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Walmart Expands Low-End Linux Notebook Offerings
startleman writes "A story on Tom's Hardware reports that Walmart apparently will offer a Linare-equipped notebook below the $500 mark. Manufacturer Linare said that it will bring a Linux-based device to the retailer 'within the next few days.' Specs include an AMD Athlon 1800+, a 40 GByte harddrive, 128 MByte memory, a CD-ROM drive, an Ethernet port and the firm's Linare OS as well as Open Office."
its fine, especially for a web user period. or a basic word processor. or maybe even for music...
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
Balance 14.1" Laptop, 1.1 GHz AMD Athlon 4
Remove windows and you got your self a sub $500.
It's Wal-Mart -- desecrator of burial grounds, disturber of ancient ruins, discriminator of women employees, and destroyer of small-town America... ...but it's Linux!
Oh, how to feel?
The coolest voice ever.
Run Windows ?
After I saw "Linare", I asked myself the same thing.
(seriously)
Absolutely no mention of warranty for the boxes at the Linare website. I'd be a little worried about buying a low-end unit from a foreign company, through Wal-Mart, without some kind of assurance I could get it serviced somewhere reasonably.
I worry that the money saved might be done so foolishly.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I had a friend that worked in the rent-to-own business. He was in collections, but the place was small enough that he could also find himself on the floor from time to time.
It didn't matter what the specs were. All the customers cared about was web (pr0n and music) and email, with a minority interested in chat.
These machines, running linux satisfy all the needs of this customer, provided they can come up with $500 all at once.
Why did they choose linaire, the world's most hideous linux distribution?
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I don't think Walmart is doing this for any other reason then they don't want to pay the sticker price for windows. They are not really advocating Linux, more so than just providing something so they can say it has an operating system. Sadly, for any of you who thinks this is a win for Linux... I feel most certain that most of they buyers of these machines will buy it not because of Linux but because of it's fairly low price... wipe the hard drive... and install the pirated copy of Windows they got from the kid next door.
Blender And Linux Fan
Dell did this for a while. 128 with a raging fast P4 was the norm for their advertised specs for years. I guess their marketing department was banking on the fact that a fast CPU helps when the operating system alone uses all the ram and you're into virtual memory the moment you run an application. People on Slashdot understand the need for just enough ram, but most consumers only know what Intel marketing tells them.
But this is being sold through the web site, not at the stores. Most of the people who buy them probably read about them here at slashdot. I doubt that they sell very many.
I tend to see this as one giant corporate bully giving another giant corporate bully notice. Walmart pushes everyone they buy from to lower their prices. This is just their way of trying to muscle MS.
Before Christmas, I saw a complete HP system at Wal-Mart for $468. It was a WinXP box with 256MB of RAM and a monitor. It even came with a CD burner.
Wal-Mart's just trying to break through that price level. It probably ain't going to happen unless MS takes a smaller cut.
My only worry is that the average, everday consumer will see Linux only on low end machines and equate the operating system with cheapness. And I don't mean "cheap" as in cost, but in terms of quality.
Why am I not rapping? I am rapping with you in a way.
what's the point of typing out byte? isn't a capital B assumed to be byte whereas a lowercase b is assumed to be bit?
if you're going to write out Byte, you might as well write out Mega as well. but mixing and matching like this? i find the flagrant lack of consistency to be unsettling.
THE STICK UP MY ASS IS TWITCHING AND I DEMAND A CORRECTION!
If it's Linare and Wal*Mart then what's this about??
No sig for you!!
It's probably more Walmart's doing than the manufacturer. Walmart will have said "give us a laptop we can sell below the $500 price point or someone else will." So the manufacturer has to cut costs somewhere. Not that I disagree, 128MB is too little, but you gets what you pays for.
That's just KDE with a fugly skin, you know. Just look at the KDE Control Center. See the "apply settings on KDE startup" checkbox?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
USB is pretty fundamental, I hope it was just a typo. I would consider buying one of these as long as it includes at least one USB port.
Something else that looked strange: Linare said it will ship "more than 1000 notebooks" to Walmart stores in the US.
We are talking about all of the USA. Doesn't 1000 seem like a rather small number? That is NOT a real Walmart level shipment of product. What is that all about? (Considering the margins are small on this thing, the total profit on that volume would probably not even buy a street legal used car here in the USA.) They might as well have said they will ship more than a dozen notebooks.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
A crafty one. Have you priced memory upgrades? At Dell they are almost twice what a little online searching can get you, same model same manufacturer.
There's money in under specing a system then overcharging for upgrades.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
For a simple machine that would allow me to do some basic development work at a local coffee shop this thing could work out nicely.
I like my desktops, and have stayed there so far, but something like this could almost convince me to try my hands at a mobile work/hobby environment. Hell, the lack of wireless would not only make it more secure, but less of a distraction than my laptop usually proves to be.
Whether or not I get one, there is plenty of reason to believe this machine is a good thing, much as the $100 PC Projects that have been touted by several groups as the next great humanitarian effort and have been reported here on here on Slashdot.
Of blankness, I know nothing.