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$298 Wal-Mart PC Has OO.org, No Crapware

Posted by kdawson on from the tell-me-again-why-dell-can't-do-this dept.

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?

4 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Has VIA improved? by athloi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Last time I checked, their CPUs were erratic, their chipsets flaky and their reputation mainly derived from making cash register and micro-PC machines that were for one-app use and no manic power user antics. Has VIA improved?

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    technical writing / development
  2. Nice home Linux server box by tji · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At $300, it's hard to beat.

    The VIA C7 is a nice low-power CPU, with enough kick for most server tasks. At only 20 Watts power, it's well below any of the Intel/AMD options.

    Too bad there isn't a version without the Windows tax.. this box at $250 would be even better.

  3. Re:Where to start. by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I got through a good portion of my senior year of college (2002) using an ancient 233 MHz Pentium-MMX laptop. with an UPGRADE to 128M of RAM (from 64).

    This included:
    Word processing
    Web browsing
    IM
    Matlab simulations
    Circuit design with Eagle

    I did have a 1 GHz Athlon Thunderbird available, but with the exception of the Matlab stuff, I took no productivity hit. In fact, if anything my productivity was higher because I could work while laying on my apartment's nice comfy couch instead of sitting at my desk. (This is why I used the laptop when I had another machine available.) In some ways the slowness of the Matlab stuff actuall increased productivity because it forced me/allowed me to multitask while my simulations ran.

    Admittedly, the laptop ran Linux. Running Vista on this machine is likely crippling it so that 1GB RAM might indeed be insufficient.

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    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  4. Re:It's in the processor by Applekid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    According to this, the Sempron 2500+ runs at 1.4 GHz and had a thermal design profile of 59 W. I assume actual power consumption is greater than the thermal design.

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    More Twoson than Cupertino