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$200 Linux PCs On Sale At Wal-Mart
Placid sends in a Wired blog entry on Wal-Mart's new sub-$200 Linux-based PC. Wired calls it "a custom distribution of Ubuntu Linux," and the AP identifies the distro as gOS, made by a small company in Los Angeles. Wal-Mart began selling Linux PCs in 2002 but they have been out of stock for a while. From the Wired blog: "It has a 1.5 Ghz VIA C7 CPU embedded in a Mini-ITX motherboard, 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Normally, this would simply mark it as unacceptably low-end for use with modern software. By using the fast Enlightenment desktop manager (instead of heavier-duty alternatives like Gnome or KDE), the makers say it's more responsive than Vista is, even on more powerful computers."
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Unacceptably low-end for modern software? Huh? I do some development at home, but other than that nearly all of my time is spent either reading email or surfing the web. Neither is particularly heavy.
And I'm happy with my bottom-end MicroCenter PCs that cost under $300, even with the development work. I did double the memory to 1GB, but that was the only change for two years. (Last week I decided to add a low-end NVIDIA card.)
I'll grant you that it's not a great choice for playing movies, and would undoubtably suck as a game platform, but for a lot of people that system would easily satisfy their needs and is far more affordable than the crap I've seen pushed at the same market -- get a 'name brand' pc for only $19.99/week for a year!
So is it for everyone? No. Is it a good choice for a lot of people? Yes.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Despite being a big Linux advocate, the same can really be said of capable versions of Windows. My parents use an AMD K6-2 350mhz machine with an 8GB hard drive and 256mb of RAM. It's running Windows 2000 with the latest Firefox installed, and an upgrade is not anywhere on the horizon for them. My mom checks email and browses eBay. My dad checks email and keeps track of his Fantasy Football teams. That machine running that software performs those functions just fine, despite being horribly outdated. My brothers machine: a Celeron 566mhz with a 40GB hard drive and 512mb of RAM, running XP. He surfs the web, uses AIM, and does his Fantasy Football thing on it. He's also not looking at upgrading anytime soon.
The simple fact is most normal people don't know the difference between a fast computer and a slow one. The only time they normally buy a new one is when their computer gets enough spyware on it that it no longer works properly. They buy that new system because the old one was "broken", not really slow. For people with free tech support (see above), that generally doesn't happen.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Normally, this would simply mark it as unacceptably low-end for use with modern software. By using the fast Enlightenment desktop manager (instead of heavier-duty alternatives like Gnome or KDE), the makers say it's more responsive than Vista is, even on more powerful computers.
You're taking an underpowered machine, with a non-standard desktop, OS and software, and selling it to what is likely the least tech knowledgeable market that you can find.
a) Sell crappy Linux box to unsupecting mark.
b) Mark can't figure out why it isn't like every other computer
c) Mark can't make $9.99 computer game install
d) Mark can't make MS Word document open.
e) Profit?
Ever consider that there was a reason why Wal-Mart's last cheapo Linux PC has been "out of stock" for so long? It's because they can't sell them without having them returned.
Three Squirrels
Yeah, but don't try and run Open Office on that machine. Gonna suck. Not that MS Office 2007 would run great either, but for a modern machine, it's still pretty pathetic. It's about at the year 2001 level.
For simple Web browsing / email, such a machine works fine. If they sold it as an email / web appliance, that would be better, but to sell it as a general purpose home PC is a little disingenuous especially as it won't run any other software that Walmart sells.
They should really have used Ubuntu and XFCE.
I like Enlightenment, but it is VERY different than Windows, and not completely intuitive. For example the icon bar (like a task list) defaults to being able to go under things (in Ubuntu anyway). Also, no start button and no files on the desktop.
XFCE works very close to gnome or Windows and looks great. Stuff saves to the Desktop, it has a start button and a task bar. No autoflip on screen edge (by default) no multi-view ports (by default at least). Using enlightenment almost to me sounds like designed failure. I would think a slightly sluggish Gnome or KDE would give a better impression.
I also think the biggest thing would be a lighter-weight (than Firefox) but still highly site compatible (like Firefox) web browser would help. On my system (that uses Gnome) Firefox is the biggest memmorey hog. I also have a Celeron 3.4GHz with 512 MB of ram. I installed Xubuntu, but also some Gnome and KDE apps. Firefox is using 125MB of RAM. My SWAP is at 400MB used of 800MB. I am using XFCE and as long as no super Flash site comes up things run fairly well, though there is definite lag in the Google Apps, they are functional.
I like Enlightenment, but it is just too unixy for the complete novice I think.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Neither of these can yet (YET) hold a candle to Office.
I beg to differ.
So you would buy MS Office at $460 for a $200 PC? And of course that also needs a windows license for another $210 so you are up to $670 worth of software for a $200 PC. Then of course you would need the commercial equivalents for all the other software that comes with that machine which would probably run around a total of $2500+ for a $200 PC. Yeah - that makes a lot of sense for home users (the target market.)
Say what you will about Open (Star) Office but it handles 95% of the business documents I deal with perfectly on a daily basis. It should handle 99.999% of the home needs just fine. The only reason it can't handle the remaining 5% is due to Microsoft's refusal to fully document and release specifications to the MS Office file formats. It's not OK to support a company that illegally abuses it's monopoly status to damage competition.
In 1990 or 91 it would have been a supercomputer, too.
1991 was pre-Pentium; hot stuff then would have been a 68040 if you were a Mac user, and some sort of 486 if you used PCs.
I don't get what people's problem is with the performance of this thing. Granted, I don't upgrade very quickly (I have a dual-1GHz machine and an ancient headless Pentium-133 box under my desk, and the dual-GHz box only replaced a 400MHz one last year), but that's more than enough power for everything except gaming.
Frankly I'd like to see consumer hardware plateau so we can get off of the upgrade treadmill, and the software people can start groveling around retirement communities to find someone who knows what 'optimization' means. It's absolutely ridiculous that people think you can't do typical productivity tasks on a 1.5GHz machine.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
feel free to use what you want. Only don't preach, please...
This comes up a lot, this idea of "preaching". How is advising - even demanding - people to make ethical decisions "preaching"? Simply put: Technical superiority and cost aren't the only considerations that should be made when you decide which product to purchase and use.
Microsoft is an unethical business. They use monopolistic practices to distort the market to their advantage, and they lobby for and exploit restrictive laws to prevent threatening innovation in software development. Because they are such a huge business, the impact and severity of this behavior is similarly huge. It's very important as an ethical human being not to give them money or other forms of support, because if you do, you're actively aiding in their activities which harm the rest of us.
It seems to me "don't preach" is a slightly obfuscated way of saying "Don't tell me what to do". Nobody here can make you do anything, but that doesn't give you an excuse to do whatever you like, without regard to ethical considerations. And offering advice and commentary on what seems like an unethical action is far from preaching, unless "offering an analysis which takes into consideration right and wrong" falls under your definition of preaching.