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Walmart Offers Sub-$500 laptop With Linspire
LehiNephi writes "Cnet reports that Walmart is offering a sub-$500 notebook running Linspire. The specs are less-than impressive: a 1GHz VIA C3 processor, 128 MB RAM, 30GB hard drive, and a plain vanilla CD-ROM. Seems overpriced for what you get, but cheap nonetheless. And yes, it does run Linux."
[I posted this elsewhere, but it's relevant here too.]
This is a bad choice. I have a C3 933Mhz processor. It performs roughly equivalent to a 300Mhz PIII. Not only this, but it is extremely hot. The C3 was supposed to be cool, but this is one of the hottest laptops I've used. I haven't objectively measured it with a thermistor yet, but the external temp seems about 55 C to 60 C. If I put the laptop on my bare chest it leaves red marks. It may be because the laptop is so thin, or maybe the HSF construction is shoddy.
The PIII/M is cool, and embarrasses the C3 in terms of performance. This is partly due to C3 being a bad processor, but also largely due to PIII/M being a good processor. In fact, if I was getting an x86 notebook, I wouldn't accept anything except a PIII. I've personally experienced Athlon notebooks, P4 notebooks, and VIA notebooks, and can tell that they are all inferior. I can't speak to Transmeta or Apple branded notebooks.
If this C3 notebook is at all appealing to you, my advice is to get an old PIII off ebay or reburbished from one of many dealers. You'll pay the same price and get a much higher performing, cooler laptop.
Windows XP might behave this way, but I've gotten 2K running happily in 128MB. No, it doesn't hit swap half as much as you are characterizing.
I would be more concerned about KDE running happily under such a load. I'd put IceWM on there instead. And don't even think about running OpenOffice.Org...that would kill it DEAD.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
1.5 hours is embarrassing. A VIA C3 1Ghz is about 12W. A Pentium M mobile is about 14W. And a P4 is perhaps 50W.
This laptop has the right cpu for long battery life. I suspect it has useless batteries in it. And does not have that many power friendly peripherals.
Apple 1GHz G4 laptop gets about 4.5 hours on a charge. But they have an 8 cell(i think) li-ion pack. As if the number of cells means anything. (Did Walmart print the mAh of their battery pack?). For twice the price you get 10x the laptop.
P4 laptops go about 2.5 hours on their batteries, typically. (intel's speedstep power management helps dramatically). And Pentium M laptops go 5-6 hours on a charge.
Really you can pay $200 more for a laptop that goes three times as fast and lasts twice as long. Or pay double and get something that lasts 4 times as long. I really don't see any advantage to buying this laptop. A used celeron laptop would probably be a better deal if you absolutely can't spend more than $500 on a laptop. (my NiMH 600mhz celeron laptop gets about 2.5 hours on a charge, but only after I replaced the NiMH pack with a fresh one)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They managed their finances such as not to do this. From the sounds of it, most of their bussiness from Walmart simply went to other home improvement stores, namely Ace and Home Depot.
Have you checked the breakdown of the precent of malpractice insurance that goes to lawyers, against the amount the insurance companies merely pocket? People get mad at the doctors, and get mad at the lawyers (I mostly avoid dealings with both myself), but how do the insurance firms avoid anyone noticing how incredibly much money goes to them - not just for malpractice, but for medical insurance itself. If you eliminated the insurance companies from the racket, it would cut something like 30% off our medical costs.
As for the suits against doctors, the majority of suits are against just a few doctors in any state. The states where the medical association actually disciplines doctors they get complaints against end up with much lower malpractice insurance, because there's less malpractice, because in medicine as in most professions it's about 10% of the people who make 90% of the screwups. So what malpractice insurance gives doctors is the freedom from having to discipline their own. Start yanking licenses from the idiots, and the problem goes away. But of course the insurance firms don't want the problem to go away. They make money coming (medical insurance) and going (malpractice insurance).
It's a protection racket.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
No, they are not. We have 30-40 of these we use for developer testing, servers, etc.
They are 2-4 times faster on IDE access then any 32bit P3-4 system including Xeons. Rest of the IO is also quite good (around 2 times better then comparable P3). As a result they make very good small servers.
CPU performance is nothing to shout about, but hardly slow. It is similar to PIII at the same speed. Possibly 10-20% slower, but not more. Actually it depends on what are you doing because they have smaller cache then PIII (only 64k).
Thermals are phenomenal. A C3 eats 1-5W where P3 eats 70+.
They are rumoured to be extremely sluggish for a completely unrelated reason. The early EPIA (as well as some current non-Via system) motherboards shipped with a Cyberblade on board. It has shared memory. So when a geek takes it his first reaction is to pump up the video frequency and resolution as high as the system can bare. As a result the video is accessing the memory at 150MHz pixel clock. That into a considerable portion of the memory bandwidth. In fact the slowing down between 60 and 90Hz vertical sync is clearly visible. This is no longer the case with newer motherboards which have a fairly decent 2D video with its own memory.
Overall it depends what you use it for. If you want a silent low maintenance server or test box. It is perfect. If you want a silent typewriter/mail desktop it will do the job. If you want to play doom3 you are got to be kidding.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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