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Building 2011's Sub-$200 Computer
adeelarshad82 links to PC Magazine's recent account (updating a similar quest detailed last year) "to see if a decent PC could put together for less than $200. Turns out that between some great deals, an AMD processor, and a Linux OS, it can actually be done." They actually come out with a decent-enough system for that money — but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
You can get an eeePC netbook for $199 RETAIL at Best Buy...Best Buy!!! I know this is talking about desktops, but it just doesn't seem that surprising...
but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Of course, like if you had used your optical drive in the last few months.
Seriously, why would one want an optical drive in a PC these days?
So they comparison shopped a bunch of parts, and editorialized about every one. Big deal - go to Newegg, hit the sales, and don't overindulge and this is an easy project. How is this even news?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating"
Optical disks? How quaint! :)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
What is this, 2005? It's not worth the hassle to build a desktop PC any longer.
In fact, I haven't used a desktop in several months.
I can't wait until these sorts of things are possible with commodity ARM (or other architecture) chips as well, especially for overall power consumption.
Here Here.
Get a fucking USB one if you are stuck on them.
And it has Linux on it? Crap, at least get Win XP.
That's right, if you want crap, get Win XP. That was too easy.
I use mine mainly to rip audio CDs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My optical drive broke down about 3 years ago. I've never had to replace it. So I agree, for some, it might not be needed at all.
I've used my optical drive probably twice this calendar year, once to install an old game and once to install MFC printer s/w that's not available for download. For the most part I can do without one.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Optical drives are dated and obsolete. I boot a live CD via USB then grab the stage3 for an OS install. Backups are done via the network.
I wouldn't put an optical drive in if budget weren't an issue. The few watts it consumes while plugged in are a terrible waste of power for something never used.
Who even wants to load an OS via optical? Talk about slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
Once you install via USB you'll never go back.
Because the people that put out content for the computer ship on them. A cheap 4G mem stick is ~$4, to press 4.7G DVD costs them pennies. Until there is a useful way to allow customers to DL onto their own memory sticks, optical will stick around.
but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Because they want to.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Probably more important than an optical drive
I can unequivocally say no. We sell a lot of little desktop computers without an optical drive. They come with Ubuntu usually and maybe 1/3 of our customer base gets one. They are extra. The minimal configured systems are without keyboard, mouse, monitor or optical drive and run $249. People are not renting DVDs any longer and most have never watched a DVD on the computer in the first place. Some areas have a higher than usual younger user base (Portland) and there is more demand for an optical drive (or at least there was) in these region. Elsewhere though most people do not watch movies on the PC.
I know I did not even blink about missing an optical drive from my latest build. Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it! Granted you need an existing copy of windows but still. I cast my vote firmly in the fewer moving parts camp.
What is this "Audio CD" you speak of? Is it like an Audi TT?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I've got to say, at this point there's no contest as far as basic functionality goes, and for doing the things that "most people" tm do on their computers most of the time. Linux is clearly superior to Windows. I dare you to take a dual boot challenge.
Too slow and USB3 are expensive at this time.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not including the optical drive seems like future proofing to me :-p.
Jonathanjk.com
your spelling is about as good as your thinking.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
> omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating
Why? Even if you can get a DVD burner for under $20 - if the goal is to build a sub-$200 computer, and you can install all your software without one, then why intentionally eat up 10% of your budget on something you don't even need?
Ahoy there, matey! Abandon ye olde music acquisition ways and say arrrrrrrrgh.
Yo ho, yo ho......
It's what recordings that aren't available in the iTunes store come on.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
When I built my last PC (less than a month ago) I neglected to include an optical drive (which was actually an oversight). I've since had to order one because I can't play DVDs, I can't install games from disc (not everyone has unlimited 100Mbps internet), I can't rip audio CDs and it's hardly practical to keep all the various recovery and install CD images on USB sticks (cheap as they are, buy 20 and they soon add up - plus you can't put them in a wallet).
While blank DVDs cost a hundredth of the price of equivalent flash memory, optical media is not dead. I would happily pay £15 for a SATA DVD+/-RW drive for that convenience.
I've bought 4 USB thumb drives over the past 5 years and so far, 2 have failed. These little bastards weren't cheap either. I've also got CDs I burned about 7 years ago that still work fine. Not ONE failure. Therefore, everything gets backed up to DVDs.
The car stereo also doesn't play MP3s (2007 model, factory stereo) so I can either A: spend about $200 on an aftermarket mp3 adapter or B: burn CDs.
"Optical drive"? Is that the slidey thing you put those sort of shaving mirror thingies into? I remember we used to use something like that in the olden days.
It's 2011, dammit, why do people still use optical drives?
Possibly because, just because it's 2011 doesn't mean all past cds/dvds are magically converted into usbs.
Dammit archaeologists, it's 2011! Why are you still reading clay tablets!
Because I have close to 100 CDs and 30 DVDs. Yeah, I'm old school. Ripping them onto my hard drive would take up too much space.
Kind of tangentially on-topic (wink-wink), but ... I am planning to upgrade my home server machine, which has been humming not so quietly since 2003. Sadly, I have not much dabbed in PC hardware since then -- do you guys know any online references with example configuration for decent, quiet machines to use as a starting point? My basic requirements are ecc registered ram, a terabyte or so of some kind of raid, a quad CPU and a well-supported video running Linux and, very occasionally, an odd windows instance in VirtualBox. TIA for any opinions.
I've used a 3.5" floppy drive more recently than I've used an optical drive.
Slow Down Cowboy!
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When students were grown in schools to design computers, rather than processors designed in companies the tried and true method of market success,
this is when the industry failed into the hands of educators.
So many better architectures, waiting to be minitiarised for more efficiency from prior fabricatio nmethods, are going to be ditched in favor of these shitty designs now.
We all could have dreamed about the reality of a VAX on your wristwatch, a cluster of 21264 Alpha systems on a 5-plug UPS power strip, a UltraSPARC 3 PDA, or a SGI MIPS -based Heads-up-Display, but no: we get shitty chinese ARM's and everyone worships Apple Compooters Corpse for Jobs queefing a Tablet out his droors that is just as slim as he is from cancer!
You've proven that educators have failed, at least in one case.
Only 30 DVDs? That's not going to take much space at all. Certainly not much at all by modern HDD standards.
Even the drives that come in cheap low profile machines (nettops) are probably large enough to accomodate all of that.
30BD's would be another matter though.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I've got to say, at this point there's no contest as far as basic functionality goes, and for doing the things that "most people" tm do on their computers most of the time. Linux is clearly superior to Windows. I dare you to take a dual boot challenge.
I'll take that dare... here's where linux breaks down for "most people" tm:
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes).
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
3) Miscellaneous Toys - from the child friendly Barbie photo manipulation software that came with the Barbie camera to setting up your new Logitech universal remote to an AppleTV to programming a Lego Mindstorms creation with LabView. This affects far more people than you might think.
4) Video games - Believe it or not, lots of perfectly normal people play everything from World of Warcraft,to Left4Dead, to the copy of Bejeweled or Riven they picked up at Walmart for $7 as an impulse buy.
5) Peripherals - Printer fax scanner copier combination devices in particular still suck with linux. Getting printing going is usually relatively straightforward, but anything else is a complicated crapshoot.
I built a better system (WITH A VIDEO CARD AND OPTICAL DRIVE, PCMAG) for $189 on Pricewatch.
AND YOU CAN GAME ON IT.
But you forget about monitor pricing.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Its not my dream rig or anything, but picking off just about the cheapest item in each category yields $184 from newegg.
CPU $42 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888
Motherboard $38 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153181
RAM $25 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134635
Case & PSU $30 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811162059
HD $34 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148698
DVD $17 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031
Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it!
Somehow, I had missed that little bit of "trivia". I have to say, "About time!" I remember my early days with Windows, trying to work around a bad CD-rom in some cases, or a scratched up CD in others. And, trying to get someone's driver installed by way of the floppy drive which was often full of lint and dust. Yes, it's about time that MS actually SUPPORTS a boot-able USB. Take all my headaches, multiplied by all the people worldwide who had to work around that limitation, and you most certainly have billions of hours of wasted time!
Of course, these days, I don't spend much time fixing people's trashed out computers. I guess that's why I wasn't aware that Microsoft had come out of the stone ages.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's because they want to distribute software to you with an optical drive. It's not that big a deal in the Desktop space (its just so they can rip you off an extra $50). The real problem with it is in the laptop market you could fit an extra 2-hours+ of battery life in the space or a descent discrete graphics card or even a more robust cooling system that could add years of life to your laptop. It's ridiculous that you can't even find a 14-inch or larger laptop without a optical drive.
Realy? I've fond hard drives to be cheap and effective.
1TB of storage is a monsterous stack of DVD's or a small hard drive. 2TB is even worse.
As far as hard drive reliability, make 2 or 3 copies. 3 2TB hard drives is pretty easy to handle, DVD's pretty darn difficult.
I don't have a blu ray drive, but I dont' see it being momumentally better.
Optical is dead, and flash drives aren't reliable.
Missing:
- keyboard
- mouse
- network cable
- monitor?
- USB key to install from
- Friend to copy OS onto your USB key
- taxes (for those lucky to have them)
I think the real cheat is any budget that involves a mail-in rebate.
The article starts out about financial difficulties and then provides a price that doesn't reflect the walk home price. 3-6 weeks you might make that money back IF you are lucky that the rebate was honored.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
You must be rather young. You obviously don't remember the good old days, back when this site first started and was overrun with spam and trolls.
I'm currently on a bit of a "get legit" roll when it comes to my media. All my software is acquired legally via the net so that's OK, it's just stuff like movies and music that I still require an optical drive for. Why?
1. I like my music in FLAC format. There are very few digital music stores which sell in this format. My favourite by far is http://bandcamp.com/ but they don't have much mainstream/big-artist stuff.
2. Even if I didn't have a preference for FLAC, there aren't any legal digital music stores around which service my needs with at least a high-bitrate MP3. I don't want to use iTunes because I don't want to deal with AAC (I can convert them but I don't want a dependency on iTunes anyway). Amazon still hasn't, for whatever reason, opened an MP3 store here in Australia yet despite promising to open up to the world many years ago.
3. You can forget about any legit digital movie stores selling non-DRMed stuff either.
So what do I do? I buy music CDs and rip them to FLAC. I buy DVDs and use HandBrake to convert them, or just play them directly with VLC. Both of these cases require an optical drive, and until such a time occurs that physical sales of media are completely abolished, I will continue to do this. UNLESS... a suitable online store apears in my area which sells non-DRMed music AND video of what I want, in my preferred format. At this rate that's going to take a very long time (if ever), so I do what I can to stave off piracy.
The force is strong with this one. And by "force" I mean "drugs".
The Internet?
Get a $15 optical drive then. Whatever.
You do realize optical drives are shit, right?
expandfairuse.org
So it's where the Pirate Bay stores its torrents?
SSC
you could of gotten a amd board with a newer ATI chipset with DVI for about $15 more and for like $30 more a AM3+ board.
It fails because you need to load an OS from somewhere, from something, so you need to include the cost of the USB stick and time/cost of downloading Linux. I didn't see the cost of HD cable either. CPU Heatsink? Minor stuff but it all adds up. 2 GB of ram? pfft. Why have a HD at all? boot from USB and use Network storage.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I don't have an optical drive in my desktop. When I want to burn a CD to playon my Sega Saturn I have to boot up an old P3 box. That's about all I use it for.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You forgot:
6) Docx support, whilst I prefer open office to MS Office in general. In OO/LibreOffice Docx support is terrible (Images in wrong place, different table sizes, no word art, etc). Nb. from my experience the same isn't true the other way round, open office documents usually display fine in word.
Disclaimer: I dual boot ubuntu with Gnome 3 (btw Unity is reason 7 if we are talking specifically about Ubuntu) and Win 7. For programing, internet browsing and file operations linux is generally better. I also use LibreOffice when I am creating documents (but not for opening or editing documents created in Word). However I generally haven't found good replacements for Windows Live Photo Gallery (although digikam get close in terms of functionality, but with a terrible UI), Photoshop (I have tried gimp), MS Power Point and movie editing software in general (I've tried a large number of linux movie editing software on a reasonably high spec system and they all seemed to crash at random intervals).
Win 7 is also more visually appealing.
null
Don't like the idea of useing a cheap PSU with a case for under $30 much less a under $30 psu.
If you think about it, USB sticks are probably a good flat-out replacement for CDWRs/DVDWRs. They're faster, more convenient, and hold more. You can put them on your keychain. Just go with it, drop the optical, replace with USB.
ARM is a good architecture. It offers the 16 registers recommended, and fast interrupt registers, for quick processor mode changes (helpful for micro kernels). Its 32 bit instructions have conditional instructions to avoid small loops. ARM pioneered the high density code instruction set with Thumb. Today, MIPS is copying the ARM's past innovations.
Good point. I have already started using an HD for backups but I still back up to optical too, just in case the HD dies. It certainly is a chore to make several DVDs to back up several GB of files but at least if one or two go bad, I have more backups. If a HD goes bad, I'm screwed.
However, even more to your point, the price per GB falls every year and capacity increases. Behold HD size in rough terms:
1985: top-of-the-line HD had MAYBE 10MB. It also cost about $5000.
1995: about 8-10 GB. Cost: I honestly don't know.
2005: about 500 GB.... around $120.
Today: 2TB... $90.
Imagine 2020... or 2030... holy shit. I can see the Fry's ad now: "100 PB for $120. While supplies last." [Factoring in the estimated inflation].
But what the hell does someone do with 100 PB? As is the case with CPU speeds, we will eventually hit a ceiling. Except in this case, the ceiling will be what is practical vs. what is possible. I can't imagine someone ever using that much HD space except for perhaps a company that never destroys old customer data.
crossover office is $40-70 and works well in my experience.
it's not that much more $$$ in addition to microsoft office and if you're pirating that, then go ahead and pirate crossover too.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Guys, we have a heretic amongst us who will not suck Linux cocks. Get the pitchfork and torches out!
Don't like the idea of useing a cheap PSU with a case for under $30 much less a under $30 psu.
Get off your horse. One of the best power supplies I ever owned was free after mail-in rebate: a 500 watt no name brand.
I have used WINE for MS Office (which I did not pirate) in the past and it has worked reasonably well (although still a pain, which is why CrossOver Office exists) however it would not have been easy enough for an average user (don't know if CrossOver Office fixes this). If I ever switched to a none dual boot system in the future I might get it (at this point in time there are often stupid little things I need Win 7 for).
In general linux seems to be slightly less stable then win 7, I do however use Ubuntu as my primary OS.
It is good for power users (who can debug computer problems such as weird file permissions and edit config files) and I would suggested it for that class of users, however I would not suggest it to Joe Average.
null
The question is do you really want to be a cheapskate on something you are going to use hours everyday?
And by "is" you mean "are".
But what the hell does someone do with 100 PB? As is the case with CPU speeds, we will eventually hit a ceiling. Except in this case, the ceiling will be what is practical vs. what is possible. I can't imagine someone ever using that much HD space except for perhaps a company that never destroys old customer data.
You lack imagination then. I can easily think of someone using that much without even breaking a sweat, like e.g. many people like to keep a pristine collection of their music files as FLAC files, and those tend to take a lot of space. Similarly, many people like to keep 1:1 copies of their movies and animation and TV series, and even at 1080p those tend to eat space like crazy. And just think about it: in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution and movies will likely weigh in at about 200Gb even with reasonable compression.
And think about it, sometimes people have computers serving the whole family. I too have a home server with 2.5Tb storage at the moment, and it's starting to get full, and it's only serving 3 PCs. With a moderately-sized family it could get filled up pretty fast with everyone storing their stuff there.
I do give you that that text-documents and Excel spreadsheets don't use that much space, but many people use their PCs for much more than just using those kinds of files.
From www.tigerdirect.com I bought one of their "kit" computers with an AMD Quad Core CPU, 2gb of Ram, a 500gb HD, a DVD r/w, and Ubuntu. I added a kb with a touchpad that I already had around the office and "viola!" a sub-200 desktop *with* optical drive. I haven't done a thing to it since... and I'm posting from it now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
crossover makes it a one-click operation.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
It seems to me I remember sometime along in the early 90's arguing with my wife about whether to put a 40MB HD in our new comp, or an 85MB HD. The wife couldn't imagine ever filling up 40MB, much less 85 MB.
Pretty much same argument happened a few years back, arguing over whether to put a 250GB HD in a new comp. That time, *I* was the one who couldn't imagine ever needing that much space.
And in the same way, our grandkids will wonder how we ever managed to limp along with ONLY 1 PB of HD in our comps....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Beagleboards are 149.00USD and Pandaboards are 179.00USD you then just need an SD card 4G or better. I run a pandaboard myself for some D-Star ham radio stuff.
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes).
My dad uses Winamp to sync his iPod. He wants to manage his music the way he wants to do it, and not the way Apple tells him to do it. Now granted, Winamp is Windows software, and while I don't know of or care to find similar software for Linux, saying it requires iTunes is false.
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
TurboTax doesn't do anything particularly funky with respect to Windows. I see no reason why this couldn't run on WINE. You could argue that most people would have no clue how to run an application through WINE. You could also argue that it's trivial to learn to just prepend 'wine' to the command line, and not much more difficult to make an icon in gnome/kde to do so.
3) Miscellaneous Toys - from the child friendly Barbie photo manipulation software that came with the Barbie camera to setting up your new Logitech universal remote to an AppleTV to programming a Lego Mindstorms creation with LabView.
Lego RCX units and Harmony remotes can be programmed on Linux using 3rd party software. Technically, Harmony remotes are programmed on the Logitech servers, through a web application, and the only thing the software is used for is to transfer the profile to the device. LabVIEW offers OSX and Linux versions of all but their bottom end interfaces, and what is someone doing worrying about a $200 computer when they're going to use it to interface with IO boards that start at that price and go way way up? The AppleTV is itself a computer, capable of accessing the iTunes store directly. It has no need for interaction with a PC. If you're talking about streaming content to it, well then there are mechanisms for doing that in Linux too.
4) Video games - Believe it or not, lots of perfectly normal people play everything from World of Warcraft,to Left4Dead, to the copy of Bejeweled or Riven they picked up at Walmart for $7 as an impulse buy.
A quick check puts some 5000 games and applications on the Platinum and Gold compatibility list for WINE. Yes, people will be afraid of things like WINE, but suck it up and put out a little effort if you want to avoid that $100 Windows OEM license. WOW, L4D, and Bejeweled are all on the Platinum list, meaning it works perfectly out-of-the-box with no special configuration.
5) Peripherals - Printer fax scanner copier combination devices in particular still suck with linux. Getting printing going is usually relatively straightforward, but anything else is a complicated crapshoot.
I can't speak to other print companies but HP offers the HPLIP drivers, with support for some 2000 different pieces of hardware. Using it, I had absolutely no trouble getting printing or scanning working on my all-in-one unit.
Ever measured the power drain on that? Don't forget to factor in power factor. My old Athlon XP system (which was stripped down of various high-drain performance parts when it became a server) has more draw than my i7 potato cooker thanks to it's no-name 350W supply's 0.67 power factor vs. the 0.98 or so power factor of the i7's high end PSU. Never mind that the voltage from the cheapy PSU varies quite a bit and is actually out of tolerance on the 5V side. I'd replace it, but that machine is due for retirement anyhow as it's now a backup to a backup server...
I do a bit of consulting on the side, and most system failures are caused by no name, came-with-the-cheap-case power supplies. It's like the good old C64 era all over again: most of those died due to the epoxy-filled craptastic power supply being wildly out of spec.
PSU test results:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ - 110W @0.67 PF = 164W
Intel i7 920 - 130W @0.98 PF = 133W
This is fully powered up (no sleep states) but not doing any heavy workload. Heavy workload flips those around, of course, but the older PSU is still using an extra 50% power for nothing other than heating the mains wires.
Since moving to Linux 2 years ago, both Windows and OS X are crap.
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes).
My dad uses Winamp to sync his iPod. He wants to manage his music the way he wants to do it, and not the way Apple tells him to do it. Now granted, Winamp is Windows software, and while I don't know of or care to find similar software for Linux, saying it requires iTunes is false.
Great. Now please provide instructions for syncing up the music on my ipod touch using winamp? And perhaps you didn't notice it, but the GP said NEW ipods, not just ipods. I'm not familiar with any of the most recent regular ipod devices, but since he specifically singled out NEW ipods, I'm assuming that means they now work much like the touch/iphone/etc and no longer work with 3rd party software
Libre office has out of the box docx support, next!
Not only the power factor issue, but that "500w" power supply has a whole 18 amps available on the +12v rail. A whole 216 watts of power available. Go ahead and try to find even a decently built 350w with less amperage on the +12v rails. It won't be easy. I've seen far too many generic power supplies failing, taking other components out with them. I've seen MANY more cases of this than brand name power supplies taking out the motherboard when it fails, even if it was defective on the first power up. A little research on power supplies can go a long way.
If you take out the mail in rebate (which they probably won't honour, and even if they do it will be six months later), it clocks in just over $200.
I understand the fascination with the latest and greatest technology, because I was a willing participant on the upgrade treadmill for many years. But I realized that the best price to performance ratio is actually in used gear.
For the $191 the authors of the article spent on brand new items I could have built a system that is at least twice more powerful, and with better components all around. As an example, I found a Phenom II X4 955 with OEM heatsink for only $4 more than they spent on their Athlon II X2 270. I have many more examples, but the general trend is a used previous generation component will be about twice cheaper than a new current generation component.
When buying used there is the issue of limited availability and timing, since you do need to check your local deals sites daily to find what you need. But even in the worst case scenario I was able to build a system from scratch within a week or two, without compromising on components quality. I may not have been able to chose between Sapphire, eVGA or Asus when buying a new video card, but when saving hundreds of dollars over the brand new prices it suddenly doesn't matter that much.
One thing the article got right was their choice of processors. If costs are not an issue and the overriding criterion is performance, then Intel is your only option. But AMD is by far a much better value as a platform. Most reviews I've seen are comparing the price and performance of the CPUs themselves, but that is only part of the picture. When you add the motherboard and RAM to the equation, an Intel platform becomes significantly more expensive. When the Core i series was released, the cost of the Intel CPU, motherboard and DDR3 RAM was roughly twice more than an equivalent AMD setup with DDR2 RAM, even though the overall performance difference was under 10%.
At that time I chose an AMD Phenom II X4 945 because ironically it was faster than an Intel Core i7 920 when playing Bethesda games (Oblivion and Fallout3 at that time).
I've done quite a few system builds using this AMD bundle deal that Micro Center has had going on for some time now. Every single system works flawlessly, even the ones with the Powerspec case/power supply (more business if the PSU does fail, and I haven't seen one take a motherboard out yet.)
Phenom II X2 560 Black edition: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0347369 $87.99
Biostar A780L3G AM3 760G mATX Motherboard: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0351634 $FREE
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500gb SATA 6.0gbps: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0352164 $49.99
Micro Center branded 2x2gb of DDR3 1333: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0353218 $19.99
PowerSpec TX-381 Micro ATX Computer Case: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0330536 $24.99
Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500w PSU: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0295037 $37.99
Samsung 22x SATA DVD-RW drive: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0293049 $21.99
Grand Total of $255.10 after tax.
You have an overclockable dual core CPU (I wouldn't push too far with the stock heatsink and with that motherboard, but a little bump to 3.6 GHz shouldn't be an issue.), better graphics than the system in the article, twice as much system memory (4gb vs. 2gb), an optical drive, an actual decent power supply, a case with a handle on it, and I could probably go on, but i'd hope you all get the point. A whole $45 more before tax, not including the lame $8 mail in rebate for the power supply. Definitely worth every penny, and this is all something you could pick up and have together in a couple hours assuming you have a store close to you. Most would likely pay $40+ for the convenience alone. I also didn't shop around too much. Better might be possible.
I'm typing this from a G4 laptop I threw Debian on. It has everything I need for a "modern" OS and I do web development on it. Paid $200 bucks and couldn't be happier. Well I could, but for the price you can't beat it. If people really want to get the best hardware for cheap, hit up craigslist and put Linux on something, it's the best bang for your buck.
Ignore netbooks and Ipads and crap and you can get yourself setup with a basic video editing workstation.
The question is do you really want to keep buying throwaway mobile toy electronics, or set the path for a base level video editing workstation? Forget about the ARTICLE for a minute. Ya know? Fuck $200. Save your money till you have $300, or $400 . Quit mortgaging your life away.
>Optical media
>2011
Isn't that why you would also want to use a filesystem such as ZFS for better file integrity along with putting several of the drives in RAID so that you can just replace one if it fails.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Never skimp on the PSU, it will make your hardware less durable, sound worse quality, will behave badly with power micro-outages, take down your PC in a thunderstorm instead of only it failing and so on.
You should cheap out on the rest, even get a Sempron if it's what it takes, as it's worth former $1000 CPUs such as Athlon FX 57 and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. It even unlocks into Athlon X2 with a simple BIOS setting. You profit from not having to run an antivirus and adobe, java, quicktime etc. updater.
Regarding optical drive : get an used one from the trash, even the one from your Pentium 166 will install ubuntu just fine (and is better at ripping damaged CDs). Even the case can be scavenged from the pentium 2/3 era and will be a bit higher quality and easier to work with.
You should get a $40 PSU, not a $30 PSU + case. a 400W or 350WFortron / FSP group one is rock solid and will run your PC stable for a decade. Those a real watts too :).
http://www.pcmag.com/article/print/287106
Why don't you fuckers just put these in the summary?
I agree. Buying a new computer is a worse deal than buying a new car. I just got a refurbished HP laptop with 6 GB RAM, 750 GB HD, 17" monitor, and Intel Core I5 for less than $400. Equivalent desktops can be gotten for less than $200.
I don't respond to AC's.
Tehe money you save in energy will be initially (did I say initial, I meant instantly) lost in getting new fans with no noise! , when you FIGURE it out that you need the smaller than normal fan, and it uses even LESS watts, and costs less and the dude that sells them is legit then your stoked. Maybe you even dare try to provide your own power to it? Whoever made these racks, did a brilliant job. Unlike the Brilliant banksters. There's your trend hint for the day
My dad uses Winamp to sync his iPod. He wants to manage his music the way he wants to do it, and not the way Apple tells him to do it. Now granted, Winamp is Windows software, and while I don't know of or care to find similar software for Linux, saying it requires iTunes is false.
We were talking about "most people" tm, remember. That you can get some limited functionality out of the device without itunes in some cases with other software is completely irrelevant.
TurboTax doesn't do anything particularly funky with respect to Windows. I see no reason why this couldn't run on WINE.
"Normal people" tm don't install WINE or even know what it is. All they know is the CD doesn't work, and the TurboTax support line is telling them Linux is absolutely not supported.
Lego RCX units and Harmony remotes can be programmed on Linux using 3rd party software. ...and...
5000 games are on the platinum list...
"normal people" tm just know the bundled CD doesn't work, and the support line can't help them.
I don't disagree in the slightest that a lot of this stuff can be made to work, and even made to work well. I might be able to do it. but my Mom isn't going to be able to do it. WINE is not "trivial". Running windows applications on linux is not a unified experience... the folder paths inside the application don't match the ones outside - for example, there can be font issues for another.... And if you have any trouble, support can't help you.
"I can't speak to other print companies but HP offers the HPLIP drivers, with support for some 2000 different pieces of hardware. Using it, I had absolutely no trouble getting printing or scanning working on my all-in-one unit."
Network scanning or just via the USB cable? What about faxxing? Does the automatic document feeder work? What about duplexing? When you say you had no trouble getting it working, is that because you like me know what your doing... or could my mom do it too with no trouble?
the geforce 6100 is still supported by the latest proprietary nvidia drivers. it's very slow but will run your quake 2 and quake 3, tux, 2D opengl games which are the only ones easily running on linux anyway.
This CPU and memory amount cost a bit more in 2009, but I think I spent under €300 overall (including the HDDs).
Nowadays I would want to equip a new PC with at least 4GB, particularly since the additional cost is about €30-€40.
Sorry to burst your bubble. They have not changed, so they were crap before. You have changed.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"in 2014 hundreds of millions of XP boxes go EOL."
By then they'll be so obsolete it will be time for fresh hardware for those who care, or yet another clean install for those who don't care about EOL (most users).
"And then guys like me will simply strip or dump all those XP boxes and you won't gain shit."
Good, more boxes for me to reload with XP and sell at the flea market. (Tried Linux, no one wants them.)
To end users, "Windows" IS the computer. They have time invested in learning it, and don't NEED to learn anything different. They don't give a fraction of a fuck about what anyone else thinks they should do.
I prefer Linux, but consumers and non-geeks could care less.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
optical drive in a modern machine what do you want next a floppy?
i dont own a computer with a optical drive and there is 6 machines in my house.
> in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution and movies will likely weigh in at about 200Gb even with reasonable compression.
Hmm. Thought experiment: Normal high def movies today still tend to be under 10 GB. Let's round way up to 20 GB. The next resolution will be "4K" - double in both directions, so 4x the pixels. That only gets us up to 40-80 GB and assumes compression doesn't get any better than the current h264. Current optical disc tech (blu ray) is supposed to handle 100 GB per disc - that'd be four layers instead of today's 1-2 layers, so it'd easily handle 40-80 GB movies but not 200GB movies.
And 4K is a ridiculously good resolution. Most people today already sit too far from their HDTV to fully perceive the top high def resolution. At the same distance, they'd need a 4K TV of double the diagonal length to perceive the same percentage of quality of a 4K video. 70"-120" TVs? Oh dear. Time to completely redesign the living room again.
640GB ought to be enough for everybody.
Buy one that has been already used. Why not? With 200 buckets you can get a good PC (better then this) and recycling instead of throwing away new e-waste.
two words, raspberry pi
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
An ARM Linux box for $25
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
It looks like he changed for the better.
...In their 2011Mac Minis . With app stores pushed to the consumers, Optical Drives seems to fade away. Even Microsoft is supporting natively the .iso files in win8, another nod to a system with no optical drive.
I manage over a dozen boxes with Ubuntu on them. The only hardware that ever caused me headaches are printers. Everything else Just Works.
And even printers are nowhere near as problematic as on the Windows side: I recently connected a new printer to one of those computers: Lexmark E260. The biggest (and only) problem was deleting the old printer and renaming the new one. Both easily done with GUI. The drivers were installed automatically.
Notice how none of the Linux zealots can stand the truth? i could line links up all damned day showing everyone from giant corps like Walmart to little shops like mine running away screaming because Linux is a fiddly CLI heavy bitch, but will they listen? Oh fuck no, they still have raging hard ons for the days of the PDP11 when everyone that used a computer was a programmer and neckbeards were the rage. i mean for the love of God RMS still calls everyone "hackers" like he is at a computer club meeting in 75. Wake up and smell the last 20 years of computing folks!
As for your point about being "too old"? bullshit, total bullshit. frankly once PCs reached around 2GHz they became "good enough" for all your basic web tasks which is what I'd say a good 60% to 70% of the people out there only use a PC for. Add to that any AMD AM2 or Socket 775 out there can be trivially upgraded to a dual core (hell I can get Pentium Ds all day long for less than $20 that frankly kick ass for all basic tasks and even MMOs) and there frankly isn't a reason to shitcan them except for the license issue. I'm sure many of the smaller shops will just load "Win 7 Razr1911" and call it a day but I run a legit shop.
But as for why nobody wants Linux? I'd argue because it is a fiddly little PITA that is why. Linux has the reputation of being a difficult to use OS FOR A DAMNED GOOD REASON and that is because it IS a PITA to use fiddly little OS. As I said look at the 80% hardware there should NEVER be a failure of that hardware, ever. Hell Windows has carried OOTB drivers for the 80% hardware since Win2K and you know what? it actually works!
Compare this to Linux where Linus' constantly going Goatse on the kernel and insane release schedule means broken driver after broken driver. And before anyone says bullshit i'll be happy to post a HUGE list of "update foo broke my driver" links if you'd like, the forums are literally overflowing with them. it is simple XYZ math folks, you have X amount of guys qualified to do driver work, you have Y times tens of thousands of drivers, and you have Torvalds Z breaking shit left and right. Even if the guys qualified to fix drivers never slept and did nothing but fix drivers 24/7 they would NEVER keep up, it is simply mathematically impossible.
Most likely all these machines which could be running Linux, as for that 60%+ there is not a damned thing they do that wouldn't work perfectly on Linux, simply will either have pirate Windows loaded or EOLed XP, and that is a damned shame. So much work by the community pissed down a rathole by Torvalds ego. you have great DEs, plenty of software, versions that will run on anything from a 300Mhz with 128Mb of RAM to a supercomputer, but until you get rid of the damned CLI horseshit and drivers are "write once, use for years" so that they aren't constantly breaking? Linux simply won't go anywhere. look at the numbers folks, it is below the margin for error. it was below the margin for error four years ago, it will be below the margin for error four years from now if things don't change.
Give the people what they want, all GUI, easy to use and manage, with no driver breakage constantly? Watch them beat a path to your door. Continue with this CLI neckbeard fixation, with the constant driver Goatse, and expecting the world to do things YOUR way and calling them trolls or idiots when they won't? enjoy your 1%. You already have the "fight teh powerz!" types, and the power users have no problems with Windows, so no growth there. you NEED the home users, see the giant 50 foot neon sign screaming CONSUMERS and get in the game, or don't be surprised when nobody pays attention to you.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Not this hardware abi driver interface bullshit again, you bring it up all the time.. and it is addressed all the time. ( I think this is the third of fourth time I've replied to you on this topic on /. alone, usually long write-ups but don't have the time today)
While this is old, it is something you may find interesting. In short, you don't want a fixed abi, what you want, are stable drivers.
Nice troll, dude.
In June I got a brand new Dell XPS L502x with 4GB RAM, 500GB RAM and Quad Core i7 and a 15" 1080p screen (NVidia graphics, but of the "bad" Optimus kind).... For 525€ (Always count 1$=1€ when the dollar is weak). How did I do it? Pure luck. I've been subscribed to their newsletter for ages as you pretty much always can get 5% off. If you need a computer, that 5% is at least 5%. Sometimes they do this action "scratch ticket style". You get a code, and this code will give you 5%, 10%, 25% or 50% off. I never expected they would actually give anyone 50%, but I amused myself setting together a laptop I'd think would be nice, but for which I would never have paid full price. I entered my code and to my astonishment, I got the 50% off.
I bought 3 machines. One for my sister, one for my brother and one for me. I could have ordered up to 5, but my credit card wouldn't have let me. (Max 2000€/month)
Now, I agree you had a good deal, but you can get nifty *new* stuff cheap too...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Great, because, people living in poverty who need affordable computing also typically have permanent residences, consistent (running) AC power, and not enough to carry around during the busy day already -- they need PCs.
This will be worth reading when it's about laptops.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
And just think about it: in 2020 1080p will be really low resolution
Pure bullshit.
1080p isnt going away any time soon. Hell, its not even the standard resolution yet (that would be 720p)
Also, over the past 10 years the number of pixels per inch has gone DOWN towards lower densities, not UP towards higher densities. ~150 pixels per inch was fairly typical on mid-to-high end CRT's but then the LCD craze happened and nearly everyone is now running only 100 pixels per inch or less ('cept in niche cases like hand held devices)
"His name was James Damore."
Over 50% of worldwide PC sales fit this price and description. "White box" manufacturing, aka the "Good enough" market, overtook name brands way back. This is news to the wealthy OECD nations, I guess, but sales in those countries are now less than half of worldwide sales, and white box PCs are about 35% of sales even in the USA.
Gently reply
For kicks, I just spec'ed up a Mac Pro on the apple store. Under $20130.00 fully optioned. (I didn't buy it though)
And I just wound up 'fixing' a windows xp home theatre pc using linux.
The machines tv tuner card drivers had severe problems, and both the on-board video and tv tuner card did not have windows 7 drivers.
Linux was installed, everything appeared perfectly and as a bonus it now functions as a mythtv backend allowing new functionality the owner is really pleased with.
What use is windows when perfectly good hardware can be deprecated by the vendors at their whim (the motherboard was made late 2006, driver support discontinued 2008)
In regards to wireless, what chipsets are you purchasing that aren't supported? last I checked between the ath5k, ath9k, rt2x00 drivers the overwhelming majority of common hardware has been handled elegantly. I can just plug in a nintendo wifi usb stick and bam wireless is there, same with my pci ar2431 board. No bullshit, plug and play.
Circa 2005-2007 I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you linux wifi support was more than questionable. These days actually being hard-pressed to find hardware that doesn't "just work" out of the box is a testament to how much it has improved.
Frankly, the Raspberry PI looks like a decent system that after adding monitor, keyboard, and various other usb items would make a great computer system for under $200. I plan to pick up several of these when they come on the market and it doesn't appear that they are vapourware like many items from other companies in the past.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
1) Itunes - sure there are plenty of great media players and what not for linux... but if you have an ios device whether its a new ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or ipad (and literally tens of millions of completely normal people do, they need itunes)."
Umm - my daughter uses I-Tunes on her Ubuntu machine. She's 17, and had no problem installing it and getting her ipod working.
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
LOL - been doing my Turbox Tax on the web under fedora and ubuntu for years. Cheaper than buying the CD's at the store. I have access to all of the forms and everything. Plus I dont have to waste space on my machine with software I only use once.
3) Miscellaneous Toys - from the child friendly Barbie photo manipulation software that came with the Barbie camera to setting up your new Logitech universal remote to an AppleTV to programming a Lego Mindstorms creation with LabView. This affects far more people than you might think.
Dont use any of those. Dont have any need, so I cant say if this is true or not.
4) Video games - Believe it or not, lots of perfectly normal people play everything from World of Warcraft,to Left4Dead, to the copy of Bejeweled or Riven they picked up at Walmart for $7 as an impulse buy.
I run 3d games all the time under Fedora. I used to use Ubuntu for games, but recently changed to gaming under Fedora. I run imprudence as well as others.
5) Peripherals - Printer fax scanner copier combination devices in particular still suck with linux. Getting printing going is usually relatively straightforward, but anything else is a complicated crapshoot.
I have an HP8180C. It prints, copies, scans. Never had any issue under Fedora or Ubuntu. I have a wireless Logitec mouse and keyboard connected to my Ubuntu machine. Never had any problem, Anything I connect to these machines works just fine. I also burn DVD movies under Ubuntu. Hook up my digital camcorder to my firewire port on my laptop running Ubuntu. Copy off all of my daughters high school events and burn them to cd's or DVD's for her and my wife.
I really wish people would stop with these old worn out generalizations. If you dont like Linux, fine dont use it. But please dont tell people that it wont work for anyone. It works fine for my family and many of my neighbours and friends.
Power factor has nothing to do with power consumption.
I'm not sure that we should be focusing on the sub-200 spot at all. The greatest gains are in the 250-550 range; exponential power increases over something at the extreme low-end and newer tech too. I am assuming this is "building an inexpensive PC for anyone" focused more than "building for the extremely impoverished" which really shouldn't even be thought of in terms of retail - either donated/refurbished foundation hardware, and laptops at best, provide for that resource.
As others have shown, the article's box is really not that great and for the same or a little more you can do a lot better. Just buying bundles and sale items from Newegg, Microcenter/Fry's can do MUCH better. Also, its important to note that bargain basement is not always the best way to go, especially with components like PSUs. I also believe we need to start defining what "The Computer" requires. There's been more debate than ever on the nature of including an optical drive or not in this thread, and clearly including a modern LCD monitor (20", widescreen) is going to easily put a few hundred more dollars to the cost of the build. Finally, I think we need to start taking second-hand components into consideration. Here are my opinions on the "questionables"
1. Keyboard and Mouse - Depends. If a first-time buyer or intended as an "always on" PC (no switching existing inputs for maintenance) these are necessary. Thankfully, they're also inexpensive. A cheap optical mouse can be had for as little as $5-10 today. Likewise, keyboards. Spending a little more on each will provide powerful 5-7 button mice and ergonomic keyboards. This should probably be considered after the system is otherwise built and if necessary, equipped with the leftover money and to the user's specs (ie. if this is going to be a HTPC, then wireless may be a good option if available)
2. Optical and/or USB storage - One or the other is mandatory, but it really depends on again the user's situation. Where are they getting their OS? If this is their first PC they have no way to write a Linux distro to a USBkey, but they CAN get a free or ultra low cost disc from one of the linux burning programs. Internal are cheaper, but external are far more flexible - these days I have a single, external DVD SuperMulti DL (Which doesn't require an AC adapter) drive that I use whenever I need to install something from disc (save for the one that came in my laptop). There's also the consideration that typically discs "Just Work" even in Linux, but there can be some annoyances getting a USB drive or SD card flagged, formatted, and mounted properly to replicate a disc. Is there an equivalent of something as easy as "Linux Live USB Creator" on Linux itself? If you opt to go without optical, there needs to be a software way to ensure that USB or cards can replicate optical in every meaningful way. Of course, this may become impossible if you have a user that often buys media on disc, unless they wish to start getting said media from elsewhere.
3. Monitor - Its hard to justify that a monitor is absolutely required in this day and age, when most households have one or more "monitors" of their own - TVs I see monitors as separate component and for most users it works out this way. Sure, its nice to be able to give your desktop PC its own discrete monitor, and you can do it at a relatively affordable price, but it isn't necessary at time of build for MOST users. Some will already have another monitor from an older PC and many who are not technically inclined think you "have" to upgrade the monitor - that's how big box stores tend to sell PCs. Learning that they can use the perfectly fine on they already have usually makes many users happy. In the case of those that don't have a discrete PC monitor yet, but have relatively modern TVs in the house, this is an easy issue to solve. This group makes up a larger percentage of users than one would think - there are homes with 1990s PCs w/14" CRTs or no PC at all, but equipped with one or more 480p compli
The pitfall is things like memory bus speeds and does it have SATA, USB3, PCIe, etc. I like me some used shit, but for performance, it is rarely worth it.
Although, I was just working on a Compaq Professional Workstation 8000. 1500mb of RDRAM and dual Xeons of some kind, with 15k rpm SCSI 160 (or 320?) drives. Thing is nearly 10 years old, and runs Windows 7 with no static at all. Of course, it was a $10,000 computer when it was new.
Network scanning or just via the USB cable?
I have both USB and Network scanning (wireless) just fine. No special actions necessary. Just asked Fedora to find the unit.
What about faxxing?
yup, not a problem.
Does the automatic document feeder work? What about duplexing?
Yes, the automatic document feeder works. Yes, duplexing works.
When you say you had no trouble getting it working, is that because you like me know what your doing... or could my mom do it too with no trouble?
My wife and daughters have no problem adding software or hardware to our linux boxes. My wife is not a computer tech, nor are my daughters.
Now, I dont think anyone is in any position to state that your mom or anyone else can do something without trouble. My Father uses linux. My Mother uses linux. They are in their late 60's early 70's.
Acer Aspire 4743Z-4861 at costco on sale for under $350 (including an add-on cheapo mouse).
P6200, $GB RAM, 500GB HDD, DVD burner, 14" HD LED, Win 7 standard.
Removed bloatware, added productivity software, and it's the perfect gift for the mother in law.
Desktops are great for serial system builders (like me) because a few key components can be reused (case, monitor, drives, etc), but commodity machines are the way to go if you're starting from scratch.
I ignore the potential for this as a home server as most who have home servers recycle old parts/systems to make them.
Instead, I have to consider for whom this $200 computer would be made... and that is typically someone who doesn't already have a computer. That said, this is not a "computer" as most people know it.
There's no keyboard, no mouse, and no monitor. And without an optical drive, there's no ability to watch DVD movies, install software (questionable need with Ubuntu, though), or rip music CDs to MP3s. You may say, "But you can stream the movies you want from Netflix!" And you would be right... but if the person's in need of a $200 budget PC, would the person be paying for cable/dsl internet AND a Netflix subscription? Or would s/he be more immediately concerned with watching the DVDs on hand already?
It's all based on opinion and experience, yes, but my experience says that anyone who needs a budget PC needs the entire system, not just the tower. Instead of setting an artificial budget and then bending the rules, why not just make the best full system you can with as little money as possible? Because that would be useful. (Tom's Hardware does this from time to time.)
I am pretty sure that if you paid $500 for a desktop computer at a major retailer, then the manufacturer probably built it for less than $200. With retail markup and Windows 7, the thing gets sold for $500 off the shelf. So, this op is basically drawing attention to the fact that if there is little or no retail markup and no Windows 7 cost, the parts of a crappy desktop computer can be bought for $200 or less. Yes. OK.
Find an single-core AMD cpu on sale somewhere
track down a refurbished 20 GB pata hard drive or boot from USB stick
Get the oldest AM2 motherboard, preferably out of the "returns/incomplete" bin from a major retailer
Go buy practically any broken computer from the Salvation Army and plunder its case and powersupply and optical drive
Install Linux
In short, the op is narrowly focused on WHERE you can shop for cheap computer parts. Of course you can build computers for MUCH less than $200 if you extend your search for parts to thrift stores, refurbished parts tables, etc. The convenience factor of just buying a Major Manufacturer's Pre-Built Computer is worth something, though.
Newegg always has a bunch of monitors on sale, I just looked and there's a 23" 1920x1080 Acer for $139.99 with free shipping. http://www.newegg.com/emailpromo/
2) TurboTax etc... yep its just one week a year. But millions of completely ordinary people do their taxes with this type of software.
And those people are idiots. They pay money when most of them would qualify for free web file and file the equivalent of the 1040A short form.
Yes the OP is flaming and a bit trollish with thye offtopic ranting about the CLI but there is a solid nugget of truth in there. Drivers ARE breaking a lot.
Let me give three examples.
1. A desktop box I own with a Highpoint PATA RAID card. It works fine with RHEL3 or 4 and Fedora up through somewhere before 8. I manually butchered the GPL driver from Highpoint into loading into Fedora 9 & 10 but along that release's update stream they put out a kernel version bump that I couldn't figure out how to patch the driver into so I rolled back the kernel and have been stuck on F10 since. Every release I boot the DVD and check and nope, the regression is still there. Since it is a PATA controller it is doubtful it will ever work again.
2. My current Thinkpad X200s. It was a current production machine when Fedora 12's update train broke docking on it forcing another kernel rollback and freeze. Fedora 15 finally fixed docking at the cost of GNOME3, hell of a choice ain't it: break docking, break the desktop or run a machine without security patches. What to do, what to do. Fedora 15 with XFCE was my solution.
3. My boss's Thinkpad running Ubuntu lost the second monitor while docked during an update of xorg this week. Yup, rollback again and freeze. For one update cycle? A year? Who the hell knows. Of course since the current Ubuntu is the last to have GNOME2 it probably won't matter until the desktop suicide mission is resolved.
Democrat delenda est
So you fixed OLD SHIT by using Linux, what a fucking surprise. You wanna dumpster dive? linux works great...ohh until you update the thing then you are royally fucked. Have you run apt upgrade yet? bet you haven't, bet you won't either if you have a brain as the entire thing will fall down like a house of cards.
And waste your mod points, go ahead and throw that tux blankie on your head and go "Leave poor wittle Linux alone!" and maybe you mods and the britney guy can do a tag team thing. Won't change reality. You don't think Linux support sucks? Step right up folks and take the hairyfeet challenge!
Just go to Walmart.com, Staples.com, and Bestbuy.com, the 3 largest retailers in the USA. Write down all the PC devices on sale or under $100, then go to...lets say Ubuntu forums, since Ubuntu is the most popular ATM. Look up how many devices on sale RIGHT NOW are supported. Go ahead, I'll wait.....You're looking at MAYBE 30%, and that is if you count "support" as an assload of CLI commands that may or may not work depending on whether they have gone from firmware a to firmware f without changing the box (which they do ALL the time).
As long as Torvalds is in charge you're fucked, end of story. That douchebag acts like it is still 1993 and the kernel is his personal playtoy, not the core of a multibillion dollar ecosystem, its just him and his little friends on IRC except....it ain't 1993 anymore jackass! Your driver model sucks, support for new hotness is terrible, the 6 month upgrades break more shit than they fix, do you REALLY want me to pile on the links of people screaming because the 6 month broke their shit? because this thing could get longer than war and peace, last i looked at the forums we are talking 1000s of posts, which for an OS with only 1% share if pretty impressive in its levels of fail.
You don't like what I'm saying? Then FIX IT. Demand the kernel be forked or Torvalds "pursue other interests" and get someone in there that makes driver stability job #1, freeze the 6 month upgrade horseshit and replace it with a solid, well thought out 5 year cycle, demand that those who have software in the distros FIX THEIR BROKE SHIT instead of just releasing yet another one, seriously look at the bug trackers, its fucking embarrassing.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
How is it flaming? Because the Linux zealots here refuse to accept a single post that isn't "Gee Biff, isn't Linux doubleplusgood? Why it sure is Kim, and RMS smells like cotton candy!"
NAME A SINGLE THING that isn't true, just one. Broken drivers? You yourself admit that one. CLI heavy? For the love of God they have a term link on the desktop in a good 90% of distros for crying out loud! look on this very forum you'll find a Linux zealot that has taken HALF a quote from me and think it "proves"...something, hell if I know what. But the FULL quote bears repeating until the Linux faithful "get it".
As far as users are concerned THERE IS NO CLI in Windows or OSX, it doesn't exist. You could rip out CMD tomorrow on every single copy of Windows on the planet and 90%+ wouldn't even notice that is how little it is used. same for OSX. And before someone brings up Powershell that is SERVER TECH and I have yet to actually see it in the wild on a home machine, even once. I mean you can run a DB server on XP too, that don't mean anybody with any sense actually does it.
Look I have EVERY RIGHT to be royally pissed. i'm tired of being lied to, tired of having smoke blown up my ass, tired of having a bunch of basement dwellers telling me "Use distro X!" when I've already tried damned near a dozen, tired of NOTHING EVER CHANGING. You know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It has been TWENTY YEARS and Linux is STILL at 1%, it was below the margin for error 4 years ago, guess where it will be 4 years from now? same place.
Like it or lump it folks, but you can't change reality. Neckbeards have gone the way of paneling on cars, 99.9995% of the world is NOT made of programmers, the word is CONSUMERS in giant 50 foot neon, the CLI horseshit and 6 month breakage has been declared a giant DO NOT WANT, yet you continue to do the same tired BS and wonder why retailers like me won't carry your OS? maybe it is because you ignore your customers or insult them?
But don't worry, you stay on the same path. The world will ignore you, retailers like me won't touch your OS with a 50 foot pole, but you can sit there typing CLI crap you copypasta from some forum and acting like that connects you to the PDP11 using neckbeards of old. See if the world cares. Look at your numbers! If an OS with a $1000 barrier to entry gains while your FREE PRODUCT don't gain shit? Then dammit how big of a fucking cluebat do you need to be whomped upside the head with? UR DOIN IT WRONG
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Did you even read what you posted to? read it it is a RELIGIOUS TEXT with the writer going on about how basically they wouldn't be able to Goatse the kernel anymore! Well boo hoo, you can't Goatse the kernel if you actually had to support anything, my heart bleeds.
And if you think he is right and I'm bullshit, riddle me this? if that approach would work WHY HASN'T IT BEEN DONE? i'll tell you, because like me riding a purple pony with She Ra it is a complete and total fantasy, that's why. you might as well say "Well if we could place a hardware fairy into each copy of Ubuntu, a little neckbeard that would pop out and fix the drivers whenever they break, we wouldn't have no problems with broken drivers!" which is true, but completely impossible.
Look at the facts...Windows, BSD, Solaris, OSX, OS/2....what do they have in common? A Stable ABI. Do you honestly think that your kernel hackers are so fucking brilliant they know better than the kernel teams of ALL those OSes? Arrogant much? Sadly that is what it comes down to, arrogance and religious dogma. The RMS camp says 'ZOMG If you had a stable ABI you'd lose the 4 freedoms ZOMG!" while ignoring that Nvidia already puts out binary blobs, as do others, it just makes supporting your OS a bigger pain in the ass. And as you found out letting the kernel devs do it can easily end up with fucked and abandoned hardware, they simply don't have enough hours in the day.
But don't take my word for it, mark this post and come back in a year and watch it come true! linux will gain NO SHARE in the next 12 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 24 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 36, in short Linux is a dead end in its current incarnation. The masses simply won't deal with the fiddly driver breaking CLI heavy bullshit, like it or lump it. Give the people what they want, give the reatilers a product that is easy to support, watch your numbers rise. Don't? I hope you enjoy where you are at, because you sure as hell ain't going anywhere.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Where do you buy this mythical $230 dual core 15.4" eMachines laptop? Used on eBay or Craigslist? Their current model eME443-BZ602, is $329.99.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I know I'm late to the party but I'll play this game too. Mine meets to sub-$200 challenge and it has discrete video, HDMI out, optical audio out, 4 GB RAM, SATA 6.0GB/s and will play 1080p video without a hiccup. Throw XBMC on there and you have really nice HTPC.
Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/14YG
Part price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/14YG/by_merchant
CPU: Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock E350M1 Mini ITX E-350 Motherboard ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($18.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Apex MI-008 Mini ITX Tower Case w/250W Power Supply ($39.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $198.96
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated 2011-09-03 17:30 EDT-0400)
Contrary to your experience, I don't have many driver problems at all with older hardware. Since older hardware is cheap/free, anything I DO have problems with goes on a Winbox.
However, the reason Windows users don't want Linux is SIMPLY that it's not Windows. They wouldn't give a shit if it worked perfectly. That's not on their radar, at all, ever. I can set up nice stable Linux machines all day but users HAVE their invested YEARS of experience in Windows and don't want to throw that away.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So you are saying Linux is for dumpster divers? Is THAT what you are saying? Because I have to agree with you there as the ONLY PC I EVER saw survive a 6 month upgrade with 100% working drivers was a circa 1999 733Mhz P3 with really old Intel shit. You know what? it ended up in the dump as nobody wants shit that old, not even Goodwill! I can't believe you had the balls to admit that though, bravo good sir!
As for Windows? bullshit, utter bullshit. hell most people would even know if you changed their OS out tomorrow as long as the icons were in the same place. i work for consumers 6 days a week and you have NO idea how many times I've been told "I have Windows" but they have no damned clue if it is Win98 or Windows 7, they honestly don't know.
Lets take a look at some facts, shall we? Now for SMBs and SOHO Linux is right out, as QuickBooks/Quicken is God in those markets, and for a good reason i might add, as a single QB Girl (And it is ALWAYS a girl, they must have a union or something) can run the whole damned company with a copy of QB and an expense sheet, but consumers? In my shop I have got to learn their habits quite well, you tell me what they are doing that doesn't work on Linux....they use Firefox, they go to Facebook, they check their webmail, they watch Youtube and if they are guys or females under 30 they also go to Porntube and the like.
Now is there a SINGLE thing on that list that couldn't run just as well on Linux? Nope not a one. But here is the catch...since I would have to charge MORE for Linux because I'd have to give out lifetime support (And NO, home users won't buy support contracts. Just ask Best Buy how much they howl and scream at even being offered extended warranties) it simply makes no sense. Now if Linux would fix the driver breakage and kill the damned terminal bullshit? Then I could offer the Linux boxes for less and price WILL WIN for a huge number of consumers. this is why Dell can sell tons of $300 laptops even though we both know they are plastic POSes, and why when I get in a load of 4 to 6 year old laptops I sell at $100 each I have them all sold in less than 24 hours. price trumps all for a large majority out there.
When the Linux community accepts that CLI should have remained in the 80s where it belonged and drivers shouldn't constantly break then and ONLY then will Linux gain share. of course when that happens I'll be riding a purple pony with She Ra because I have never met a more delusional elitist bunch in my whole damned life! I swear I even had one tell me I should encourage my customers to "Embrace the POWER of CLI" like it was the God damned force!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah and have you actually used it, because I have and it doesn’t render correctly (images, tables, word art, etc) as well as converting automatic tables of contents to links
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Did you even read what you posted to?
Of course, but did you read what you posted to elsewhere in this discussion? This link in particular. You try to make it come off as a thing _against_ the development style of linux, when if you actually read it it simply provides great insight into the evolution of successful software over time.
read it it is a RELIGIOUS TEXT with the writer going on about how basically they wouldn't be able to Goatse the kernel anymore! Well boo hoo, you can't Goatse the kernel if you actually had to support anything, my heart bleeds.
All I'm hearing is "I don't have anything solid against this so I'm going to call it like a religion and compare it to a man with a messed up anus." A bit childish don't you think? If you want to attack it come up with technical points against it.
And if you think he is right and I'm bullshit, riddle me this? if that approach would work WHY HASN'T IT BEEN DONE?
erm... it has been, or you wouldn't be bitching about it would you? lol
Look at the facts...Windows, BSD, Solaris, OSX, OS/2....what do they have in common? A Stable ABI.
What else do they also have in common? Crappy out of the box (and in the case of solaris, os x and os/2 just in general) support for hardware, nowhere near as much code re-use between similar drivers, the deprecation of fully functioning hardware because a vendor now says you need a new device even though the old still runs and suits your functions perfectly, ridiculously long release cycles. The list goes on.
The RMS camp says 'ZOMG If you had a stable ABI you'd lose the 4 freedoms ZOMG!"
The rms camp don't even come into this, this is 'we will not fuck over what is best for the kernel in the long run just to temporarily pander to some companies that don't want to play the game and make it better for all'. It is out of pragmatism and what will result in the technically best kernel.
And as you found out letting the kernel devs do it can easily end up with fucked and abandoned hardware
Still rocking those MFM hard disks I see? I'm sure since you're running late 70's hard drives that using a kernel a year or so old to still get support of them shouldn't be too much of an issue. I can forgive getting rid of support for 30+ year old devices that realistically are impossible to get, and that can simply use an older version to get support.
But don't take my word for it, mark this post and come back in a year and watch it come true! linux will gain NO SHARE in the next 12 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 24 months, they will gain NO SHARE in the next 36, in short Linux is a dead end in its current incarnation.
Linux is a kernel, and last I checked, Android/media centres(i.e. wdtv)/routers/servers etc etc are flourishing. But more to the point, from a kernel development perspective why should they care about those who don't use it?
The sole aim of linux is to be a useful, quality kernel. Who defines quality? Those using it. I think you will find it _very_ hard to argue that linux does not serve a whole range of people far better than any other kernel presently in existence. It scales from your mobile phone to top 500 machines. On any architecture that is powerful enough to run it (even some microcontrollers). With better in-built hardware support than any other os presently.
The masses simply won't deal with the fiddly driver breaking CLI heavy bullshit, like it or lump it. Give the people what they want, give the reatilers a product that is easy to support, watch your numbers rise. Don't? I hope you enjoy where you are at, because you sure as hell ain't going anywhere.
The masses already use linux. Whether it be on their phone, their router, or their pc. But again more importantly, so long as I can use it for the needs I (or those I choose to support) have, why should I give a shit what other people use?
Good deal. Things are getting better, and your post is evidence of that.
But I'd still cringe if someone said "hi, I bought a new multi-function printer... now make it work with linux".
If you research first, and buy intelligently, sure... but to just wander into a Staples or Costco and come home with something and expect it to work... we're not there yet, your experience notwithstanding.
Compact Disc Digital Audio is like FLAC torrents on The Pirate Bay, except with no risk of becoming the next Jammie Thomas.
And where do they go for help? Let me guess: you are the center of your own little linux universe??
Its not a bad thing, I am the center of one too... but remove yourself from the universe and one by one your family, friends, and neighbors will run into problems they can't fix, unless one of them happens to have the nerd-gene too. But "normal people" tm don't... to use linux they need someone like us in their sphere of friends.
Umm - my daughter uses I-Tunes on her Ubuntu machine. She's 17, and had no problem installing it and getting her ipod working.
Really? Just downloaded and installed right? Everything works perfect...
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=21302
The "what doesn't work" is pretty substantial... iphones "ETC"? preferences? Podcast? Yeah, that sounds terrific. And the additional comments to the effect that the program stops responding repeatedly, and reports application crash errors... yeah.
All followed by a page of comments complaining of all kinds of problems.
Linux is great at things its great at. Running windows applications is not one of those things. It ranges from usable to useful.
And stay away from the cheap media (paying a few extra pennies per disk goes a long way).
Where should I learn which brands are good? I'd try Google, but I haven't found a way to use Google to gauge reliability of a review; it's likely to turn up reviews that smack of undue influence from advertisers.
I got to agree the first advice to anybody who building a rig should always be "Don't cheap out on the PSU!" and if you did use a cheap PSU put getting a good PSU on top of your upgrade priority.
With Nvidia and other players getting in on the CPU market I predict a serious price war. The CPU market could look a lot like the Ram market soon. Lots of players = very small price.
The no-names like that are a gamble. Some of them are perfectly fine - I've had some that have run no problems for years, and others of them are garbage. And you really don't have any way to know without buying and seeing what happens. Generally I don't want to gamble with my power supplies, so I'm willing to spend a few extra bucks to get a decent one.
So your reply is...bullshit,bullshit,bullshit and bullshit, correct? I gave you my answer as to ABIs, give me a single reason why EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET is wrong and you are right. Give me a SINGLE EXAMPLE of the magical never break drivers that are called for in that religious text. Hey if that technique works there must be thousands of those that exist, yes? the kernel hackers have had the code FOR YEARS NOW so they must have the 80% in never break quality yes? but guess what Sparky THEY BREAK CONSTANTLY which shows that kernel dev was talking out his ass. Do you REALLY think he is smarter than the entire kernel teams for OSX, Windows, OS/2, Solaris, BSD, etc? I repeat, arrogant much?
And did you even read the post above me? How the guy had enterprise hardware and is stuck with an old kernel because guess what THE DRIVERS ARE BROKEN for ALL the new kernels? Care to tell HIM he should throw away thousands of dollars in hardware? It is THIS arrogant elitist horseshit without the code to back it up that helps keep people as far away from your shitpile OS as possible! With Windows you get a MINIMUM of 8 YEARS of support, often longer. Your OS? You can't even give me a 100% guarantee the stuff you have running now will continue running in 6 months! Yep, sure gonna lure the masses with that level of QA buddy. And oh yeah all those OSes are complete shit, even though most have quite huge numbers, why they just don't know how sweet the Linux koolaid is do they daddy-o? Doesn't matter that their drivers actually WORK and CONTINUE WORKING because CLI gives you gonad powers!
Which brings us to the two bad jokes of your religion, the "Linux is a kernel" and "CLI gives you gonad powers" jokes. you DO realize I can replace every. single. argument. that you have made with the appropriate Linux TM yes? Do you know why that is? Because after all these years you've been coming up with the same tired old horseshit about how it is everyone's fault but yours, how if people would only "embrace the power of CLI" like it is the God damned force that the world would be hearts and flowers. But you know what? NUMBERS DO NOT LIE and you have NOTHING to show for damned near 20 years of work! Read it and weep fucking JavaME is kicking your ass! Don't feel even a little bit ashamed at such shit numbers? or do you think being a dead end with less numbers than a shit cellphone OS just makes you "leet" and connects you to the neckbeards of old, when IRL all you do is copypasta into a term ?
I'll repeat this until it sinks in, i'll even highlight it, Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome and that is EXACTLY what you and the community have been doing for damned near a decade now. What were your numbers 3 years ago? why they were at 1%. What will your numbers be 3 years from now? I bet my last dollar they'll be 1%. It don't take Kojak to solve this case, and it isn't some conspiracy by Gates and the Illuminati, nor is it payoffs to the OEMs that ended over a decade ago.
Now it is the fact that YOU DON'T LISTEN, not to your customers, nor to the OEMs, nor to the retailers. Wanna read something sad? Dell the current number 3 OEM, even though they only offer Linux on a token amount of frankly outdated hardware, has to run their own repo at considerable out of pocket expense. Why is that? Because if they don't the DRIVERS DIE HARD. And you sir have NO excuse nor argument that can justify that, none at all. That is just typical shitty QA from Canonical and typical Linus Goatse bullshit. But I'm sure you'll say dell is "doin it wrong" or that every retailer and mom&pop shop on the planet should pay programmers to run their own repos so they can bless their customers with your sacred cow. But i
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Try do do a very similar build and see the pricing in other currency....
I also asked her if she gets her system issues taken care of via you tube, and I got another exasperated teen response and eye roll - " Ahh Dad, Google is your friend... DUH".
I laughed and went back to my daily routine. She wants to be a teacher when she gets out of school. I hope her attitude improves before then - LOL.
Since when is "follow a youtube video tutorial" that you presumably have to locate yourself the definition of "no trouble at all"?
To me that sounds more like "I didn't work, so I had to go look for a solution..." worse the solution was involved enough that someone made a video tutorial out of it..."
She is happy. It works for her.
Lets see, it runs pretty mediocre and several features simply don't work. She's happy and it meets here expectations... thing is though... her expectations are pretty low. When she can accept without blinking that having to watch a video tutorial just to get it working poorly that's a pretty clear indicator of where her expectations are.
Furthermore she sounds pretty tech savvy to me though, ... "normal people" tm? Not so much.
Oh, most definitely. I've had more fun messing with the internals of stuff than I ever used to have; I've learned Python and just find it great for coding in, and, above all, the "everything is a file" methodology is *really+* nice - Nothing like messing with raw disks the same as with files, and vice-versa.
99 Bux
Do you REALLY think he is smarter than the entire kernel teams for OSX, Windows, OS/2, Solaris, BSD, etc? I repeat, arrogant much?
The projects have different needs and priorities, and different needs tend to yield *gasp* different methods of solution.
Your argument is akin to "hey, you are doing things differently, you therefore suck". I can only imagine what that kind of effect that attitude would have if it were to be adopted in science where any differing hypothesis from the first must be ridiculed because it isn't the same as other peoples, regardless of merit.
I'll repeat this until it sinks in, i'll even highlight it, Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome and that is EXACTLY what you and the community have been doing for damned near a decade now. What were your numbers 3 years ago? why they were at 1%. What will your numbers be 3 years from now? I bet my last dollar they'll be 1%. It don't take Kojak to solve this case, and it isn't some conspiracy by Gates and the Illuminati, nor is it payoffs to the OEMs that ended over a decade ago.
Why do you think I give a shit about market share?
Dell the current number 3 OEM, even though they only offer Linux on a token amount of frankly outdated hardware, has to run their own repo [theinquirer.net] at considerable out of pocket expense.
If you read that article the video chipsets specific driver wasn't in mainline so dell were shipping their own drivers with the 8.04 ubuntu install it was shipping with, when updated to 9.04 of course these drivers weren't in mainline and so no automatic support, and thusly the creation of the external repo. The only lesson learned here is dell are silly for not getting their driver in mainline.
But instead they'll just do as I have done in my shop, which is refuse to sell or support your OS
Again, why should I (or anyone else for that matter) care about that?
You seem very emotionally invested in how evil and horrible linus is, combined with an obsession for market share, distribution and support methods which are inefficient and of no real concern to the development process (and a severe hindrance to it if your recommendations were to be followed)
Relax.. and grow up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
Cheapass power supplies with crappy PF are putting a higher load on the utility company for no purpose. The power factor is basically how far out of phase the return power is from the grid's phase.
Your actual drain is your current * voltage divided by the power factor.
180W (1.5A @120V) with a 0.67 power factor is 269W of loss at the plug.
180W (1.5A @120V) with a 0.98 power factor is 184W of loss at the plug.
Why would companies spend thousands just to correct the power factor if it had nothing to do with actual load?
The figures I used previously were for real life systems measured directly at the plug with a kill-a-watt meter.
There are other factors involved that aren't measured there (like the efficiency during transformation and rectification), but there's no way the Athlon XP 2500 is a higher power consumer than an i7 920. Also, the high end PSU is rated at over 80% efficient in those jobs too.