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$298 Wal-Mart PC Has OO.org, No Crapware
cristarol writes "Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 PC (Everex IMPACT GC3502). It comes with Windows Vista Home Basic and OpenOffice.org 2.2, as well as a complete lack of crapware: 'Users accustomed to being bombarded with trialware offers and seeing their would-be pristine Windows desktops littered with shortcuts to AOL and other applications will likely be pleased at their absence from the GC3502.' The machine is targeted at the back-to-school market. The hardware is nothing to write home about: a 1.5GHz Via C7 with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics, but as Ars points out, it should be more than capable of performing basic tasks." Dell sells a low-end PC through Wal-Mart for $200 more, and one assumes it is loaded with crapware. Anybody know for sure?
Slashdot Groupthink mandates that Microsoft is evil, yet Wal-Mart is hunky dory, especially if there's some cheap, imported junk that they have for a really great price. For all of the impact that the Slashdot Groupthink seems to think that Microsoft has, it's largely irrelevant if you were to compare them to a company like Wal-Mart.
Slashdot Groupthink:
Microsoft: always bad.
Wal-Mart: paying their employees next to nothing and being a blight on local communities is just fine, as long as they sell PC's that don't come with MS software.
I wish I lived in the fantasy world of most Slashdotters.
I don't respond to AC's.
Walmart could sell a computer running linux.. except.. they actually want their customers to be able to use it.