, this solution doesn't provide $$$ to MSFT, so it's not the solution ballmer is looking for. However, it would be the perfect solution for small communities that can't afford computers. Everyone buys a $20 USB card and can use the local community computers as if they are their own.

There's no substitute for having your own computer to learn on, but this isn't a bad solution until everyone has one.

Re:Of course it is possible!

[Deorus]

Even better! Scrap the P4 and replace with a Celly, way cheaper!

The embedded soundcard is an ac97, supported by the mainstream Linux kernel;
The ethernet chip is a sis900, also supported under the mainstream Linux kernel;
I don't know if the embeded video card is supported by X.org (XF86 did not support it 2 years ago), but if not, one can still stick with VESA;

Of course that I am talking about my board, which is nolonger on the site (the closest one I found there is this one).

Seriously, those boards are wonderful for workstations!

Re:A computer for half the price of Windows?

[EnderWiggnz]

it can be done.

the problem, is you're talking about a 300MHZ Geode, and a 8GB HD, with 64MB RAM, and an integrated video/sound/ethernet.

but, it can be done, and it can be done "profitably"

Right now, can't be done...

[t1nman33]

...unless a computer manufacturer is willing to market a $99 PC as a loss-leader. "Buy this PC for $99 if you sign up for $20 a month internet access, or tech support, or the Foo Computer Corp. fan newsletter, or whatever."

DIY computers got more expensive than bargain-basement Dell boxen about 2 years ago...I bought the Dell that I'm typing this on for about $300 shipped with a monitor and a copy of XP. I did it through a deal on Ben's Bargains when I realized I couldn't build my own system for less than the price of the Dell. Now, my gaming system is homebrew, and I have plenty of homebrew systems around, but those are mostly application-specific (a music jukebox machine, a server, a game emulation machine) and a labor of love rather than practical "do-it-all" cheapie boxen.

If you want a PC for less than $100, your only option right now is really to head on over to Craig's List and find somebody who needs to get rid of their old Compaq for $50. In that sense, the sub-100-dollar PC is possible, but it's still a loss-leader for the guy who's selling his $2000 system for a fraction of the cost when new.

Now, could it BE done? Is it POSSIBLE? Of course. But, again, only by a company like Dell or IBM or whoever can afford to buy old Duron chips by the truckload and stick 'em into bargain-basement mobos for inclusion into home computing applicances. It will happen at some point. It just hasn't happened quite yet.

Balmer

[Traa]

Balmer wants a $100 computer.
You would think he would be able to afford something better then that...Microsoft having problems?

;-)

Hardware is NOT the problem

[randalware]

I have always planned spending a lot more on software than hardware.

With the steep discounting of hardware, the cost savings is in software.

A $100 dollar machine will just make software vendors than do NOT reduce prices even richer.

An information appliance with reliable software that doesn't need patching every week would be the cheap option I think is likely.

Something like a Apple 2 with os & sw in a small package with an monchrome lcd ,floppy,std usb keyboard, pcmia card slots, 802.11 & ethernet port.

Put the os software on rom & rom cards and data on the memory cards & floppy.

O wait this sounds like an X-BOX , never mind.

Train everyone to use & program Linux in high school, then we can all use the cheap
hardware that is being surplused.
Like 486's & Pentium 1,2,& 3 systems.

Hmm, not really

[lakeland]

You'll find special deals to achieve this, but nothing else will come close. And you can bet those special deals have all sorts of terms and conditions that you don't want.

Just to prove the point, how many MBs do you know that are under $50? How many CPUs? I managed to find a new athlon 2000+ combo for $80, but even there I was having to get special deals (pcboost.com).

A search on pricewatch returned a duron 950 for under $100, but actually going to the website showed that 'targetpcinc.com' was out of the 950 and had replaced it with a duron 1200, raising the price to $107. Not only that, but the system had no ram and no HDD. Ram starts at $18, a HDD is $40. So I can barely get a machine for $17. And if you've ever tried installing linux with no floppy and no CD, you know how 'desirable' a CD reader is. That would bring the machine to $190. Throw in a keyboard and mouse and you should just avoid breaking $200. Oh, plus shipping and sales tax.

I accept that a huge OEM would be able to get better prices. But twice as good and I start smelling fish...

Trying to answer the question that was asked...

[rewt66]

Most of the answers are along the lines of, "I can't find the parts at that price in this catalog or that store". I don't think that was the question.

Some other comments have focused on whether what Balmer said was reasonable. Interesting topic, but that isn't the question either.

Some other comments have said, "Yes, get a used one." That still isn't the question.

The question is: Could we spec out a PC that, in volume, could sell for $100 and run Linux?

An interesting twist on the question: Can we consider it "a PC" (for purposes of this question) if it doesn't have an Intel-compatible processor? Say, a StrongARM CPU? (Note that the criterion was that it run Linux; well, Linux runs on a wide variety of CPUs.)

Re:Trying to answer the question that was asked...

[gl4ss]

*The question is: Could we spec out a PC that, in volume, could sell for $100 and run Linux?
*

yes, probably even with x86 compatible cpu.
(small card, weak cpu, some cheap small flashdisk big enough for tiny linux distro, entirely doable in _volumes_ for under 100$ right now)

would it be what anyone considers as a "PC" nowadays, performance/usability-wise? not really.

but then again, set top boxes have more power than average pc from 20 years back. do they count? no. they're not what ballmer was wanting.

and the question was pretty much posed as "can you build a sub 100$ computer that counts as a modern desktop pc from store parts right now". to which the answer is no, you can't.

Re:Trying to answer the question that was asked...

[DarkBlackFox]

Could we break $100? Sure, follow the curve of hardware prices over the past 10 years... Starting at upwards of $7000-8000 for a home PC, which then dropped to $4k-5k a few years later, which then went to $2-3k not long after, to the magic $1k, and now to sub $500. Hardware is getting cheaper and faster, no doubts there. The problem is it will eventually level off. Hardware is getting cheaper because manufacturing processes have improved dramatically, in efficiency and design. Machines can be relatively easily retooled to produce the next increment of CPU, hard drive platers are increasing density (while the rest of the housing and electronics remains essentially the same), memory is still floating in that non-fixed prize zone (but still relatively affordable compared to a few years ago). Yes, costs are going down. Will costs dip below a certain point? No. Despite how much you refine your manufacturing processes, you will always have to pay for power/electricity to run your machines, workers to run the machines, not to mention the designers and architects of the components themselves.

Yes, software has upfront costs, with the planning, development, marketing, etc. However, once it's developed and in a useable form, the cost of replication and distribution is very small. Couple of dollars for CD pressing and packaging. And of course patching (which in Microsoft's case seems to be a bigger problem than the plague, but whether that cost should be passed on to the consumer after a certain point of excess is another question). Doesn't hardware have the same upfront costs? Doesn't someone have to design the motherboard/cpu/hard drive/whatever? Doesn't someone have to design the machines to manufacture said components? Don't the raw materials and processing/refining cost something? Heck, if I pay $100 for a hard drive, I have something worth $100 in my hand to hold. If I pay $450 for a copy of MS Office, all I have in my hand is a 50 cent disc and some numbers/letters. Yes, I know the software has value when I sit down and type with it, but tangible property will always have more physical value than intellectual property, simply because there's a physical representation of the money spent.

Anyone who thinks physical computing items will be a suppliment to intellectual property, and not vice-versa (particularly if it's in your interest to wish so, or it's in your line of work to think so), has lost touch with the reality of the industry, despite what financial weight they have to throw around to see it happen.

Re:Trying to answer the question that was asked...

[mcrbids]

Yes, I know the software has value when I sit down and type with it, but tangible property will always have more physical value than intellectual property, simply because there's a physical representation of the money spent.

Except that the purpose of the hardware is to run the software. It's not "We have the hardware, now what are we going to run on it?", it's more like "What do I have to buy to get NNN?".

The intellectual property is not an afterthought - it's the central point. Case in point - at numerous points in the past (including the present) you can/could buy hardware far better designed for day-to-day use than the X86. But, the X86 reigns supreme.

Intel has twice tried to shift away from X86 towards other hardware with numerous benefits over x86, only to bomb twice, despite massive advertisement, promotion, and spending.

Why, you might ask?

Oh, because those other platforms did a sucky job running software developed on x86. That Intellectual Property is what counts! Without it, the hardware is worth next to nothing!

End of the MS tax?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

That's going to be a big pain for MS.

In the old days of mini-computers, sellers would charge more for the minicomputer version of software than for the PC version, even when less people were using the PC version (ie. there was no volume discount argument). The reason they could get away with this was that people who'd paid for a $10k computer would balk less at paying more for the software.

Turning this around, while MS charges a fraction of the cost of a new PC, people are prepared to see it as a relatively insignificant expense (eg here in NZ, I'd pay probably NZD1K retain for a computer (inc monitor etc and WinXP)) and WinXP is only say NZD200 of this.

If however the computer price came down to say NZD400, of which WinXP was half that, then I'd have a much harder time brushing the WinXP cost under the carpet.

Lower PC costs will force lower software prices.

Now I have RTFA, but Ballmer probably has it in his head that people will pay NZD1K for a computer and if the hardware costs only NZD200 then he can put NZD800 in his pocket. People are not as dumb as that.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[Dragoon412]

I would think that the success of Dell, Gateway and the like prove that a large number of people are that stupid.

A small-time shop, or independant builder, can pay retail and warehouse parts on components (read: NewEgg, GameVE, etc.) build the same PC that one of the major OEMs are selling for $2000 for about $800, add WinXP Home ($70, OEM) and Works Suite 2003 ($50), throw a 50% markup on top of that, and make a very nice profit for myself, as well as make the buyer quite happy with the $500+ savings.

I can only imagine how cheaply I could do this if I had Dell's volume discounts on parts, I'd be making a killing.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[Allen Zadr]

As an IT director, I buy Dell and Gateway because of component compatability testing. I know, out of the box, that everything will work together properly. There won't be an off-brand network card that has problems with the off-brand (or Intel Embedded) video card. Or a sound card that doesn't work when Direct3D is initialized.

Yes, I do have the ability to do it myself, but too many times I've ended up re-buying parts trying to figure out some silly incompatability.

Obviously, this is less of an issue now than 5 years ago, but it is still a concern of mine. I guess, to me, it's worth the price.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, people, as in "the buying public" are more than stupid enough to fit Ballmer's bill (hell, they've been buying Microsoft's not-quite-operating-systems for a quarter of a century now), however hardware vendors are not. If you remember, a lot of interesting things came out at the Microsoft antitrust trial. One of those was how displeased the big boys are at the fact that Windows is becoming a bigger and bigger percentage of a system's cost the more OEM hardware prices fall. Microsoft won't acknowledge that fact and insists on maintaining the same price structure. The only reason that market pressure didn't force them to change their pricing long ago is that, well ... as an illegal monopoly they apparently weren't subject to market pressure.

Back in, say, 1982, when what passed for a decent PC went for $5,000, paying Microsoft's juice money for what passed for an operating system wasn't such a big deal, but times have changed. Linux certainly has a lot of appeal to the Dells, HPs and Gateways of the world, and in anything resembling a free market Linux would already be a mainstream desktop OS, but Microsoft really really really doesn't want them to go down that road.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Uou entirely miss my point. The user (and, by proxy, Dell, Gateway etc) see that they're selling a $2000 computer of which WinXP is only say 10% of the cost. In the case of the $800 computer, WinXp is only 20% of the cost. It is hardly worth fighting MS (by switching to Linux etc) to reduce the cost by 10%.

If, however, the cost of the computer came down to say $300 of which $200 was software, the picture changes completely. Now by switching to say Linux you'd be able to get your computer for a third of the cost.

For a lot of lower income countries (India, China, etc), the difference between a $1800 and $2000 price tag is academic, it is still too expensive. For an IT department buying computers 10% here or there is not a huge deal. However a $100 computer is obviously far more easy for the lower income earner to buy than a $300 computer. Similarly a 60%+ saving will make a huge difference to the IT department.

Ballmer must be nuts! A low cost computer will kill MS.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Economics is an academic occupation that does not reflect the real world.

The simple truth of low income countries is that when they are faced with unaffordable medical systems (including medicines and medical procedures etc) they simply die.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[NotoriousQ]

I am (part-time) internal developer, a.k.a sysadmin's worst nightmare. I can tell you that the dell systems I work wiht have almost as many incompatibilities as any of the machines that I have built. Plug in a USB key, and they freeze. Update an SDK, and they freeze. Not often, but just as often as my own machines.

Incompatabilities exist, and they do not go away. The only thing one can do is to do research to minimize them. Dell does it for you -- great -- you do not spend your own people doing this. On my own machine, I will do my own research and not buy Dell.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[hhawk]

> Ballmer must be nuts! A low cost computer will kill MS.

Some day there will be a low cost computer, based on Commodity chips, software, etc. So it's better to make $5 a year from the billion people who will have that computer, than to make nothing.. and an extra dollar per computer is an extra Billion...

Why A Billion? About Billion have computers now.. and until it gets to that low price level ($100), most could never afford it. But my theory is that @ $100 only about 1 Billion more can, leave 3+ billion people on the Planet without.. Of course if you count by FAMILY rather than by person and you factor out some of the older population you do get a deeper world wide penetration.

Re:End of the MS tax?

[homerules]

A good IT professional would have checked one out first to verify operation with equipment before buying thousands of them.

What's wrong with you geeks?

[vicnot]

Look, a sub $101 computer isn't rocket science. There are landfills full of say 500Mhz and below machines...

A 400Mhz machine, even a 166Mhz machine is suffice to run lots of stuff...

Face it, we all use to use them...

A 400 Mhz machine with 128mb RAM is quite a lot of machine for what the average person wants it for:

1. Word processing
2. Calculator
3. Web browser
4. Lousy paint program

A majority of cycles are wasted with the user sitting there..

Here's an old Dell that meets your lofty needs :) $99
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem &cate gory=51110&item=5133297107&rd=1

For $200 you could get the keyboard, mouse and LCD monitor all in the nice form of a portable computer. Be it 500Mhz or so, Linux will run just fine.

What the hell does everyone need a 1Ghz or 2Ghz spec'd machine for? It produces tons of heat, typically noise too and eats up tons of electric with that huge power supply you all want...

Re:What's wrong with you geeks?

[droleary]

A majority of cycles are wasted with the user sitting there..

What the hell does everyone need a 1Ghz or 2Ghz spec'd machine for? It produces tons of heat, typically noise too and eats up tons of electric with that huge power supply you all want...

Because nobody is offering up a 500MHz system that can do in 4 idle seconds what I want done in 1 immediate second. You could just as well argue that the majority of a car's time is spent idle or off, and that the user hardly ever redlines it, so why not stick in a smaller engine? The problem being that no amount of hours it spends sitting in the parking lot will turn my hour commute into a 1 second commute. Computers are over-engineered in just the same way to accommodate what is the common "burst" usage.

A low-end machine alone is not a solution. The promise of a thin client was supposed to allow a basic system to also meet the needs when burst processing, but it never got any commercial traction. The big hurdle was having a network of machines to serve the client requests, the logistics of which usually made standard desktops about as cost effective. There are even things that could be done today to "average out" CPU usage on a single computer, but the economics just don't support them. Could you relieve some CPU burden by pre-decoding an MP3 and just streaming raw audio data? Sure, but how often do you know what will be listened to far in advance, and what kind of trade-off is 10x the disk space for less than 10% of the CPU?

The same thing applies to all sorts of other non-CPU-bound tasks. At some point, they just all add up and overwhelm a 2GHz CPU, to say nothing of a 500MHz or less CPU. Unless you can devise a system that essentially caches very well, thus providing an illusion of faster processing, you're going to have usability issues. Yes, the CPU is sitting idle 90% of the time, but you need to also realize that what humans remember is the all the time we have to sit and wait and wait and wait for the computer. They wait for all sorts of things, too, and not just the CPU. Just throwing an underpowered CPU at them isn't going to help.

Re:A computer for half the price of Windows?

[suckmysav]

AMD bought Geode some time ago, and they are soon to release a new device codenamed "Emma" with 128Mb RAM and a 10Gb HDD.

The price point is expected to be $185, but that includes Windows CE embedded and cut down versions of Word, Excel, IE and Outlook.

Who knows what the price point would be if they had have used Embedded Linux, firefox and OO instead.

Recent Fry's sale (local not outpost)

[Anonymous Coward]

had 1.5GHz+ Athlon, and mobo, in case, with 128k and PS for $89. No rebate. the CDROM, hard drive, and network card had all been free after rebate within a few weeks of the base system sale. So figure another $10 for tax and rebate postage and you're under $100 with a nice machine.

This is only sensible if you live near the Fry's store.

Consider the cost of driving your car a mile. It's likely close to 35 cents when all but your time is figured in. Drive 80 miles round trip to Fry's 3 times and you've spent another $84!

Hell, I couldn't sell my real pretty SGI Indy on ebay. The one kid who bid $14 didn't want to pay the $60 shipping for Indy, camera, kybd, mouse, and display. Maybe one of you dumpster divers will find it. I'll toss gently.

flawed question

[barchibald]

Hey:

Its great to ask this question, and I'm all for cheap hardware. But...given that hardware must be manufactured, consume raw materials etc. I would expect that the floor cost for hardware should _never_ go as low as the floor cost of software - especially after you get past some R&D point for both.

Can you say "monopoly"? It seems much clearer to me that software ought to have some fully commodified components and that the OS ought to be that component. Given that the world of software has (intelligently) landed on layered architectures, we'd expect to be spending money at the higher layers and have ever increasing commodification at the lower layers. Again...can you say monopoly?

Now...I"m not arguing that hardware should NOT fall under this rule, but....well....some costs associated with hardware are a given, and those costs will forever be higher than the "given" costs of software.

Just my 2cents.

Reading the Article

[deathcloset]

Ok right off the bat: does he actually mean, "soon there will be a $100 PC?" what with the trending down of file size due to compression and the deflation of adequate internet-usable pc hadware how could they not become $100?.. I mean....oh god it's all just FUD isn't it!?

let me acutally RTFriggin'A

There has to be...a $100 computer to go down-market in some of these countries. We have to engineer (PCs) to be lighter and cheaper,

sounds like the auto industry's way of stifling inovation to squeeze profits.

Ballmer said piracy of Microsoft's Windows and Office software in emerging markets has become a major concern for the software giant, especially among business users who can afford to pay for software.

i've always wondered. why would you want to pay for software over a programmer? Because It's cheaper, it's easier. But is it better?
Cheaper and Easier isn't always Better. (cheapest and really hard can be very good, I think you'll agree :)

"PCs are not selling to the lower end of the population in China and India. People buying machines there are relatively affluent. So...should the prices be lower? Not really. Until government and situational factors reduce piracy...those people...don't pay," Ballmer said.

Oh, they'll pay alright. one day, I'll make THEM PAY!!!! ahahahaha!!

Balmer didn't say that, I did.

But lower prices have become part of Microsoft's strategy for gaining market share in developing nations. In recent months, the software maker has announced plans to introduce low-cost "starter editions" of Windows XP into countries including India, Russia and Thailand. These versions will be bundled only with entry-level PCs and will not be available for retail sale.

are these guys friggin wizards of FUD or what!? Starter editions? What is redmond up to? I'm sure at the end thier intents are purely alrtuistic. But don't be suprised if the new office assitant is the Hypnotoad!

The Microsoft CEO bristled at the suggestion that Linux is gaining in popularity as a client operating system at the expense of Windows. "There's no appreciable amount of Linux on client systems anywhere in the world," he said.

how do you refute that? Maybe with that classic example of car companies looking out thier windows and seeing only american cars. Thus they think that there will only be american cars.

Just out of curiosity, do you think that microsoft actively pokes and prods linux for security holes? It would make sense wouldn't it?

Ballmer said that some governments have decided against using Linux after studying the costs involved. "You can sit here and read the drama stories and assume they are true. Paris said Linux was dramatically more expensive than Windows. In...Brazil, it's the same thing."

so france surrendered to microsoft, so what's new?

P.S. JK! I like the french! Thank you Fermat!

One exception is the city of Munich, Germany, which is planning a widespread Linux installation, Ballmer admitted. "Yes, we lost the city of Munich. But the fact that the same story gets told 65,000 times, and they are still diddling around to some degree...come on, where's the evidence?" ...ok i'm done reading the article.

I call bullstuff

[Asprin]

$100 PCs might be possible, but they won't stop piracy. What you need is $20 copies of MS Office 97 Pro. At that price, everyone would pay for it.

I think it's silly that Ballmer's argument is basically "The reason everyone in the third world is stealing *our* stuff is that *their* stuff is too expensive."

Canadian Prices...

[Qybix]

A new do-it-yourself kit here in sk.ca is $209.00cd or less for a 2.0ghz amd... I'm sure I could get better if I didn't get the case.

Free - PC as Loss Leader

[ZenFu]

Many of us receive free magazines. Why not a free PC?

Perhaps streaming banners, perhaps AOL like marketing, perhaps whatever we'll find useful and that can be profitably provided for free. How about giving away a PC that is designed to automate your personal finances; That knows what sort of mutual funds you might want; That prompts you through financial planning?

Yeah, there's privacy. But then there's convenience too. And if it comes from a trusted source then perhaps you won't care. That trusted source could be Google. But, it's more likely that a new company will be born that will follow a consistent series of messages, actions, and product lines that will garner your trust. Such a company could knock Google from the roost.

There's certainly room for a company that you'll trust more than you'll trust the typical mortgage company, the typical bank or (oh my) the typical credit card company.

Of course you can.

[Animats]

You can buy a DVD player for $29.95 at Best Buy. The sub-$100 computer can't be that far out of reach.

An XBOX is basically an appliance PC. That's what a sub-$100 PC will look like. There have to be millions of identical ones, with no options, so the manufacturing line just runs and runs.

Corporate refurb?

[gliph]

I know there are a million of these sites out there, but I've actually purchased stuff from these guys before (besides the fact they are local for me, no shipping!) Here's one for $100, Dell Tower that's a P3 550, 128mb, and a 10gig drive. They even have a _6_ month warranty for any issues that may arise. You can also upgrade the memory for another 25 or so. That'll run a lot of flavor's of Linux for CHEAP.

Sure, using cost-reduced 5-year-old technology

[davidwr]

$100 PC? Sure, we can do it:

• A store in the UK has a motherboard for £18.99 ($35). It includes sound, video, USB 2.0, and ethernet, plus the usual stuff.
  
• Outpost.com offers 128MB of PC2100 RAM for $20.
  
• Ebay has a bunch of 4.3GB IDEs with a "buy it now" price of $7. Let's assume new would be twice that at $14 if we could get it.
  
• A case + power will run you at least $22.
  
• I found floppy drives for $6.50.
  Throw in a network cable for half a buck's worth of parts.
  

Total cost BEFORE cd-burner/dvd-player*:
Motherboard: $35
128MB RAM: $20
4.3GB HD: $14
Case w/ power supply: $22
Floppy drive: $6.50
Ethernet cable: $0.50
Total: $98
Linux: Free, in both senses of the word
Look on Steve Ballmer's Face when he reads this on /.: Priceless

Um, Microsoft, when you get the license cost of Windows down to $1.99, you too can play this game. :)

*internet cafe's don't need CD players on every machine.

Re:Sure, using cost-reduced 5-year-old technology

[vonsneerderhooten]

*internet cafe's don't need CD players on every machine.


They dont processors either, apparently. ;-)

Re:Sure, using cost-reduced 5-year-old technology

[dtfinch]

Now to find the $2 CPU.

sure its possible...

[3seas]

plenty of tossed out systems running plenty fast enough to run something like AROS - Amiga Research Operating System

Its all about a small and efficient OS to bring life back to old hardware. Neither of which linux or windows is.

And it even has standardized user friendly level IPC, of which neither windows or linux yet has.

But AROS is currently lacking developers contributing to it.... and it is FOSS...

Paris didn't give in

[bstadil]

Paris said Linux was dramatically more expensive than Windows

If you google the case you will find that Paris did something very smart. They got a 60% discount right off the bat and put MS on constructive notice that a monopoly will not be tolerated. They are starting pilots with a few hindred people with the stated intention to switch to OO.o gradually.

MS can't do a thing as any lock-in attmept will only hasten the switch.

Same with Military in Singapore. They are switching one third to OO.o and leaving the balance on Office 97. Again the mantra is we will switch if you do not open the file-format and we will not upgrade.

MS will be slowly but surely f**ked, it will just take a few years.

It's assumed that...

[YrWrstNtmr]

...a monitor, keyboard and mouse are already available.

Why? Someone who only wants to/can only pay $100 for a PC likely doesn't have these around. Someone who does have these around, probably doesn't want a $100 PC.
A computer is more than the box. Input and output devices are kind of required to actually do anything with it.

Re: Xbox Meets WebTV

[quarkscat]

No local storage, only MSN.
Applications (MS Office, et.al.) available
via web services on a monthly subscription.
No problems with OS theft, or IP not
protected by strict DRM (Trusted Computing).
Lock-in to the Microsoft product family.

This is either a Microsoft wet dream for new
revenue streams, or their last hurrah.

I did it.

[Mustang Matt]

A while back a vendor (tiger direct I think) had a 850 MHz cyrix chip soldered on a motherboard. Free after rebate. I added a 256 mb kingston chip which was free after rebate. I bought a $29 delivered case/ps off of ebay. No floppy and I initially plugged in an IDE cdrom drive to load knoppix. Had it been preloaded I wouldn't have needed to. So really the only thing left is the cost of a hd. I think I've seen decent hard drives for $60 after rebate. (I used an old drive)

I think it can be done. This machine isn't fast though.

How cheap can the OS be?

[empaler]

You've got it all wrong.
Windows is a great bargain, at only 99$

Just ask Steve Ballmer.

What are you complaining about? You get a lot of programs, like Write and Paint, not to mention Control Panel... but unbelievably also Reversi! (Though I am *extremely* puzzled by his closing words)

Re:Consider the parts you need...

[bhtooefr]

Hey, it met all of the feature requirements ;-)

It didn't have to last, it just had to be electrically safe ;-)

I Live here in Bangkok...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live here in Bangkok. The Thais I work with don't like using pirate software because of the lack of support for it. What's selling like hotcakes is low cost PC's running Turbolinux (recent kernel, fully translated GUI, and terrific support - in Thai). The sellers offer windows, but the price is simply too high, and the average Thai has to struggle with windows interfaces they can't read, if they haven't had any formal training in computer literacy.

This is why last years government connectivity initiative was distributing low cost machines at cost running Turbolinux.

When I see windows boxes, they're in internet cafes whose primary focus is gaming, and they're running '98 or 2000. And that's the news from the street here: Mr. Ballmer just doesn't get it.

Re:Computers are FREE

[Hatta]

Ok, I'm gonna take a karma hit on this one for tooting my own horn, astroturfing, or whatever the hell you might want to call it

Masturbation?

Typical Ballmer Double-Speak

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: Microsoft's $300 operating system and $600 office suite are being installed on computers without Microsoft being paid their licensing fees.

Cause: Computers are too expensive.

Solution: Hardware manufacturers must lower the costs of their systems, so more money can be spent on Microsoft software.

Interpretation: Ballmer wants hardware manufacturers to bear the cost of competition. Ballmer either is being deceitful and dishonest, or he simply is delusional and in denial. Regardless, the disconnect in his logic is mind bending. He simply cannot fathom that the solution to his problem is a $30 operating system and a $60 office suite.

Microsoft's offer of a crippled Windows-Lite (for OEMs only) to a few asian markets at a reduced-price is wholly inadequate. Microsoft ultimately will be forced to sacrifice some, if not most, of their 85% monopoly margins to compete with FOSS world wide. And it's going to hurt...

$112 Or bust.

[Mulletproof]

The Modded Xbox is almost a viable solution, but for a more ground up design:

$18 - Celeron 700MHz 66MHz 128K FCPGA CPU OEM (socket 370)
$25 - ASUS MEW-AM Mainboard Socket 370 supporting Intel Celeron 300~533+ Onboard sound/video
$40 - 1 512mb Stick of PC100 Ram $58 if 2 256mb sticks are required.
$3 - Encore - 10/100 VIA Chipset NIC
$24 - COMP-USA ATX Case w 250W Power Supply.
$2 - Generic heatsink

Total = $112

I thought it important to load up on the RAM as compensation for the trailing edge CPU. Granted, you won't be playing Doom 3 on this machine, but it'll do most anything you want in terms of office support, though I'm not entirely sure how linux compatible the hardware is. Still, a decent machine. Prices include shipping, unless I missed something.

All prices courtesy of Pricewatch.com

Re:$112 Or bust.

[Maul]

Close, but this system will also need a hard drive and CD drive.

Quick glancing at Pricewatch, You can probably get a 20GB hard drive for under $30 and a really generic CD-ROM Drive for under $20.

On the upside, we could probably get away with 256 MB of RAM. That will work for most people just browsing the web, sending email, or using a text document once in a while. So we're still probably looking at something around the $150 mark.

Now, this takes care of the hardware. What about the wonderful (*cough*) Microsoft software?

Windows XP Home: $199
Microsoft Word 2003: $199 ($499 if you want full office suite)

Nearly $400 for software on an PC that costs around $150! This is, unless MS really is going to start offering crippleware versions of Windows and Word in the US market.

Re:A computer for half the price of Windows?

[EnderWiggnz]

yeh... i saw that...

i'm _certain_ that the production price on that is about $70 for the hardware. plus another 50-or-so for the msft tax. still leaves a nice heatlhy 35% gross margin.

via is really giving the geode line a run for its money though, and i think that theyve got the better SoC tech right now.

although, i think that amd's manufacturing advantage could crush via.

the real shame here is transmeta - they would a perfect fit for this type of a device, but they're:
1) too expensive.
2) financially insolvent.

and as for the pricepoint for the linux... its actually amazing - sometimes, the linux devices are more expensive, for identical hardware, and have a higher GPM.

really though, these low-end devices are more than enough for 90% of the computing publics needs.

Is a PDA close enough?

[Rich Klein]

Palm Zire 21s are under $100 straight from the manufacturer. I'm pretty sure you can add a keyboard, the monitor's included, and you don't need a mouse. What requirements am I forgetting?

Re:A computer for half the price of Windows?

[EnderWiggnz]

i can run firefox successfully with 32MB flash, and 64MB Ram. This includes baseOS, X, ICA Client, Terminal Client, RDP, and network and printing funcitonality.

it runs slow as molasses on a Geode, and firefox is exceedingly slow to start up on the Geode, but runs "ok" once its up and running. If you give me an 800MHZ VIA, things work much more gooder.

OpenOffice? its a bloated piece of crap. work needs to be done on that front. I dont think that i can get it going in less than 256MB.

Why x86?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The only reason to use x86 is Windows. If you're going to use WinCE or Linux then you may as well use some other smaller/faster/cheaper/lower wattage CPU like an ARM, MIPS or SH4 or something.

Considering that the weight (if one could call it that) of WinCE is behind ARM, the use of WinCE for this product is pretty dopey.

These Geode tablets have been promoted since Nat Semi owned Geode (a few years back). Geode has pretty much gone nowhere and does not look like it will change. I'm quite suprised that AMD didn't rather put their effort into their MIPS device or license ARM and make an ARM device.

It is interesting to note that AMD is one of very few major CPU vendors that does not use ARM for their mobile/low-power 32-bit stuff.

Re:Why x86?

[Uzik2]

The reason for x86 is economy of scale makes
it cheap. I've priced out others and they aren't
nearly as inexpensive.

Re:Computers are FREE

[servognome]

You wouldn't happen to wear a green jacket with a bunch of question marks on it would you?

Re:A computer for half the price of Windows?

[wyrmBait]

My own desktop is circa 1998: a 600Mhz Classic Athlon, 128MB of RAM. It runs kernel 2.4 compiled for K7, and nVidia drivers for the TNT2.

Firefox, Mozilla, OO.org all run just dandy on it, though OO takes way too long to load. I can even run Firefox and OO.org at the same time, but task-switching between them thrashes the swap partition for a few long seconds.

As I write this I'm running Firefox, Gaim, a system monitor, XMMS, a Gnome Terminal (bloated!) with three terminals, and two BitTornado windows, all on Gnome 2.4. It's using a modest 70MB RAM and 131 of swap. That's running stock Debian i386 binaries: just imagine if I was running Gentoo and all those apps were compiled for k7.

So the answer to your question is, yes, it'll run fine even without stripping anything down, and even better than you'd expect if they have the sense to recompile the key apps for that specific hardware.

Dell is the low price builder

[rednip]

I don't know which Dell and Gateway your talking about, but the Dell and Gateway which I know introduced competitive pricing to the PC market. They gobbled up a large percentage with aggressive pricing, 'old school' large manufacturers and white box manufactures alike have had a hard time competeting with them.

I don't know where you are getting your prices from (maybe 1996) but Dell will sell a perfectly cabable machine for less than $500, with a 15" flat panel monitor!. Ala carte, a 15" flat panel will cost one $200 by itself. Personally, I still build my own, but when someone asks for help choosing a PC, I just point them at Dell.

Pah, you're wasting money.

[Tatarize]

$21 Rosewill 184-Pin 128MB DDR PC-3200, Model RW400/128 - Retail
$26 PCChips "M811LU" KT266A Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU -RETAIL
$10.75 POWMAX 320W Power Supply for Intel and AMD systems Model "VP-320ATX" -RETAIL
$41 AMD Athlon 1.33 GHz, 266MHz FSB, 256K Cache Processor - OEM

Total: $98.75

Quick notes, I didn't buy a case so don't step on it. Also, I didn't buy a heatsink or fan so it'll only run for about 12 seconds. Also, you need to boot off the lan. Also, you won't be able to see anything, and not because the processor poofed, but also it has no video card.


For full good system, I did it once for about 220 bucks. Harddrives and cases pah! Who needs them. My system will turn on for $98.75!

computers in India

[humbads]

I was in India over the summer, and I visited one of my cousins who sells PCs from a small shop in Bangalore. Most people over there buy $200-$400 PCs, because that equates to 10,000 to 20,000 rupees. Farmers and laborers (75% of Indian population) make 50 rupees per day, so only the upper class city dwellers can afford PCs. Still, 25% of 1 billion is 250 million people. Would you pay $100-$200 for software on a $200-$400 PC? No. So free or pirated software rules in India, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

It's not reasonable for Ballmer to expect Indians (or others in the developing world) to pay $100 for a copy of XP, unless he can magically make the average Indian earn $40,000 per year rather than $3000. Also, keep in mind that in India, electricity costs more and a UPS is mandatory, so funds available to purchase hardware and software are less.

Even at $200-$400, hardware costs far outweigh labor costs in India. In the US, computers under $200 are not even worth the time to sell them or fix them, given that any qualified PC tech costs $60-$80/hour. So all the sub-$200 class PC components get junked.

This leads to an interesting business opportunity. If there was an efficient means of accumulating all the junk components, they could be shipped by sea container to India, where PC techs could sort out and re-sell the working parts. It costs about $4000 to ship a 20x10x10 ft. container to India from the US. So, you'd need to collect twenty $200 PCs or the equivalent to cover shipping costs. Since once the parts get to India, labor is almost free, the only other cost is gathering the components together in the US. A large corporation might have the means to do this cheaply, however. Maybe large corps should partner with Indian salvage companies to get rid of their old computers. They might make some money rather than paying to have them disposed, and also, Indians could get their $100 PCs for checking Hotmail.

Re:Sell decent PC for $100

[EnderWiggnz]

i'll disagree.

there is certain bandwidth point where exported displays (citrix, x, rdp) become a good-enough solution. while this is near-impossible with a dial-up, its a reality with any type of broadband over 768k, so there is a huge difference between dialup and broadband.

however, there is one number that will change this discssion, that is 4GBPS, or the average speed between your video card and your monitor.

once we hit that, all bets are off.

Piracy was an intended business strategy

[arbi]

In the Ballmer article it states:
> But lower prices have become part of Microsoft's strategy for gaining market share in developing nations.

For over a decade, in the early years of Microsoft, they have been making piracy of their OS and Office software easy. This was a vital and intended strategy for them in order to firmly establish a marketshare dominance.

When the average user gets accustomed to (pirated) Microsoft products, this encourages businesses to use Microsoft products since most employees already have the skills in using Microsoft products. Microsoft then proceeds to enforce BUSINESSES to have legal copies of their software while still encouraging private users to pirate their products.

As you can see, their strategy worked. They are basically doing the same thing now with developing nations. And they will be successful unless the respective governments intervene.

uh, so would I...

[josepha48]

... so why does MS charge $300 USD for XP, if they want a $100 computer? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to cut their price to $50 USD to allow $50 for a computer. Yeah I know all about OEM and how makes don't pay as much. But if an OEM can sell you a $100 computer, why can't MS come down on their proce to the end user?

Oh, btw, cell phones and pda's are at around $100, and they are 'computers' (CPU, video, etc) so for a $100 computer, you'd need a cheaper OS. I don't think he gets that. Why am I going to pay $100 for a computer, then pay $300 for office and excel and powerpoint?

Especially if we're talking Longhorn...

[ikewillis]

For $100, I really doubt you're going to be able to get Longhorn-caliber hardware for quite some time, considering Longhorn's system requirements call for:

• A dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz
• A minimum of 2 gigs of RAM
• A terabyte of storage
• A graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today

Try getting that for $100

Labor.... shipping.... compatable memory

[zakezuke]

Problems with your estimate in order

1. Will that memory work on a i810e chipset? Crucial lists only 256meg simms being as low as $79.99 per 256meg pc133. Other sites reccomends "8x8, 16x8 DRAM Chips Only" Chances are you won't find this in your grab bag.
2. Does this actually include shipping, just because pricewatch says it does doesn't mean it is so. Notice the little "NEW. BUY 1 FOR $4.63" for your NIC. I also notice that they "reccomend" double package protection for $1.99. They also have a 99cent handeling fee. In other words $4.99

$31.07 CPU $22 + $9.07 {www.arsenalpc.com}
$24.95 motherboard {justdeals.com}
$158.00 2-256mb low density pc100 (2*$79) www.1stchoicememory.com
$4.99 NIC (www.shopampm.com)
$29.99 compusa ATX case in store + tax
$8.99 sync/fan $2.00+$6.99
---
Grand total=257.99
Without taking the memory into account (2 sticks your price)
$157.99
*hard drive not included*
*keyboard/mouse/speakers not included*
*cd-rom not included*

Page one machine on www.pricewatch.com

$116 Celeron 1.7ghz 128mb CD-rom keyboard $104 + $12 shipping

Bit of advice to ya. When trying to save money, keep in mind that legacy machines sometimes need legacy parts. In your case the cost of the ram for your machine is equal to the cost of a replacement machine. That is simply unacceptable. Chances are if you go with something that will take slow pc-2100 DDR memory you're going to save a hell of alot more money than you ever would going with anything that takes pc100/pc133.

Re:Computers are FREE

[Jeremi]

If we're going to start plugging things, then I'll seize the opportunity and throw in a plug for FreeCycle. FreeCycle is a great way to get a good used computer (or anything else) for zero cost, and also an easy way to clear out all your old junk by giving it away to local people who find it useful. No packing or shipping hassle, since the recipient typically will come by to pick it up, and you'll earn more karma that way then you ever will posting to Slashdot. :^)

Don't confuse econ 101 with real economics

[metalhed77]

Maybe you should report this to all the peer reviewed econ journals. What you say is controversial, but intriguing....
</sarcasm>

Don't confuse econ 101 with real economics.

Yes, it can be done

[rho]

Build a platform like a Palm IIIxe. Add a keyboard and modem. Easily doable under $100. The IIIxe was selling new, at a profit at $200 many years ago. Assuming an economy of scale large enough (China), I can certainly see it coming in under the limit.

A Palm IIIxe isn't the fastest computer on the block, but it is capable of all of the basic computing tasks. (A friend took his and one of those folding keyboards to an archeological dig in some God-forsaken 3rd world hell-hole as a data input device instead of a laptop. It worked marvelously.) It runs for a long time on batteries, and could likely be re-fitted for solar power.

Add the power of the Internet through the modem, and you hardly need storage space at all.

Computers aren't expensive because of the hardware, or the software, really. Our expectations make the machines so costly.

Possible hell yea!

[Deliveranc3]

I live in Toronto and we have two stores, active surplus and Above all. In either one you can find any kind of PC component for approximatly $5 (maybe a sound card would set you back more but that's because it's specialty) some parts you'll have to go in the "maybe not working box" but if you use redundancy you can get it all working. They have $30 cdn monitors.

Basically yea it can be done, these guys are doing it for the most part to support haxor culture, they are crazy russian engineers who have basically volunteered their time to run the place but they aren't doing it at a loss.

"maybe not working components" aren't for everyone but I can build two computers for $100 American so I'm happy.

Actually following the rules...

[rpdillon]

If I actually follow the rules and get only new hardware, not on sale, with video, hard drive, ram, case, power supply, cd-rom, motherboard and processor, I get $181. This is all straight from newegg.

I bet if you shopped suppliers, spent a bit more time, and took advantage of sales (still only getting new equipment) you could pare it down to $100.

Linkworld Beige/Transparent Gray Micro ATX Mini Tower Case, Model "217 MICRO ATX C.06" -RETAIL
Item# N82E16811164041
$13.00
$13.00

CD/DVD ROM Drives
Artec Black 56X CDROM, Model CHM-56, Retail
Item# N82E16827120505
$14.50

Hard Drives
Hitachi 40GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model HDS722540VLAT20, OEM Drive Only
Item# N82E16822145056
$49.00

Memory (System Memory)
Rosewill 184-Pin 128MB DDR PC-3200, Model RW400/128 - Retail
Item# N82E16820223007
$21.00

Motherboards - AMD
PCChips "M811LU" KT266A Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU -RETAIL
Item# N82E16813185010
$26.00

Processors
AMD Athlon 1.33 GHz, 266MHz FSB, 256K Cache Processor - OEM
Item# N82E16819103156
$41.00

Video Cards
APOLLO S3 SAVAGE IX Video Card, 8MB SGR, PCI, Model "XPERT PLAY 3000 PCI" -RETAIL
Item# N82E16814140033
$17.00

Product total: $181.50

Non-handheld Palm computer?

[defective]

I've been thinking about this for some time. You can get a Palm for $99, a color one for $149, and those come with a screen! Surely if they didn't have to be so small they could be sold at a lower price. If you take out the screen, buttons and slot and replace them with an ethernet port (you already have a usb port), you could probably get below $99. There's been plenty of times I wished I could just plug an ethernet cable into my Zire. I've already got all the apps I need to use the Internet on it.

Word for XBox.

[emjoi_gently]

I dont know why they dont do it. A USB keyboard, mouse, printer attached. Drop in your Office for XBox DVD when you want to write a letter. Or your Explorer DVD when you want the Web. Keep it video game simple... save your letters like you save games. Forget about any OS at all. No Windows or Linux or anything else visible. Forget multitasking.... I've found users quite suprised to discover it's even possible. A super simple productive machine for the home user. No viruses or complicated installations. No obscure problems with the OS. Nothing much to break.

Re:Word for XBox.

[mabinogi]

That sounds like a great idea!

We could make it boot right up into BASIC with a soothing blue coloured screen if there's no disk there.

2005, the year of LOAD *,8,1

Re:Word for XBox.

[emjoi_gently]

Well, there was something rather pure and simple about life with DOS. In all seriousness PCs, whatever OS they run, are too complex and too fragile for non-geeks. Too Flexible, if you like. I really beleive they should be heavily trimmed back for many users.

Re:Agree

[zuzulo]

1) Go to budget barebone PC manufacturer like

www.ikonpc.com

or

www.tigerdirect.com

among many others

2) price lowest barebones case that comes *with* mobo, power supply, CPU

3) add hdd and one memory stick (as well as CD player if needed), do not add MS operating system, aftermarket software, video card, sound card, or other overpriced extras

4) pay between $120 and $150 with free shipping

5) recieve components and assemble your ultra low price computer (~2 year out of date)

6) ????

7) profit or something similar

Not quite at that $100 price point, but pretty close these days, and even closer if you are willing to pick slightly less recent CPU, mobo, and memory. And no, i am not an employee or in any way affiliated with these or other barebone PC manufacturers. ;-)

To make a very cheap machine

[Zachary Kessin]

You would have to make it simple to manufacture. I was thinking what you would want is a motherboard with "everything" on it. Ethernet, sound, USB, video card, IDE, Modem. To go from board to computer you add some ram, a hard drive and put it in a case. You probably would want a somewhat custom case for easy access as well. If I was trying to make a $100-150 computer I would also make it a motherboard with no slots, just what was on the motherboard. I figure many many users just want the real basics and thats it. I might even put 128mb of ram on the mother board.

The idea here is that by putting everything on the motherboard you reduce your cost to put the whole computer together.

Now many of the slashdot crowd would not want such a fixed computer for their main workstation, but it would be an ideal system to give your kids etc. Or for a massive install.

Re:To make a very cheap machine

[Kjella]

Standard parts are cheap. I suspect that putting 128MB ram on the motherboard would cost more than a standard RAM slot and stick. Everything-in-one solution has been tried before and not really gotten anywhere. The cost savings are neglible. Even game consoles (which are really computers in drag, and often subsidized or sold at razor-thin margins) can't do that as of today.

What is needed is relocation. There's lots of people in the rich world throwing/giving away $100 computers. That is for individuals. If I were a major institution in the third world, I'd make a deal to purchase the outdated computers of a rich world insitution/firm for a symbolic price + shipping.

Besides, computers are still moving too fast for such a "platform" to standardize. CPU, GPU, memory, interconnects (PCI express, SATA, DDR2, CPU sockets, USB2, GbLAN etc.) What you're looking for then is most bang for the buck, not standardization.

What you're asking for has actually happened a bit with the SFF market. But those are mostly high-end, because people see they can get lots of power in a small box (I have an Athlon 3500+, DVD burner, 2x160GB HDD in mine), not low-end. Low-end is driven by volume, and then you have a mid-sized beige box that offends noone and can be expanded to do most everything.

Kjella

Not sure...lets see how close I can get.

[fireboy1919]

I'm sure it's going to end up being bad, but I'll give it a shot:

First of all, no case. It'll work without one, so I'm not including it in my attempt. Given this, along with the fact that I'm using old, slow and therefore cooler processors, no cooling should be needed.

Second, I'm ignoring labor. If you can put Linux on your machine yourself, you can build it yourself.

Cheapest new CPU I could find was a PII-266 for $6:

Compatible motherboard Intel 440BX for $10

Lets go with a good 64MB of ram. This one uses EDO, which is $8.
Then we add a a 4MB AGP video card for $6,
a sound card for $6,
and a 10/100 LAN card for $4.
Power supply for $14.
8x CDROM drive for $9,

At this point, I might add that all of these things actually have free shipping in case you want to do this.

With the exception of power supplies, which are cheap, harddrives go bad the fastest, so people are always buying up the surplus ones. It makes it a lot harder to find old stock that hasn't been sold.

So I'd like to consider it separately. Right now we're at $63.

The cheapest harddrive I could find in 4 minutes of searching (about that for the other stuff) was a 20GB 7200 drive for $30 with shipping.

So...we're done at $93.
You might also have to buy an IDE cable. I was just hoping that the harddrive or the motherboard or the CDRom drive came with one.

Using this same procedure, you can probably get a case for about $20. Same low quality. But why bother with such cheap parts? Keep 'em in a shoebox.

Pricewatch Scavenger Hunt

[spworley]

Actually this was kind of fun. http://www.pricewatch.com/ gives all the necessary links.

These are all-new, retail prices. Shipping + taxes not included.

CPU: 700 Mhz Celeron $18
MB: Intel 810 MB, with sound/video/USB/ethernet $10 (!)
RAM: 128MB PC2100 $15
DVD: $12
Case+300Watt PS: $24
HD: 3.5GB EIDE $17
Heatsink/Fan $1
2 IDE cables: $1
Total: $98

This even includes a DVD, not CD.
The hard drive was the surprisingly expensive part. The motherboard was the surprisingly cheap part.

Nintendo Gameboys and DVD players and TIVOs.

[Gldm]

Seriously. Have you seen the specs on the Advance series? They sell for what, $80? With a screen?

Dump the LCD, it's too small for reasonable work. Replace it with TV out. Yes TV is sucky but most can (barely) manage readable text in 640x480 for simple wordprocessing and browsing. I'm betting someone in the next 10 years *cough*china*cough* will develop a digital TV cheap enough to penetrate the 3rd world markets, which should improve things dramaticly. But for now, TV out would suffice, and removing the LCD would probably save at least 20% on the price per unit.

Add a USB port. Just has to be at least one. You can always daisy chain a keyboard and mouse like apple was often fond of. GBA's already have a link system, and wasn't firewire co-developed by apple and nintendo?

Add ethernet. I doubt you could do wireless in the price range, but eventually it'll happen. Generic 100M cards go in 99 cent bins these days. You can even find gigabit cards on sale for under $20. 802.11 cards will follow, though it's not necessary either way, just convenient.

Now someone out there is saying "Wait, what about the disk?" Ok now, repeat after me "There is no disk." Wait, what? You heard me, no disk. How? We centralize the disk on a NAS, and use a bootstrap flash rom similar to a GBA cartridge. This way, you can distribute disk cost among many clients, which is FAR more efficient per GB. Consider a 160GB disk costs barely more than a 20GB disk these days. It's not even twice as much! (seriously, pricewatch has cheapest 20GB @ $33, 160GB 7200rpm @ $66!) By using ROMs with individual user keys, they boot up and request a specific user directory on the NAS, so data can be private, even encrypted. Also, assuming 802.16 really delivers on its promise, consider how many clients even a modest disk and router could serve in the 3rd world. Assuming we use a very light distro (possibly fitting everything but the apps on the boot flash!), what's the average user disk use in the real world? Exclude multimedia files. Hmm gee, those business documents and emails aren't all that big are they? A 160GB disk could probably serve at least 100 users if you restrict the kind of content they can store (just restrict the apps they can use), and that's being pessimistic. Plus disks will continue to grow, so adding more capacity is easy. Ok fine, you don't want to be draconian about file storage. So give each user a reasonable space, say 16GB. Figure it formats down to about 13GB. That's still enough for 3GB of apps and 10GB of files. Say that again, 10GB of files. Can you imagine telling someone from 1994 "You can only store 10GB of files"? Because that's the kind of data storage we're looking at here.

Don't like gameboys? Too much modding work? How bout a DVD player? Ever seen one of those under $100? Umm yeah. Does it have TV out? Yeah. Could it have USB? I don't see why not. Networking? Oh come on, ethernet cards are almost literally a dime a dozen. Processing power? It can decode mpeg2. My pentium 2 300 could barely manage that. And that's minimum spec. I'm betting modern DVD players have all sorts of fancy stuff that takes more CPU anyway.

Yeah I bet you don't like my distributed disk idea either huh? Ok then, how's this work for ya: My old DSS reciever died last week. I went around pricing a new one. Turns out Circuit City is having a sale. They've got an RCA DSS reciever WITH AN 80GB TIVO BUILT IN for $99.95! What ISN'T this machine? Does it have display? Yes, to TV, often to multiple formats. Does it have storage? Hello! 80GB! Does it take media? Hooking a DVD reader to it would probably be trivial, considering it has an IDE disk inside. Networking? It already recieves digital video over a coax cable! It's a cablemodem for all effective purposes! Keyboard/mouse etc? Most of them already have USB or firewire anyway, again trivial.

The HUGE advantage linux has over windows in the 3rd world is PORTABILITY. When you can run the OS on virtually ANY hardware with a recompile, it means you're not constrained to an expensive platform designed for high performance. The only way MS will threaten this is with ports of the CLR virtual machine that .NET runs on, and I'm betting it'll be a while before appliances are running that.

Re:Agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfff! I don't need no stinking RAM. I mentally memorize the one and zeros.

$100 PC... and some great old ideas

[j.leidner]

If they sold a $100 computer, I'd like to suggest warming up some great old ideas:

• Why _load_ Firefox/OOffice when you can run it in the ROM? It might run a bit slower, but the perceived responsiveness is often determined by application startup time.
• Why _boot_ a machine at all? I'm ok with developers' machines being booted, since they stay up 27/7 anyway. But a consumer who wants to check something on the Net or write a quick letter can't be bothered to go through a 3-minute boot cycle.
• Also, it can't hurt to modify the hardware slightly so that a LED indicates there are new emails even if the whole box is switched off, to save energy.

I hope I will live to see a real consumer computer that is as much an appliance as a microwave oven.

The only idea that goes a little bit in this direction is modern BIOSes that have a built-in Web browser that doesn't need an OS.

--
Try Nuggets , our SMS search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.

Re:$100 PC... and some great old ideas

[yerfatma]

I'm ok with developers' machines being booted, since they stay up 27/7 anyway.

Obviously you work at the same place I do.

Re:$100 PC... and some great old ideas

[saintlupus]

Funny, I've got a machine that was designed just that way, right down to the blinking email LED. It's called an Audrey, it was made by 3com, and it failed miserably in the market.

People want a "real" computer for the same reason that they want "upgradable" computers; futureproofing, whether they need it or not.

--saint

Re:In Asia, maybe

[ya8282]

Memory made in Korea (e.g. Samsung or LG) is purchased in Korea for 2x the price of memory sold in the US. If the import tax into the US were lowered, the companies would naturally raise their prices to try and reduce their losses (or increase profits). Thus supply and demand will not change due to this, so you will pay the same price. Power-supply prices are about the same as US in Korea, if you don't include the hefty 19% import tax and an additional sale profit margin tacked on. CPU's are more expensive here, storage is more expensive here, case is probably similar to US prices... CD/DVD recordable media might be cheaper!

Re:Labor (huh?) shipping (duh.) memory (hmm)

[zakezuke]

Shipping was included, as I noted in my first post

Shipping was not included in most cases. I checked price watch to the best of my ability. Yes, many of the page one links "said" free shipping on pricewatch, but you go to the links pricewatch provides and it's clear that you get charged for either shipping, handeling, misc packing, or any of these in combination.

It's my belief that you didn't follow through and actually checked the websites like I did and actually saw the misc shipping charges. Your $112 estimate was in error. The parts you listed would cost $157.99 to get to your door, and the ram wouldn't work anyway. For that motherboard to work you're going to need to spend $80 per 256meg stick. Unless you can find a cheap source of low density ram that works with the i810 chipset.

If you're still not understanding what i'm saying... using your parts and ram that would work, we're looking at $177 for that machine with 256 megs machine or $257.99 for that machine with 512 megs. Not including the $20 for 20gb and ($12 DVDROM). $209 and 289.99 respectivly. If we are still not clear... page one price watch memory won't work in a i810 chipset.

Now, you did take the time to look for some crap, and I commend you for that. Please understand me when i'm telling you keeping within budget of $100 or even close, you are going to have to ditch the idea of socket 370 and intel chipsets. To keep costs low from the get go, you're better off looking at an AMD athlon / duron as ddr memroy is not only dirt cheap but is bloody likely to work.

I opted for the slower processor and tried to balance it out with more RAM

You opted for a motherboard with a i810 chipset that requires expensive ram. Now if this is the route you want to take, you might consider a VIA chipset. A VIA chipset is far more likely to beable to use dimms with x*4bit chips onboard.

You took the other approach and added more than $100 to the process

I don't know where you get $100 from, I was trying to illistrate that the dirt cheap PCs are going to be fast celerons, or low end AMD Athlons/Durons.

What imay be unaccpetable for you might be for him

It's unacceptable for a machine to NOT TO WORK. Your machine as configured either won't post, or will only see 1/4 of the memory you put onboard if you are lucky. Chances are the i810 motherboard will not post!!!

A bit of advice to you- Don't read between the lines so much. Oh, and pay a bit more attention to the story and its replies.

I understand you must have worked very hard browsing pricewatch to put together a system list. I can see why your feelings might be hurt. But that doesn't change the fact that those companies who say free shipping on price watch lie like dogs, and you picked a motherboard that would cost so much in terms of memory that you'd be better off buying a dell. If you really really really take your self seriously, I reccomend you re-evaluate your game plan. As in, if you want to keep costs as low as they can be, try looking for chipsets that will take cheap memory.

Again, if we are unclear... i810 won't take page one price watch memory. Use of the i810 chipset will double or tripple your estimate. Page one companies lie about shipping charges. Your machine would cost as much as a new dell as configured. To lower costs, pick a chipset that can deal with the flood of cheap memory that's on the market. {as a side note, sometimes it's cheaper to buy a pair of 256meg dimms for intel chipsets and have them be seen as being only 128megs, then buying one low density 128meg dimm).

What you did was cool, I welcome you to redo the assignment, would be great with more follow through.

Thank you for your time and have an insperational day.

400MHz is fine

[Nurgled]

I still use a machine with a 350MHz Pentium II chip for almost everything I do, and I do a much wider variety of things than your average user would do.

Unfortunately, I don't have a word processor installed so I can't do what I wanted to do and load an "average user"'s set of software and see how fast it runs, but suffice it to say that currently I have a bunch of text editors, my web browser, a VoIP client, an IM client, my email client, an IRC client, a whole tonne of terminals running application-wise, and in the background Apache and mySQL running, occasionally serving requests from other users of my network.

The thing all of these pieces of software have in common is that they are interactive: they don't do anything unless the user is actively using them. The ones I'm not currently looking at are using a minimal amount of CPU perhaps processing the occasional packet, or whatever. The foreground application might occasionally have quite an intensive task to perform, but it's usually over within 30 seconds tops, and the scheduler ensures that the other apps get a chance to run anyway.

It's applications like games, video playback and so on that beat the CPU constantly that become a problem. Having said that, I regularly play back video files from over the network fullscreen in mplayer and with the use of some cache and the hardframedrop option there's no discernable degredation apart from the occasional sound stutter or decompression artifact where a key frame gets skipped. Realistically no action game since Quake III Arena would run on this machine, which is its only real downfall. I don't generally play computer action games, though, so it works well enough for me.

The hard part, of course, is finding a 400MHz CPU to buy new. Second hand could work (and that's how I got my CPU three years ago), but new you'd probably be looking at a lot more than something a thousand MHz faster just because there are no economies of scale attached to such a CPU anymore. If people became interested in a low-cost PC to the point where there was a demand for such CPUs, I'd assume that today with the lessons learned from the faster CPUs companies could make a much leaner, meaner "slow" CPU that runs a lot cooler and with much less power consumption than the Pentium 2 family did. The CPUs on the fanless EPIA Mini-ITX motherboards are a good example of this, but you can't buy those separately of course.

With DRM anything is possible

[gilesjuk]

Ballmer would like a PC which can only run Windows. Make this a cheap PC like a games console where the PC is sold at cost or a loss, charge silly money for software.

Go further. The key is integration

[Moraelin]

Can you buy a board with a ton of interfaces, voltage regulators, 128 MB RAM, etc, for less than 100$ today. Well, yes. It's called a graphics card.

No, I'm not going for "Funny" mod points. Bear with me. I'm trying to make a point.

The point is that you want to minimize the number of chips and the PCB complexity to the maximum.

It's not even a new idea. Back in the day, ZX Spectrum computers were very cheap because of the "ULA" chip. Basically Sir Clive Sinclair had invented the north-bridge. With integrated graphics, no less. No, again, it's not a joke.

Instead of having a ton of smaller chips, the ZX Spectrum basically had one custom designed chip with all the needed functions. It cut the price a lot.

For a more modern point for it, look at the PS2 vs XBox. The PS2 went and integrated pretty much everything it could into the CPU. The XBox went with a traditional PC design. The PS2 is a lot cheaper to produce. And the XBox loses money hand over fist because it's expensive to produce.

So basically that's the way I'd go. Take an idea from the AMD K8: it already integrates the memory controller on the CPU. Aside from saving traces on the mobo, it also gives it awesome latency on memory access.

So I'd take that idea and run amok with it all the way: integrate _everything_ possible on the CPU. Including ATA controller, a simple 2D graphics core, etc.

Of course, I'd probably not base it on the K8, which uses too much power and is large anyway. I'd want something like a P3 made in 90nm (yes, it's called a Dothan) and with a minimal cache. Say, 256K will do just fine.

That leaves lots of space to pack the other goodies around it. Again, the idea is to pack both "north bridge" and "south bridge" and sound card too on the same chip as the CPU.

I'd probably go for a Kyro 1 graphics core. Yes, it's old, but it does just fine even in simple 3D games, on very little memory bandwidth. And since it's gonna be an integrated graphics solution, bandwidth is what it won't have.

So basically at the end you'd have a motherboard which is the size of a graphics card, and looks much like a graphics card. A central chip, some 8 RAM chips soldered around it, a big cooler and a couple of connectors.

Re:That's exactly what Balmer wants!

[DLR]

Note that the Xbox 2 is going to be built around a PPC chip and no hard drive. Is there a version of Windows for PPC? I don't believe so, but I could be mistaken.

I remember an incident in 1981...

[leonbrooks]

(cue sound of k1dd13z winding mental age estmates up)

...when I worked in a computer store in West Perth called Computer Choice, for a chappie by the name of Ed O'Connor-Smith. After watching him sell a computer, one friend of mine took to calling him Ed O'Conman-Smith which was a tad unfair even though he could indeed sell ice to eskimos or charm a starving baby away from the breast. He once sold a million-dollar mainframe on someone's petty cash.

Ed sold an Osborne 1 to a lady called Pauline Winter (no relation to the actress AFAIK) of Maritana Typing Services, of which I can find no trace on the Web. Pauline had a top-of-the-wozzer Olivetti electric typewriter which would do a steady 75 WPM and had a 16,000 keystroke typeahead buffer. She beat it. Easily.

The Osborne 1 scanned the keyboard in software in its spare time, using its (at the time) grunty 4MHz 8-bit Z80, with pretty much inevitable results. So Pauline brought it back.

Instead of refunding her, Ed upsold her to a KayPro II, which was built like a lab instrument and had a separate microcontroller in the keyboard and guaranteed 3-and-a-half-key rollover. And 400kB 5.25" floppies in place of the shiny new recently-doubled-in-size 192kB floppies in the Osborne, and a full 64kB of RAM in place of the Osborne's 48kB. Your keyboard probably has considerably more storage than everything in the Osborne added together. (-:

Pauline sat in the shop for a few days, using the Kaypro to make sure everything went well. Her typing was like rain on a tin roof, there was no way you could hear individual keystrokes, but the funniest part was watching WordStar.

WordStar is a little priority-driven time-sharing little universe of its own. It had an event loop decades before Bill knackered the one in OS/2. If it has time, it prints stuff. If it doesn't, it at least updates the display decorations. If it has no time for that, it keeps the current text looking good; and if not all of the current text, then the current line, followed by the lines above and below outwards towards the top and bottom of the display. And if not even the current line, it echoes the characters as you type them, and the last-ditch response is to just store the characters and echo nothing.

With Pauline at the keyboard, WordStar was able to echo two characters out of 3 if it was lucky. Printing happened for a few minutes some time after the start of coffee break, and for maybe 25 minutes of a half-hour lunch break, and for many hours after she'd finished for the day. She was typing at least as fast as a top-shelf Ricoh daisywheel could, and that's fast. She started with a blank data floppy every day (two drives, one for programs and one for data), and usually filled about 3/4 of a 400kB floppy by close of trade, so I'd guess that was a sustained 110-120 WPM.

Re:That's exactly what Balmer wants!

[stanmann]

There was an NT 4 core on PPC, I'm sure the code is still sitting around in a CVS somewhere.

Cheap PC, or more efficient setup?

[CrazyWingman]

It's interesting the way a lot of these threads are going here. A lot of what I'm seeing is, "Well, if you just need a word processor, then..." This makes me wonder if we should be focusing some effort in a slightly different place.

Maybe what we need is an operating system that "just does" word processing, web surfing, and e-mail. It would be a bit of a throwback to the old days of typewriters and workstations, but was that era really wrong?

Sun seems to be trying to encourage one mode of doing this - the blade terminal. But, I think there are a lot of companies who are very worried about taking such a big step toward this setup. Not only do you have to spend a bit of time getting the networking for that system right, but if you don't like it later, you suddenly have all of this hardware that is completely useless to you.

I think that if you could get the same setup running on the x86 machines that are already in place in most companies, and also show them how they could buy cheaper versions, that would still work perfectly if they ever chose to go back to their Windoze platform, then you would really have something killer.

I'm sure that there are now a few zealots screaming, "This is exactly what XYZ linux does!" I'd argue, though, that even linux in its current state is a bit more than what is needed. I'm really talking about a very non-general purpose machine that literally only does word-processing, web browsing, and e-mail. And, of course, the qualifier here is that it does these three exceptionally well and extremely intuitively. I think there are ways to start with a linux distro and write some extra application code to make this system happen, but it's not there yet.

Sigh, back to my current Windoze business life. Counting the hours until I can get home to my nice, debian-loaded UltraSPARC. :)

Why not a retro box

[majesty2180]

http://www.retrobox.com/ These guys sell great pc's (rebuilt and tested before selling to you) for dirt. $75.00 gets you a PIII-500, 128MB Ram, 6.4Gb hard drive, Sound, 8MB Video, CD-Rom, and Network card.

I've just sold my old K6

[famazza]

I've just sold my old K6-II 500 for R$ 100. I used to run Slackware 9.1 with no problems. My wife used to run WinXP + OfficeXP, and also some games like Half-life (ok, I used to play HalfLife).

It's a good machine:

• K6-II 500
• 
  Soyo Motherboard
  RAM: 256 MB SDRAM PC133
  Diamond Stealth III S540
  SoundBlaster AWE32
  

It's a good option for those who only wants to use office suites.

Yes and no...

[Se7enLC]

I'm not so sure it's financially possible for a company to make a new PC designed to be saleable for under $100. People have mentioned the xbox and buying individual parts that are "new", but have been in stock since they were top-of-the-line, but those ways won't work, for reasons I'll get into.

Reason #1: Look at the pricing curve for parts. a 20 gig hard drive doesn't sell below $30, but a 120 gig harddrive can be had for $39. Why? Because nobody is MAKING 20 gig harddrives anymore. The ones you see are just overstock.

Reason #2: In addition to the lack of market for those computers, we have the lack of profit. Just because we can FIND a new motherboard for $10 or w/e doesn't mean it will be around for long. It's not being manufactured for that price, it's just being sold off since there's an overstock. $10 won't buy parts, manufacturing cost and developing costs for a board. We'd like to believe that mass producing makes everything cost a penny, but it's just not true. Somebody's salary has to be paid with the profits, and they don't want to make fractions of pennies.

Reason #3: The reason the XBox is so cheap is because the profit plan for the company involves the sale of games. They figure nobody will use the system without buying games. That's why they are so pissed at people buying them and modding them - they are actually losing money, since those people will potentially never buy a game.

And with my super powers of Pricewatch-checking...

[pla]

OK, can we build a reasonable PC for just $100 and a copy of Linux?

The cheapest reasonably modern (Athlon XP 2000) barebones system on Pricewatch goes for $76.

Now you'll have to excuse me, I think I'll spend the rest of the morning finding a cure for cancer, and after that, on to the really hard problems, like deciding what to cook for supper.

Re:LOAD *,8,1 is not DOS

[computechnica]

I remember going to Target and entering these two lines on all the commodore, atari, and adam computers:

10 print" Target Sucks";
20 goto 10

Ready.
Run

Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks Target Sucks

why not used?

[Robocoastie]

there's tons of perfectly good used pc's and used parts out there. I just bought a dual p2-450 rig for example off ebay for $80 ($100 w/shipping) that is now doing file and print sharing and crunching folding@home.

This rig flies with Yoper Linux I was flat out amazed. I still ended up putting one of my XP Pro licences on it though because I ran into too many troubles making my hp psc printer work through samba but even with winxp it is fast and reliable.

So if M$ really thinks there's a market for $100 pc's in so called "developing" countries then people should set up biz's that recycle these used pc's and sell them over "there".

Why didn't Ballmer suggest this though? - Simple answer, because he won't make money on that. He knows ms makes their money through oem sales and notice he made this stupid "need" revealed on the heels of the announcement of the stripped down winxp they are developing for these "developing" countries? So what's he really getting at? -

My conspiracy theory answer: When the XBox came out I told people this was ms's first move into making their own computers, people laughed. But with the rumors that xbox 2 could be a full media computer keyboard, windows and all no ones laughing now. I think those who suggested that ms's answer for this so called "$100" need is an embedded version of windows that users "subscribe" to use and is basically an advanced dumb terminal are correct.

I predict they will either make it themselves or they'll have a licence to select few oem's to put it embedded and the oem's will be the ones that collect the subscription fee.

The most expensive part of a computer these days is STILL the monitor, but a custom version of windows on a rig like this could automatically blow up the text on the tv when an app that needs more clarity is called on such as email.

This plan of theirs would be in addition to their other windows products of course not a replacement.

Just one little problem with this...

[bug]

If/when a $100 PC hits the market, customers will see that they can buy a tangible working PC for dirt cheap. Oh, but then they'll need software for it. At that point, they'll really start questioning why their OS and office suite each cost as much or more than the hardware. The software is easily replacable by either illicit copies or legitimate copies of linux and openoffice. It's far easier for a customer to see the value in tangible hardware (that they can resell if they want) than the value of intangible components like software (which according to their EULA they can't resell). I simply do not see how a drastic reduction in PC hardware prices benefits Microsoft. Microsoft software is taking up an increasing percentage of the cost of a PC, and in the end this could kill them. Remember, their OS and office suites are their only consistent profit makers.

working hard to protect MS margins

[burnin1965]

I perused some of my favorite hardware sites and the best I could come up with is in the $149 to $179 range. And that is for what I would consider a reasonable box that could run popular open source applications.

So I don't believe it is possible at this point but I also don't want to see everyone in the hardware industry struggling to meet Ballmer's challenge. Why should everyone in the hardware industry work even harder to destroy our miniscule margins so MS can keep their 80% margins?

The hardware industry is extrememly competitive almost to the point of self destruction. I know first hand from working in the industry and talking to others. i.e. I was at AMD's fab25 in Austin a couple weeks ago looking at some equipment in the fab and they were running full steam. You would think they are making money hand over fist, however, in talking with an engineer it turns out they were just getting by because they were trying to cut prices to the bare minimum to compete.

If anything I'd say that MS needs to embrace competition in their industry so they can drive their prices down the same way hardware manufacturers have over the years. In my opinion Windows isn't worth crap, but I'm sure people in India and China would be more interested in paying MS $10 for their product instead of $299.

Sorry, kind of a rant, but Ballmer's statement combined with the stress from working in the hardware industry just burns me up!

burnin

Recycling that $100 piece of hardware?

[otisg]

It's amazing that they want to make something for less than $100, yet it's so expensive to recycle computer hardware.

Compare that to the situation in paper industry - to make 1 ton of paper you need 2 trees, 240,000 liters of water, and 4750 kWh. To make the same amount of paper from recycled material you need 0 trees, 180 liters of water, and half the energy.

Re:A computer for half the price of Windows?

[ThJ]

You mean like those pesky "KDE" and "GNOME" programs?