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PC Mag Slams Cheap Wal-Mart Linux Desktop
An anonymous reader writes "PC Magazine reviews the $200 Linux desktop wonder sold by Wal-Mart. This desktop sold out quickly and has been cited as proof that consumers are tired of the Windows tax and ready for Linux. Not so according to PC Magazine, which gave the gPC a 1.5 star rating." Previous discussions we've had about system reviews were realistic but not quite so harsh; is this just nitpicking or is the 'shiny' starting to wear off of the cheap Linux PC concept?
I'd say a 1.5 star rating is actually quite generous, considering the amount of money Linux spends in PC Magazine. It probably wouldn't get a mention at all if not for the huge sums of money Microsoft spends.
In other words: move along, nothing to see here.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Look who the biggest advertiser is in PC Mag ... you know ... follow the money ...
The box does everything most people want - safe browsing on the web, email, and word processing. Throw in an extra stick of ram, and its a decent second box for a developer.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Think of the source, dudes. PC magazine does not write about linux or Macs. They write about PCs--which are implicitly Windows-based. If they did not do this, they would be pissing in their own soup and Microsoft would never talk to them again.
It's a $200 computer. Dell doesn't even sell anything that cheap, and their cheap stuff is pretty crappy. But, for $200 any computer at all is pretty good. The iPhone costs twice that much and it doesn't even come with a mouse!
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
For the target audience of the magazine, the rating is mostly correct. Its not a very good system for those people.
But for grandma? Do you really trust PC Magazine to be *capable* of reviewing something the way your grandmother would see it, rather then how a full time PC user would? Its a similar problem when someone like 1up does a review of a "casual" focused game. The review is meaningless because who the game is aimed at and who the review is aimed at are completely different markets.
The only way to review this thing properly is to give it to someone in the Walmart crowd who doesn't use a PC very much now, and see how they do with it. Unfortunately, I don't know of a magazine that does that sort of review.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I went and skimmed. Half a gig of RAM, 80G h/d... and it runs "Ubuntu, but not speedily"?
Pardon me, I'm typing this running on an AMD Sempron 2600, 512M RAM, and running SuSE 10.3, and it runs quite nicely, thankyouverymuch. In fact, it seems faster than the SuSE 10.0 I was running till earlier this week.
And I was running SuSE 10.0 on an old 900 MHZ machine in the first part of '06, and it ran just fine.
I'd say that evidence shows PC Mag's review for what it is: bs.
mark
This review isn't just nitpicky - it completely misses the point on a number of fronts. Here are a couple:
Save up for just a little longer and buy something for at least $450 that runs Windows Vista, or get the ASUS Eee PC 4G laptop.
A major selling point of this is that it is cheap and his first recommendation is buying something more than twice as expensive. Not only that, but he recommends buying a $450 system with Vista. Are there companies selling systems at that price with hardware even capable of running Vista? If so, sight unseen, I can gaurantee you that they suck. The Eee PC is a sweet little machine, in my estimation, but it is no replacement for a desktop. Whenever I see someone griping about the Eee PC it is because they are expecting it to act like a desktop and it isn't one. Also - the Eee PC doesn't answer his critique of this system not running windows and mac apps. So he is just fishing for things to pile up against the system even if they aren't consistent with one another.
The upside is that the processor consumes only 20W peak by itself, and during use, the PC did keep its overall power usage to the 20W-to-50W range.
Another nit to pick about gPC's green claims: While the VIA processor is low-power-consuming and Everex claims the gPC is fully RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) compliant, it has no Energy Star rating or EPEAT certification.
That's not a nitpick. It's stupid. The thing uses less energy than most other systems, he says so himself, so he complains that this fact is not certified. Apparently certified and using more energy is more environmentally friendly than not certified and using less energy.
You could buy this PC to use for a hardware project, such as for installing Windows Home Server or another flavor of Linux. For those purposes, however, I would recommend you just use that old Pentium III box in your closet,...
Windows home server? So now you are better off buying an underpowered Vista machine at twice the price or taking Linux off this box and replacing it with a buggy windows product. Nice. But dig up an old PIII because for some reason that's better. No explanation of how or why but the mind boggles.
The setup sheet rightly notes that, for the PC to fully function, you need a broadband Internet connection with an Ethernet cable. The picture on the setup sheet, however, points to the included modem...
The words are right, the picture is wrong. In other words the documentation doesn't exactly match with reality. I have to say that this has been true of more products that I've bought than has not been true. Anyone wanting to run a PC that is advertised as relying on the internet for full functionality over dial up, is going to be frustrated by anything they buy, no matter how powerful because dialup sucks.
He had to change the monitor resolution. That's rough. He had to install Flash and had choices that confused him. That's a curious oversight on the part of the manufacturer but hardly a show stopper.
Needless to say, programs written for Mac OS X or Windows that you can buy online or in a retail store won't work on the Linux-based gPC it's mainly a Web-based PC.
Wow - that's almost like investigative reporting. It's a web-based PC? I'd have never guessed that from all the advertising. I shouldn't get snarky I guess, but come on. He's upset because this isn't a high end desktop that can run mad and windows apps. He wants it to be a G5 but it isn't so it gets a low rating. If he rated cars only high-end sports cars would get a chance. Anything else would be under powered and without the luxuries he expects on every vehicle regardless of price.
He is right about getting what you pay for. And more is quite often better. But the slightly more difficult question is "How much is enough?" And for many people, in my experience, this cheap little machine is enough. Why should it be punished because he wants more?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
From their site: BOTTOM LINE: The Everex gPC is ostensibly either a "green PC" or the "Google PC." While it mostly fills the first description (without all the certification), the second is held up in legal wrangling and lackluster implementation. The gPC is not the alternative to Windows or Mac OS X it's cracked up to be; it's very frustrating to use. It's a "green PC," but if you're expecting to do more than the basics (aka go online, chat, email, office stuff) then this isn't a PC for you -- you'll need something edging $1K because the graphics won't cut it. PROS:It's cheap. You don't have to worry about Windows viruses and malware. Available at over 600 Wal-Mart stores and online.
CONS:Ethernet "Internet Connection Required." Modem is nonfunctional (for now). 1,280-by-800 resolution forced by internal graphics. Adobe Flash installation can be confusing for a novice. Google search window goes to WebRunner, not the expected Firefox. Programs written for Mac or Windows will not run. It's very cheap, because it's a Mini-ITX. It runs Linux, so forget 99% of all the problems with Windows. And if you got low-end broadband you're running through the Ethernet port anyway, so why install a modem? Plus, you got Firefox, OpenOffice, and Thunderbird. You're good to go if you're an old geezer who wants to keep in touch with the kids and don't want to pay too much (since you got that low-end DSL that's just fast enough).
The market for the gPC isn't for everyone, just folks who want to get online and not worry about getting in trouble. PC Magazine missed the point, and the 1.5 review can just be tossed out the window.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Stopped reading after this sentence...
"My advice to these people? Save up for just a little longer and buy something for at least $450 that runs Windows Vista..."
Because users are retards.
Actually, they probably see the large PC-CDROM or PC-DVDROM icon in the corner, and assume it can play on their brand new PC...
I read the PC review with an open mind because I was curious about how a $200 machine would be. For a 1.5 star rating, I was expecting the review to say things like 'it died' or 'refused to work' or 'it was impossible to install the software that was provided' or something. Instead, the PC criticisms were: 1) "slapped together" (what does that mean), 2)"low-power, relatively low-performing VIA C7-D processor", 3)"the gOS team is working on a modem driver" 4)"the gPC defaulted to 1,280-by-800 resolution", 5)"it has no Energy Star rating" (but used only 50 watts), 6)"programs written for Mac OS X or Windows that you can buy online or in a retail store won't work on the Linux-based gPC", 7)"It would've been nice if the folks at Everex or gOS preinstalled Flash support".
The article summarizes the above with: "In the end, though, it has so many shortcomings I would have a problem recommending it to anyone." With the possible exception of 2), these are all minor nitpicks and hardly justify a 1.5 star rating. Based on the author's own description of his use of the machine, it should have been given a 3-star rating and that would be marked down from 4-stars because of the low-power processor. PC Magazine feeds on Microsoft to survive and this article shows that.
I got the kids one for Xmas.
.05 review:
My
gOS sucks. I was about 2 minutes into things and wanted to remove some of the icons from the 'dock'. I right-clicked - hit 'delete' (or maybe remove) and the whole dock disappeared! Ooops. A few more unintuitive things like that and I ended up formatting it and installed Edubuntu. Installing Flash took about 1 minute. Added a few other things TuxPaint, etc and was ready to go.
Kids are happy!
As one who has worked both with Linux and Windows extensively and watched both mature in their resective markets.
There seem to be three points here that are largely missed by the review.
1) the $200 puts a very low price floor on a rather relatively functional PC (browsing, networking, etc) compared to higher prices systems in the $400-$800 ranage. The features will now no doubt a) smooth out some of the kinks and set a baseline for improvements at this $200 price.
2) At $200 a large market can afford one to do the mundane computing tasks that are typically take up about 80% of most PC users time (few PC users actually spend their cpu cycles actually "computing" in a strict sense).
3) with such a large potential MASS market (from THE MASS marketer) Linux is being tried and becoming comfortable to a much wider base of users, which puts considerable pressure on other OS makers who expect to make a profit in the "commoditized segment" of the PC business.
As a Vista user, this is a win for me as it puts pressure for the first time on Microsoft to really make their OS perform with a minimum of penalties both in terms of cost and performance, lest they be replaced by cheaper, as nearly functional equivalents.
As a Linux user, this is a win for me because it puts additional pressure on Linux software developers to make their software run in more standardly configurable modules to conform to the dimensions of an increasingly larger Linux market, so that installation, maintenance, and peformance tuning become ever easier.
The nice thing is that if you don't like it, you don't have to buy one, but at $200 (sans monitor) a lot of people, especially younger, poorer users with limited budgets will.
EXACTLY. People always comment on how much friendlier Windows is.... I just don't see it. If it was so damn friendly, then why do I still have to keep answering questions about it from my family and friends? And seriously, at what point are we going to be noob-free? Teenagers these days haven't known when computers didn't exist. My 2.5 year old daughter can use the mouse and play her Reader Rabbit games on the PC pretty well, whereas an elderly neighbor had no clue how to use a mouse - she was hovering her hand over it and moving her hand around. Quite a clash of generations. I guess we'll always have noobs in a sense, but they won't be as prevalent.
I've been using Linux on my home machine since RedHat 6.1, and the advances it has made on the desktop are nothing short of amazing. But there are still things I don't know, and things that frustrate the hell out of me with it. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm more comfortable with Windows than Mac, those things just do not mesh well with my brain. It will be interesting in 10, 20 years to see how things have progressed. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.