$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?

Comments

One Question

[Eightyford]

Why not buy used? Wouldn't a used computer be a better deal?

"Eco-friendly" computer

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

I noticed that the manufacturer's product manager threw in the word "eco-friendly" to describe the computer. Did they really have efficiency in mind when they developed the computer, or is this just part of the recent trend (a la "no carbs/trans fats") to label anything and everything as being good for the environment?

I guess a computer that has little or nothing to it also doesn't use much power either. But then, my Game Boy is more eco-friendly.

Re:"Eco-friendly" computer

[UbuntuDupe]

Didn't you get the memo? In modern terminology, "eco-friendly" means being wasteful in the most efficient way possible.

Driving a Hummer once per year --> terrorist.
Driving a Prius 100 miles each weekend to bounce between parties --> eco-friendly.

Lighting up a tiny studio apartment with incandescent bulbs --> terrorist.
Lighting up a mansion full of empty rooms with CFLs --> eco-friendly.

Running non-eco-friendly computer 8 hrs per day --> terrorist.
Running eco-friendly computer non-stop --> eco-friendly.

Suggesting alternate method to contain global warming that requires little effort from most people --> terrorist.
Requiring everyone to adhere to a set of rules banning devices deemed inefficient --> eco-friendly.

Glad I could clear that up.

Re:"Eco-friendly" computer

[freeweed]

Coming up with a bunch of non-sensical arguments that practically none of the environmental movement has ever made --> strawman.

Posting something that makes it seem like you're "thinking outside of the box", when you're really just attacking arguments no one made --> karma.

If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[jeffmeden]

The computer needs to do web browsing, email, and word processing. The occasional song or pic shared with friends is to be expected too. However, as long as the hardware is shitty enough to prevent the owner from becoming hooked on WOW, Eve, or any other time-vacuum, then it will probably be the best $500 the parents DIDNT spend to get their kid a better computer. And with all that free time, they just might do their homework! For the education market, this product gets an A+ from me.

Re:If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[Corporate Troll]

Mod parent insightful...

Re:If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[Metaphorically]

This is the exact logic I disagree with. Web browsing, email and word processing are easy to say but they all take substantial amounts of ram and cpu power. Then throw in the essential virus/malware scanner and firewall and you'll burn that one gig of ram in no time.

Look at the features of a modern web browser and it's no surprise that it sucks up 100+ MB of ram. Same goes for a word processor that's doing full-time spell checking and reformatting large documents. Then there's the OS updates. When an update is made it's not made for last year's bottom-of-the-barrel hardware like this pc, that code is written to target today's average cpu. So patches to the OS are made to run on hardware that's faster than what yours was the day it was new.

Now consider that students go to school for a reason (I'm thinking college/university here). They have specific applications they need to run for some classes. In engineering I had to do PSpice and Matlab and whatnot. People in social work and other fields have stats programs they run. I'm sure accountants, geologists and every other field have their specific apps. These aren't tweaked to run on low-end hardware.

Finally there's the distance courses. They often include video, audio and copious PDF files. Flash player, Windows Media Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader are all getting fatter with each release.

I've actually convinced myself that this computer is worse for students than I thought in the first place.

Re:If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, this makes me feel old, but when I was in college, probably 25% of the students had computers. Those without them did things just as destructive or addictive as WoW like binge drinking and (12-20 hour sessions of) AD&D. You don't need a computer to get distracted and blow off college.

Re:If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[CastrTroy]

When I was in university residence (1999-200), my roommate convinced his parents to get him a $4000 on the assumption that he couldn't play games on it (he was quite a game nut) when all along he had intentions of running games on it. Anyway, we ended up playing a lot of Quake 2 and NFS2, not because we couldn't get Quake 3, or NFS 4, but because there was a lot of people in residence who couldn't run those games. It was more fun to have an 8 player game of Quake 2, then to spend the time to find 2 other people to play Quake 3 with. So, while the kids probably won't be able to play the latest and greatest games on that computer, they can waste plenty of time playing older games, that don't even require half the power that computer has.

Re:If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[goldspider]

I concur 100%. If I'm going to buy my kid a new PC (big "if"), it will have ZERO bells and whistles. If he/she wants to play games on it, the upgrade costs are coming out of their pocket. As a parent who will likely be paying for their college, I don't feel obliged to provide for their entertainment.

In fact, while I'm thinking of it, this PC might be a good buy for my parents who badlu need to upgrade their old workhorse. Those specs will run XP just fine!

Re:If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[markov_chain]

I think you're being slightly pessimistic here.

All this stuff runs just fine even on 512M of RAM. I use one such machine for work, which includes most of the stuff you listed (word processing, web browsing, matlab, lots of compiling, lots of PDF, image editing, etc.), and it runs just fine even with dual monitors.

Let's not even go into the "uphill both ways" stories of what computing power we used in college to do these exact same things.

I think the GP is right, the kids will whine because they can't play games. Been there, done that :)

Re:If it stops them from getting hooked on WOW...

[Red Flayer]

1 Gig ought to be enough for anyone. Heh.

Seriously, though, if the choice is between a student having this $300 computer, and a student having no computer, which do you think is better?

Not every parent can afford to spend $1000 or even $500.

I'm sure accountants, geologists and every other field have their specific apps. These aren't tweaked to run on low-end hardware.

Yes they are. Any app designed for business is tweaked to run on a variety of systems, programs are designed to run on systems that were state-of-the-art more than five years prior. The business upgrade cycle used to be around three years, but now it's getting larger every day -- and businesses tend not to buy top-of-the-line systems anyway.

Back to educational use -- very few disciplines of study require apps that really use a lot of cycles. And when they do, typically those apps are run on university computers, not students' PCs. Those apps are also typically used for high-level research, not basic undergrad stuff.

Re:Don't sell the students short

[The_Fire_Horse]

I know that Walmart are a bunch of pricks, but seriously a 1G PC with 80G HD is more than enough for a students LEARNING needs.
Sure, if you include MP3's, porn, FPS games and bittorrents it may not run so well, but still $289 isnt a bad price for that.

Re:Don't sell the students short

[Ant P.]

I wish they sold stuff like this elsewhere. I'd have no problem paying £300 for one, it'd make a great router/whatever with the Via chip in it.

Re:Don't sell the students short

[TheWoozle]

"Just any junk hardware"? I'll spare you the long list of systems I've worked on, but please allow me to ask you to get off my lawn.

I've done statistical analysis on a Zenith Data Systems 8088 system and written games for a Commodore 64, so please don't refer to anything with an 80 GB hard drive and 1 GB of RAM as "junk hardware". I know junk hardware, and that, sir, is no TRS-80.

The fact that the OS needs 1 GB of memory to function is what's wrong with the world! Seesh, kids these days...

Re:Don't sell the students short

[Silver Sloth]

More likely than anything, I'll just keep building my own. Ok, you can build your own. So can I. However there are many, may people out there who either can't and/or don't want to so supplying an entry level PC at an entry level price is good marketing. There's plenty there to run a browser and OO which will cover most homework assignments. Maybe, when the users find that it won't run the latest games software they'll be forced to upgrade and start the IT learning experience.

Re:Don't sell the students short

[UbuntuDupe]

Exactly. Why do Linux users have such a hard time understanding that MOST CONSUMERS ARE NOT LIKE THEM ?

Re:Don't sell the students short

[mwvdlee]

I wholeheartedly agree!

Apart from the fact that, if you're going with Windows on this kind of hardware, a version prior to Vista would've been smarter, everything should suffice for it's intended purpose.

Problem is that Microsoft probably offers OEM's Vista for near free but charges a premium for XP, the system would have probably been more expensive if it included an older version of Windows.

Inflation of specs for student tasks

[Anonymous Coward]

What's up with the inflation of specs you need to have to write reports and do other school stuff ? When I was in high school ("Gymnasium" as we call it over here in Europe), I wrote all papers and reports the first year using Amstrad CPC 6128, Arnor Protext on ROM and a 9-pin printer. Later I used a 486 and WP 5.1 (Now with Graphics..). Today I have a 900 MhZ AMD K6, 512 Mb memory, and still I can use InDesign, Word 2003 and Excel to do 100s of pages of technical manuals, without any slowdown at all. Yes, I do not play games, but do you have to ? I would be happy to have a 1,5 GHz with 1G or RAM. So stop saying that it's "Nothing to write home about". My guess is, the people that don't play games never use even a fraction of it's powers.

Re:Inflation of specs for student tasks

[DocSavage64109]

Yeah, I really believe you have a 900MHz K6. (I know, you meant an athlon or duron as even K6-2s maxed out around 500MHz or so)

Other than that, I agree -- most non-gamers would be fine with it.

Re:Inflation of specs for student tasks

[Tim C]

Isn't the answer obvious?

How would stores shift the mid- and high-end PCs, given that most people don't play modern 3D games, if they didn't inflate the specs required to perform more common tasks?

I've even seen stores recommending at least a mid-end PC if you want to surf the web. Presumably the low-end ones aren't powerful enough to run a web browser...

Re:Inflation of specs for student tasks

[Colin Smith]

When I was in high school ("Gymnasium" as we call it over here in Europe) In Austria or Germany. In Scotland, England and Wales it's "Secondary or High School". In France, "Lycée". etc etc.

Not to abuse an old cliche....

[goldspider]

....but will it run Linux?

Even with the MS tax, can you realistically buy or assemble a full PC with those specs for that kind of price? Sounds like a good entry-level Linux box to me!

Re:Slashdot Groupthink is strange

[kebes]

I just love the people who treat Slashdot as a single entity with a single opinion... and then proceed to point out hypocrisy in Slashdot because it holds two seemingly incompatible notions.

Interestingly, they usually describe this as "Groupthink" ... which is basically the notion that everyone starts supports the popular opinion. That is, that everyone agrees with each other to be part of the crowd, and suppress dissenting views. The irony, however, is that the very hypocrisy that is being referred to is telling evidence that groupthink is not as prevalent as it is assumed to be.

The fact is that Slashdot users have a variety of backgrounds and opinions. On every issue, there is a distribution of opinions. On some subjects we all seem to agree (e.g. "technology is good"), on others we mostly agree (e.g. "Linux is cool") and on others still there is so much disagreement that you will see completely contradictory and opposing opinions both modded up to +5 (e.g. "global warming is a myth").

Your example, of disliking MS but supporting Wal-Mart, is a total strawman. The general impression I get is that there is a consistent but not universal dislike of Microsoft's business tactics, and that there is solid division of opinion on the Wal-Mart issue. I've seen insightful comments both supporting the good that Wal-Mart does as part of a thriving free market, and insightful comments about the harm that Wal-Mart does as a megacorp that only cares about money. Both sides make good points and the most reasonable stance is probably a nuanced view that takes into account all of these factors. To suggest that Slashdot has a single opinion on these subjects betrays a serious lack of perspective on your part.

Your closing sentence, "I wish I lived in the fantasy world of most Slashdotters", again is deeply rooted in the fantasy that Slashdot is a single entity with a single mind, and that any self-contradictory statements it makes represent its own insanity, rather than diversity of opinion among its constituents.

Where to start.

[Joce640k]

"email takes substantial amounts of ram and cpu power..."

The machine has 1Gb RAM. My laptop has a quarter of that and seems to browse the web and run Office perfectly well.

As for CPU... I'm pretty sure it will cope with the heaviest of messenger sessions.

I've actually convinced myself that this computer is worse for students than I thought in the first place.

You need to climb down back to the real world. Very few people need garanteed sub-millisecond response times (or even knows what they are).

Re:Where to start.

[Metaphorically]

And my abacus only had nine beads...

The software that we used in school isn't available any more. I can't get Becky any more (oops - looks like I can). Netscape 2.0 isn't going to cut it. Wordperfect 5 for DOS was great on memory use but I just can't use it any more.

Students need hardware just like everyone else. A decent CPU, a couple gigs of RAM (if you want the computer to last until the end of the year), that's the foundation. This box has neither but does come with a resource-hungry OS.

Re:Where to start.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, those specs barely run Vista. Now if you install something like win98 or DSL than you're in for a very fast machine.

Re:Where to start.

[John Biggabooty]

A gig was a substantial amount of Ram in XP, more than most users would need. In Vista however, it's a bare minimum. Vista may say on the box it works with 512MB, but try it. It is crazy slow! You need 2GB to have a system that is usable.

Everyone who has made a negative comment so far has gone quickly to -1 land, but I had to put in my two cents worth. Doesn't it say in the guide to moderation that if you disagree, don't mod down, respond?

Re:Where to start.

[Canthros]

1. The $300 PC should be plenty sufficient for most classwork-related needs for at least the next year or two. Boosting the RAM will probably extend that a bit farther. Adding a dedicated video card might even make it practical for many popular (if not new) PC games. For students pursuing many liberal arts degrees, it'll probably be sufficient for their entire college career, even if the software remains rather out of date.
2. At $300, they can probably afford to buy an OEM copy of Windows XP to downgrade the OS to something that doesn't suck on the hardware, and then, effectively, throw the machine in the trash at the end of the year to buy a new one in the fall.

Granted, a gig-and-a-half Via processor isn't any too beefy for a new computer, but it's not that much less powerful that the five-year-old Athlon XP I use at home (under Win 2k, though). And it's undoubtedly more powerful than the 166Mhz Pentium (with MMX! and 48MB of RAM!) I was issued as a freshman almost ten years ago, and the 700Mhz desktop Athlon I had the last year I was a college student. Ultimately, the issue you seem to be missing isn't that don't need computers, it's that your average schmoe still doesn't need much of a computer for 80-100% of what they're doing with it.

What I'm getting at is that not everybody is/was a compsci or engineering student (or does 3D modeling, or whatever).

Re:Where to start.

[ricegf]

I did my EE senior project (in 1984) on an Atari 800 with 48k of RAM (took 3 cards to hold all those memory chips!) and a floppy disk drive that wrote 88k per disk (unless you used the "hole punch trick", in which case it was a "flippy" and could hold 176k :-).

For the project, I designed and built a processor from discrete TTL gates (!), and used the Atari to write its operating system as well as a processor simulator to debug it. All this in Atari 8k BASIC.

And I got an A, too. :-) :-)

Better yet, as a cooperative education student with NASA, I was actually paid to write a general aviation flight simulator cockpit on the Atari (in raw assembler), and was flown to Oshkosh to present it at the Experimental Aircraft Association convention. I still remember the Apple II and Commodore 64 fans who were determined to argue that their computers were better for flying an airplane than an Atari.

Crazy kids, we were. But I've never understood every bit in every register in any computer since then.

I'll take the crap.

[hal2814]

A few months ago I bought a Dell with an Athlon X2 3600, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and XP Home off the Dell Outlet site for $260 shipped. It was "Previously Ordered New" which generally means the original owner never even opened the package. I'll take the crapware and an X2 over no crapware and the C7.

Actually...

[benhocking]

I believe part of their point was that if they built their own, they wouldn't have to repartition/reformat the hard drive in order to remove Vista...

Re:Simple solution

[RAMMS EIN]

You may be surprised to know that many common TFTs still use significant amounts of power, even when in standby (some even when off!).

Compared to a PC that runs at over 100 W, it probably doesn't matter too much, but if your PC uses about 20 W, it matters if your monitor uses 1 W or 20 W.

It's all good

[PhotoGuy]

I know a lot of people hate Wal-Mart. I personally don't, I guess I haven't watched the right documentaries yet, to tell me what to think, or something.

And yeah, Wal-Mart probably isn't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, nor to boost open source, nor to satisfy the few Linux people. Their motivation is undoubtedly to make money, and they usually do that by giving consumers what they want (a cheap item, that does the job).

Well, we should be proud that OpenOffice is seen as a viable enough too in their delivery of such a product, especially one aimed at students. It really is a big step in the right direction, and validates Open Source to a very large degree.

-dale

Re:Minimal crapware..

[l3v1]

It's not totally crapware free. From the Specs: Norton Internet Security(TM) 2007 (90-day subscription included)

They could have chosen a free AV package, like they chose a free office suite

Even more, with the Norton stuff installed that 1.5ghz via cpu will feel like a 800mhz one and with constant hdd scratching it will feel like it swaps all the time. There are dozens of - even free - av sw that are at least as good and need much less resources - which is point to consider given there's only 1gb of memory and vista on it. I just made a 750mhz duron machine usable again last week by replacing that norton 2k7 stuff, they just wondered how could that be...
 

Re:Nice home Linux server box

[tji]

Good link. The C7 @ 1.5 GHz looks like it's even lower power -- 12Watts, vs 20Watts @ 2GHz.

Anyone have links to real world benchmark information (not performance per Watt, raw application performance)?
This would make a nice Linux server.. my only hesitation is raw power for the few CPU intensive tasks my server performs. For example, MythTV commercial flagging. With my 1.6GHz Athlon64, it does commflagging quite well. I'm wondering if going to a C7 would slow that down a lot.

Also, this box could possibly be an interesting Myth frontend. The integrated GPU has an MPEG2 accelerator function, which (when everything is working well) can make decoding HD video very low overhead. But, there are several issues that would probably get in the way

- Driver support. The OpenChrome project is a bit iffy.. They may not support this new chipset, and may not have full functionality if they do.
- XvMC VLD support - If it does work, the XvMC API is not always reliable.
- HD support -- depending on the chipset, it may or may not support HD resolutions. Many VIA GPUs are limited to 1024x1024, which makes them fairly useless.

Low end for education

[MadMacSkillz]

This computer can do basic word processing and web browsing, so if that's what folks want it for, it's maybe a sellable idea. However, as earlier posters mentioned, let's remember that you get what you pay for and high quality is not going to be present from a low end box from a company like this. Also, don't forget to tack on the extra hundred bucks for el cheapo LCD display, so it's really a $400 computer, not a $300 computer.

Regarding education, it might be OK for the basic stuff but innovative teachers are going far beyond the basic word processing/web browsing thin client type stuff nowadays. I'm training a group of new teachers right now on iLife. In a fifth grade class, students can write, cast, direct, film, edit, and publish a movie on a topic they're studying to their own website on a school web server using iLife. They can compose their own soundtrack using GarageBand. They can make a podcast about the movie and put it on their website. They can take pictures of the process and make it a slideshow and publish THAT on their site. All easily possible because of iLife and the fact that today's Intel Macs have the CPU power to do all this stuff. You're not doing any of that on a cheapo PC. When kids make stuff, they learn more than just reading dry old textbooks. It's called constructivist learning. At the secondary level, the projects can and do get more in depth.

So if I'm a fifth grade teacher, I don't want one of these crap boxes. You can buy three crap boxes for the price of one iMac, but I'd rather have the iMac.

Too bad

[aevans]

If it did have all that junk: AOL, Norton, etc.; they could probably sell it considerably cheaper. Companies *pay* to have you put that crap on your computer. They're buying advertising.

Re:Funny

[itchy92]

Grrr... I just wanted to make a flippant comment for a "funny mod" and now you've engaged me...

I do not support Microsoft's business actions-- past, present, and probably future. But the last line of your post actually made me laugh; you think with an open-source platform and applications, people will spend less time "mucking" with their machines? Really? I'm not going to spout anecdotal evidence that I have to the contrary, but I think even the most rabid zealots would agree that by its very nature, OSS requires much more mucking than a closed platform.

I actually agree with the OP sentiment that if F/OSS wants even a fighting chance at gaining market share (beyond Firefox, and maybe OO.org), they need a marketing department, and a damned good one. I think that the distros and some of the applications have come a really long way in terms of user-friendliness and general aesthetic appeal, but I also think they've got a long way to go. Foremost, stop giving your software these goofy-shit names that no one will ever take seriously. Second, try something truly innovative, instead of using the guise of user-familiarity to copy what Microsoft "blatantly ripped off" of Apple, who "creative acquired" off of [etc. etc.]. Third and perhaps most important, stop demonizing everyone who doesn't wave your flag; closed software is not the Great Satan, it does not conspire to eat your babies in the night, and it doesn't hate freedom. For a movement that's all about choice, there certainly seems to be an intolerance of anyone who chooses the "wrong" choice.

/end rant
//damn these slashies are addictive