Actually I'm enjoying myself today. One comment is "Insightful troll" and one is "Interesting flamebait".
Although the post reads like a troll, I was quite serious -- Thus far every Vista install I've seen lasted no more than a month. Some went back to XP, a couple decided as long as they'd made a change they might as well try something else before going back to XP... And that makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, you wiped XP and installed Vista hoping for something better didn't you? Why give up after just one FAIL?
A Vista/. thread is always going to be about axe grinding and nothing else. This is true both for the posts and for the moderation. For helpful discussion you would probably want a different forum. There you'll find helpful posts like this one.
It's not like I haven't gotten that approach from the Redmond monopoly before.
You know what? As long as it isn't compatible with most software and hardware, whose fault it is doesn't really matter does it? It goes or it don't. Right now it don't.
I've installed this thing several times for myself, friends and family. So far the question isn't "do you like it?" After they've tried Vista the question is "do you want to go back to XP, or do you want to go forward to something different?"
Lots of people are waiting for this SP1 like it's going to fix what's wrong with Vista. The thing is - the fix really is to go in a different direction. None of the improvements in TFA matter much to anybody. It's like Vista, with 0.0001% less FAIL. They failed to address the application compatibility issues, the hardware compatibility issues, the lack of a compelling new feature isssue. It's like Microsoft wants this thing to bounce like a dead cat.
If you can't take the Karma hit, maybe you should stay out of the Vista threads.
But they get it eventually if they're battered with a cluestick hard enough.
Here's my slashdot journal anti-drm rant from two years ago. Dead horse, me-too journal, yadda-yadda whatever.
It still holds for video, though. DRM'd content is toxic as far as I'm concerned.
Did they have to drag out the world's most notorious talking rectum to give the obvious quote? Could they not have Garnered similar insight from any shambling coke zombie on Wall Street?
What can you learn about a meteor shower from 47,000ft that you can't learn from the ground?
In Seattle you can learn that the meteor shower is happening. In the Northwest getting above the clouds is almost your only hope of seeing such a thing.
That some manufacturers make closed hardware that cannot be supported without extreme reverse engineering, if at all, is not Linux's fault. It's yours for buying that stuff. If you can't be bothered to check the HCL then at least quit whining.
It's no secret that Microsoft expends considerable capital to get manufacturers to keep their devices closed. The net benefit to those manufacturers should be that their products don't sell. If they want my money, they're open. I'm not paying for my own chains and neither should you.
It doesn't sting. It reminds me of my boy when he was 8 years old. We would take him out to nice restaurants where we could get decent food. No matter what was available he wanted the same boring things: chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, cheeseburger.
I encouraged him to try new things but it's pointless to push it because there's something in the human condition that makes us think any unfamiliar food is toxic.
So be it. Enjoy your kid's meal. I'll be over here with the diverse selection of culinary creations from all the world's cultures. Thanks.
I have one too. It works fine. I'll be buying more of them.
Some things were a little bit of a nuisance -- getting the resolution set to 1680x1050, installing flash and citrix client, getting it to boot from a sata drive. They weren't too hard to overcome but for a newsie type like the author probably a little too much to handle.
Performance though is not a problem at all. Blender works nicely for me, as does transcoding video. It plays videos and DVDs just fine. I used OO.o to edit some spreadsheets from work and that went fine too. The machine boots quick. The office apps load quick. It's not a games machine and it never will be but other than that I love it. It's sweet that you can install thousands of programs just by clicking on the menu and you don't have to go searching all over the internet to download them from potentially dodgy sites.
TFA was wrong about RAID. It has via's standard SATA RAID controller. I am not using it but it's there. You have to enable the SATA RAID to get it to boot from SATA even if you only have one SATA drive installed. It is a C7 processor. It's quiet. If performance ever does become an issue, I'll probably upgrade the RAM from 512MB to 2GB. Since this box uses DDR you can do that right now for about $45.
I don't know what he was looking to get for $200 but to me this was well worth the money.
20W at idle, 60W running full tilt is going to save me a bunch of money in electric bills also.
Why can't some public minded video types compile a consumer news clip with high production values that helps people avoid the perils of DRM by pointing them to unencrypted sources for their favorite content? Apparently the networks will run nearly anything they didn't have to pay production costs for.
A gootube dramatic series would be cool too. You could call it MediaQuest, with the stooge starting each episode buying content he hopes to enjoy (the "White Album?") but every episode ending with his money wasted as his purchase becomes unusable yet again. "Rats! DRM'd again!"
Here are some attributes that make linux environments better:
More secure. Boots faster. Runs faster. Consumes fewer resources. Scales better up and down. Creates no licensing liabilities for end users. Compatible with more software I can afford. Doesn't threaten me with license compliance audits. Compatible with more hardware than any other operating system ever. Crashes less. More maintainable. Has no kill switch. Evolving faster. More flexible. More available. Pendrive bootable. CD Bootable. Embeddable. More affordable. More durable. Uses less wall power. It doesn't have a BSA. Looks better. Is easier to use. Does not have >100,000 separate virus variant history. Comes with a workable set of applications. Comes with tools to make my own applications. Doesn't check every day to make sure I'm still "authorized" to use it.
It's engineered with the purpose of enabling me to do things with my computer, not preventing me from doing things with their software.
But.. but.. it's not compatible with {games/microsoft servers/Photoshop}! : Cedega and Citrix solve all of these problems I might have.
Don't brag Windows support until you've called them. It's a dismal experience and usually unrewarding. You would get better value for money and better service hiring a local professional.
Until we get practical fusion geothermal is good clean power. There's enough heat under Yellowstone to replace all the electrical power ever generated. Geothermal is a base load source of electrical power unmentioned in the summary and the article. I wonder why? It appears to be be a nearly unlimited supply of clean power available from national sources.
Perhaps you're referring to the fiber buildout happening right now it the greater Shelton metroplex or the one that's been in place for years in the Moses Lake metropolitan area. Moses Lake, the larger of the two with nearly 17,000 population certainly qualifies as a vibrant urban economy -- if vast fields of wheat were considered urban living that is.
It was interesting. The wattages you showed were informative. I bought one of these boxes too, from ZaReason. I'm typing this on it.
I didn't have the trouble you had finding the log out button. I was also disappointed to have to install flash myself, and I didn't get it done as easily as you did, but it didn't take me too long. Now that your review is up, other users should have little trouble. Java was a little tricky. Citrix plugin for firefox took half an hour to get set up right. I didn't have the network trouble you did because my house is already wired for Ethernet so it was plug and go for me. I was on the internet a few minutes after the box was open.
The primary purpose for this machine is to be the main PC for my son. He's four. He loves it. It plays his favorite flash and Java based games. In My Applications->System Tools->Add/Remove I installed the game Childsplay, which is educational and fun for him to play. There are thousands of programs in there to install and they're all free. He didn't need any instruction to get started.
The monitor I'm using is widescreen 1680x1050. When you set widescreen, you have to check the box that looks greyed for widescreen, and I had to tell it the monitor was a similar one to the one I have because it's a new brand and the database doesn't include my monitor. That was about it. Videos and DVDs play just fine and look lovely. HD not so much... It was a slideshow with the WMV I downloaded. I'll have to see if it's acceptable with XviD+MP3 AVI files before I give up on that.
I am quite happy with gOS. I think he'll stay with it for a while. That's odd for me because I preach nevernevernever use an OEM OS install. I'm really looking forward to using Gutsy since it works so well. The machine is fine for most things, and works for its purpose very well. Not a gaming machine, but this is nice and moving to lower wattage PCs will be better in the long run. I'll build the machine up to 2GB RAM and 500GB SATA RAID just because that's the kind of geek I am but really for normal PC use the memory and drive it comes with works great. I wish they offered a more deluxe box in a gOS version. I noticed the Google branding all over as you did. If it were any other company I would care, but I actually was going to have to install all that stuff anyway so for me it's nice to find it there. I smiled a little bit at the "Google OS" idea. If this is the Google OS, I'll take it.
Earlier today I had to check an Excel spreadsheet for work. It opened quickly in OO.o Calc, and everything was where it should be. I've worked with Word documents too, and nothing bad happened.
Basically, for $200 I was expecting junk. That's not what I got. I'll be buying more of these in the future. One to replace our aging media server, probably one to replace my web server. Very nice.
There is a lot of happy news with this story. People in the least developed countries get xo machines paid for by those in the US and Canada more able to pay. Classmate PCs provide cheap laptops to (possible) less advantaged students in Mexico and Brazil, paid for by the IMF.
Intel and Microsoft both face a challenge. For many years available computers have been inadequate to the tasks at hand. As the computers become more agile, and their markets more broad, there has been increasing demand for premium computers and software. The two companies have built great brands by offering increasingly effective platforms. Moore's law marches us persistently into the future however, and the premium price earned by these brands no longer equates to a better experience because the underlying technology has improved so much that the premium brands offer little advantage over the commodities.
Of the two, Microsoft has the bigger challenge.
Intel can push for rationalization of IP laws. This will free up a great deal of high-density video data that will drive a renaissance of mashups that let the common geek produce content in HD for GooTube and stroke his ego. Content creation can be the driver for a new generation of demand in processing that will tide Intel over until they find a new reason to sell their high end 32 core 17nm chips. Resolution will continue to increase until we all have photo-realistic 90" displays, and then maybe hologram tech will come out. Intel will do fine.
Microsoft, OTOH, hasn't put out decent code in over a decade. They've been exploiting their monopoly to force their product down peoples throats for so long they think that's their mission. They have forgotten that people choose them because their software helps people use their computers to do stuff. Now that the basic problems of document management and data mangling are solved, they have nothing left but branding. Their brands are increasingly associated with bloat, DRM and nagware. Every software package they sell is a hook to drag you deeper into a relationship where they provide all the software and have all the control. They are terrified of choice, and they should be.
As the emerging markets come online they'll choose piracy or open source -- they will not consider paying full rate for commercial apps. Like Ballmer said, "Developers!" (Repeat until you pass out).
The standard percentage of these folks will have the wiring and desire for programming. I think they'll like gcc and Eclipse. Those of us in the developed world find it easy to forget that intelligence is a Bell curve and those coming online lack the distraction of learning a hundred misbegotten failed technologies like.net 1.0. These systems are the battleground for ownership of the global IT market of 2020, and from where I sit it looks like change. Change can be good, no?
There is no environment safe enough for programmers who write code that works out to:
malloc(user_supplied_unchecked_value);
You may as well consign them to documenting the work of people who don't do that. An error that basic isn't going to remediate with counseling, nor with fancy new programmer proof technologies, no matter what the salesman told you.
I wound up getting this box from another vendor. Plays DVDs great. Does 1680x1050 resolution on my widescreen just fine. No SVGA out - 2 pci slots, no others. 2 unused SATA ports, 8 open bays. Five minutes to install flash and citrix client. Other than that no mods and it's a good work box, with the stock gOS system. I wonder if gOS is a reference to Google OS, or if it's just for the Gutsy Gibbon flavor of Ubuntu it's derived from. Whatever. It comes with loads of Google brand widgets that do all the right stuff and aren't annoying or scary enough to make it worth installing over. Does all the videos from CNN, youtube, etc. I'll use it for work if I can get it away from my 4yo, that is. He likes to play the learning games that come in the package installer. The keyboard and mouse are junk, but I expected that. The USB powered mini speakers are fine. It's quiet, which I expected since it's a low wattage system.
In short, very happy with the purchase, would buy again, +++++
Now if Intel bumps up the performance on their value line, AMD is toast and Intel engineers can go back to resting on their laurels until another challenger steps up.
Nothing for me here. If the system draws more than 60 watts, do not want.
I have the gPC now. I got it from zareason.com as another/.er suggested. $227 delivered.
First impressions: The linux environment is not bad. As I type this I'm watching the "Brainy Baby: Shapes and Colors" Dvd and Lupe Fiasco - "Superstar" on youtube. To be honest the fullscreen view in youtube looks awful even with my 4mbps broadband connection. The smaller size plays just fine after I downloaded and installed flash. The DVD plays just fine. My screen is 1600x1200. Responsiveness is nice and snappy. It comes with PS/2 ball mouse and PS/2 kb.
Let's not complain about my eclectic tastes, shall we? I have my reasons.
Anyway, this is a micro-atx, not a mini-itx. It has 2 SATA ports (both free), 2 DIMM slots for DDR2 (one filled with the 512MB stick), 2 PCI slots - one taken up with the useless modem. No AGP, no PCIe. In the back VGA and 4 USB ports, PS/2 mouse and KB, serial and parallel (why?), 100mbps network, standard power and that's it. Comes with a 200W PSU.
The case has bays for 8 drives (2-5.25"), three of which are taken. It's a standard chassis, and has spots for several case fans though none are provided. It's micro-tower form factor and my impression is cheap, but not too cheezy.
The drive is 80GB IDE. They get thinner every year.
I'm writing this on it. It'll do for my purposes. I doubt it would be good for gaming.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I'm enjoying myself today. One comment is "Insightful troll" and one is "Interesting flamebait".
Although the post reads like a troll, I was quite serious -- Thus far every Vista install I've seen lasted no more than a month. Some went back to XP, a couple decided as long as they'd made a change they might as well try something else before going back to XP... And that makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, you wiped XP and installed Vista hoping for something better didn't you? Why give up after just one FAIL ?
A Vista /. thread is always going to be about axe grinding and nothing else. This is true both for the posts and for the moderation. For helpful discussion you would probably want a different forum. There you'll find helpful posts like this one.
Or you can read this helpful post about downgrading from Vista to XP. Personally I like the thread entitled "Windows Vista: Vista iTunes Video Playback Blame Game.
Here on /. this is what you get and that's the way it is.
It's not like I haven't gotten that approach from the Redmond monopoly before.
You know what? As long as it isn't compatible with most software and hardware, whose fault it is doesn't really matter does it? It goes or it don't. Right now it don't.
I've installed this thing several times for myself, friends and family. So far the question isn't "do you like it?" After they've tried Vista the question is "do you want to go back to XP, or do you want to go forward to something different?"
Lots of people are waiting for this SP1 like it's going to fix what's wrong with Vista. The thing is - the fix really is to go in a different direction. None of the improvements in TFA matter much to anybody. It's like Vista, with 0.0001% less FAIL. They failed to address the application compatibility issues, the hardware compatibility issues, the lack of a compelling new feature isssue. It's like Microsoft wants this thing to bounce like a dead cat.
If you can't take the Karma hit, maybe you should stay out of the Vista threads.
That's the feature their customers are going to want most.
Unfortunately, quoting the rules can get you ejected from the game. Let me instead recommend some good books.
But they get it eventually if they're battered with a cluestick hard enough.
Here's my slashdot journal anti-drm rant from two years ago. Dead horse, me-too journal, yadda-yadda whatever.
It still holds for video, though. DRM'd content is toxic as far as I'm concerned.
Did they have to drag out the world's most notorious talking rectum to give the obvious quote? Could they not have Garnered similar insight from any shambling coke zombie on Wall Street?
In Seattle you can learn that the meteor shower is happening. In the Northwest getting above the clouds is almost your only hope of seeing such a thing.
Linux supports more hardware than any other operating system and is virtually virus free.
That some manufacturers make closed hardware that cannot be supported without extreme reverse engineering, if at all, is not Linux's fault. It's yours for buying that stuff. If you can't be bothered to check the HCL then at least quit whining.
It's no secret that Microsoft expends considerable capital to get manufacturers to keep their devices closed. The net benefit to those manufacturers should be that their products don't sell. If they want my money, they're open. I'm not paying for my own chains and neither should you.
It doesn't sting. It reminds me of my boy when he was 8 years old. We would take him out to nice restaurants where we could get decent food. No matter what was available he wanted the same boring things: chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, cheeseburger.
I encouraged him to try new things but it's pointless to push it because there's something in the human condition that makes us think any unfamiliar food is toxic.
So be it. Enjoy your kid's meal. I'll be over here with the diverse selection of culinary creations from all the world's cultures. Thanks.
I have one too. It works fine. I'll be buying more of them.
Some things were a little bit of a nuisance -- getting the resolution set to 1680x1050, installing flash and citrix client, getting it to boot from a sata drive. They weren't too hard to overcome but for a newsie type like the author probably a little too much to handle.
Performance though is not a problem at all. Blender works nicely for me, as does transcoding video. It plays videos and DVDs just fine. I used OO.o to edit some spreadsheets from work and that went fine too. The machine boots quick. The office apps load quick. It's not a games machine and it never will be but other than that I love it. It's sweet that you can install thousands of programs just by clicking on the menu and you don't have to go searching all over the internet to download them from potentially dodgy sites.
TFA was wrong about RAID. It has via's standard SATA RAID controller. I am not using it but it's there. You have to enable the SATA RAID to get it to boot from SATA even if you only have one SATA drive installed. It is a C7 processor. It's quiet. If performance ever does become an issue, I'll probably upgrade the RAM from 512MB to 2GB. Since this box uses DDR you can do that right now for about $45.
I don't know what he was looking to get for $200 but to me this was well worth the money.
20W at idle, 60W running full tilt is going to save me a bunch of money in electric bills also.
And Rob Enderle... when we really need them to help us understand this?
And Dan Lyons, too!
I think you need one of these to install in that old beige box or if you crave a complete solution, one of these.
And let's not forget openfiler, since we're mentioning free NAS solutions. It's not lightweight, but it looks pretty cool.
Why can't some public minded video types compile a consumer news clip with high production values that helps people avoid the perils of DRM by pointing them to unencrypted sources for their favorite content? Apparently the networks will run nearly anything they didn't have to pay production costs for.
A gootube dramatic series would be cool too. You could call it MediaQuest, with the stooge starting each episode buying content he hopes to enjoy (the "White Album?") but every episode ending with his money wasted as his purchase becomes unusable yet again. "Rats! DRM'd again!"
That would be nice.
You forgot to count those vast oceans of fossil fuels under the poles.
Very nice. Well done!
Here are some attributes that make linux environments better:
More secure. Boots faster. Runs faster. Consumes fewer resources. Scales better up and down. Creates no licensing liabilities for end users. Compatible with more software I can afford. Doesn't threaten me with license compliance audits. Compatible with more hardware than any other operating system ever. Crashes less. More maintainable. Has no kill switch. Evolving faster. More flexible. More available. Pendrive bootable. CD Bootable. Embeddable. More affordable. More durable. Uses less wall power. It doesn't have a BSA. Looks better. Is easier to use. Does not have >100,000 separate virus variant history. Comes with a workable set of applications. Comes with tools to make my own applications. Doesn't check every day to make sure I'm still "authorized" to use it.
It's engineered with the purpose of enabling me to do things with my computer, not preventing me from doing things with their software.
But.. but.. it's not compatible with {games/microsoft servers/Photoshop}! : Cedega and Citrix solve all of these problems I might have.
Don't brag Windows support until you've called them. It's a dismal experience and usually unrewarding. You would get better value for money and better service hiring a local professional.
Did I mention more secure?
Until we get practical fusion geothermal is good clean power. There's enough heat under Yellowstone to replace all the electrical power ever generated. Geothermal is a base load source of electrical power unmentioned in the summary and the article. I wonder why? It appears to be be a nearly unlimited supply of clean power available from national sources.
Why is it not exploited more?
Perhaps you're referring to the fiber buildout happening right now it the greater Shelton metroplex or the one that's been in place for years in the Moses Lake metropolitan area. Moses Lake, the larger of the two with nearly 17,000 population certainly qualifies as a vibrant urban economy -- if vast fields of wheat were considered urban living that is.
It was interesting. The wattages you showed were informative. I bought one of these boxes too, from ZaReason. I'm typing this on it.
I didn't have the trouble you had finding the log out button. I was also disappointed to have to install flash myself, and I didn't get it done as easily as you did, but it didn't take me too long. Now that your review is up, other users should have little trouble. Java was a little tricky. Citrix plugin for firefox took half an hour to get set up right. I didn't have the network trouble you did because my house is already wired for Ethernet so it was plug and go for me. I was on the internet a few minutes after the box was open.
The primary purpose for this machine is to be the main PC for my son. He's four. He loves it. It plays his favorite flash and Java based games. In My Applications->System Tools->Add/Remove I installed the game Childsplay, which is educational and fun for him to play. There are thousands of programs in there to install and they're all free. He didn't need any instruction to get started.
The monitor I'm using is widescreen 1680x1050. When you set widescreen, you have to check the box that looks greyed for widescreen, and I had to tell it the monitor was a similar one to the one I have because it's a new brand and the database doesn't include my monitor. That was about it. Videos and DVDs play just fine and look lovely. HD not so much... It was a slideshow with the WMV I downloaded. I'll have to see if it's acceptable with XviD+MP3 AVI files before I give up on that.
I am quite happy with gOS. I think he'll stay with it for a while. That's odd for me because I preach nevernevernever use an OEM OS install. I'm really looking forward to using Gutsy since it works so well. The machine is fine for most things, and works for its purpose very well. Not a gaming machine, but this is nice and moving to lower wattage PCs will be better in the long run. I'll build the machine up to 2GB RAM and 500GB SATA RAID just because that's the kind of geek I am but really for normal PC use the memory and drive it comes with works great. I wish they offered a more deluxe box in a gOS version. I noticed the Google branding all over as you did. If it were any other company I would care, but I actually was going to have to install all that stuff anyway so for me it's nice to find it there. I smiled a little bit at the "Google OS" idea. If this is the Google OS, I'll take it.
Earlier today I had to check an Excel spreadsheet for work. It opened quickly in OO.o Calc, and everything was where it should be. I've worked with Word documents too, and nothing bad happened.
Basically, for $200 I was expecting junk. That's not what I got. I'll be buying more of these in the future. One to replace our aging media server, probably one to replace my web server. Very nice.
There is a lot of happy news with this story. People in the least developed countries get xo machines paid for by those in the US and Canada more able to pay. Classmate PCs provide cheap laptops to (possible) less advantaged students in Mexico and Brazil, paid for by the IMF.
Intel and Microsoft both face a challenge. For many years available computers have been inadequate to the tasks at hand. As the computers become more agile, and their markets more broad, there has been increasing demand for premium computers and software. The two companies have built great brands by offering increasingly effective platforms. Moore's law marches us persistently into the future however, and the premium price earned by these brands no longer equates to a better experience because the underlying technology has improved so much that the premium brands offer little advantage over the commodities.
Of the two, Microsoft has the bigger challenge.
Intel can push for rationalization of IP laws. This will free up a great deal of high-density video data that will drive a renaissance of mashups that let the common geek produce content in HD for GooTube and stroke his ego. Content creation can be the driver for a new generation of demand in processing that will tide Intel over until they find a new reason to sell their high end 32 core 17nm chips. Resolution will continue to increase until we all have photo-realistic 90" displays, and then maybe hologram tech will come out. Intel will do fine.
Microsoft, OTOH, hasn't put out decent code in over a decade. They've been exploiting their monopoly to force their product down peoples throats for so long they think that's their mission. They have forgotten that people choose them because their software helps people use their computers to do stuff. Now that the basic problems of document management and data mangling are solved, they have nothing left but branding. Their brands are increasingly associated with bloat, DRM and nagware. Every software package they sell is a hook to drag you deeper into a relationship where they provide all the software and have all the control. They are terrified of choice, and they should be.
As the emerging markets come online they'll choose piracy or open source -- they will not consider paying full rate for commercial apps. Like Ballmer said, "Developers!" (Repeat until you pass out).
The standard percentage of these folks will have the wiring and desire for programming. I think they'll like gcc and Eclipse. Those of us in the developed world find it easy to forget that intelligence is a Bell curve and those coming online lack the distraction of learning a hundred misbegotten failed technologies like .net 1.0. These systems are the battleground for ownership of the global IT market of 2020, and from where I sit it looks like change. Change can be good, no?
There is no environment safe enough for programmers who write code that works out to:
malloc(user_supplied_unchecked_value);
You may as well consign them to documenting the work of people who don't do that. An error that basic isn't going to remediate with counseling, nor with fancy new programmer proof technologies, no matter what the salesman told you.
I wound up getting this box from another vendor. Plays DVDs great. Does 1680x1050 resolution on my widescreen just fine. No SVGA out - 2 pci slots, no others. 2 unused SATA ports, 8 open bays. Five minutes to install flash and citrix client. Other than that no mods and it's a good work box, with the stock gOS system. I wonder if gOS is a reference to Google OS, or if it's just for the Gutsy Gibbon flavor of Ubuntu it's derived from. Whatever. It comes with loads of Google brand widgets that do all the right stuff and aren't annoying or scary enough to make it worth installing over. Does all the videos from CNN, youtube, etc. I'll use it for work if I can get it away from my 4yo, that is. He likes to play the learning games that come in the package installer. The keyboard and mouse are junk, but I expected that. The USB powered mini speakers are fine. It's quiet, which I expected since it's a low wattage system.
In short, very happy with the purchase, would buy again, +++++
Now if Intel bumps up the performance on their value line, AMD is toast and Intel engineers can go back to resting on their laurels until another challenger steps up.
Nothing for me here. If the system draws more than 60 watts, do not want.
Why not SNOBOL?
I have the gPC now. I got it from zareason.com as another /.er suggested. $227 delivered.
First impressions: The linux environment is not bad. As I type this I'm watching the "Brainy Baby: Shapes and Colors" Dvd and Lupe Fiasco - "Superstar" on youtube. To be honest the fullscreen view in youtube looks awful even with my 4mbps broadband connection. The smaller size plays just fine after I downloaded and installed flash. The DVD plays just fine. My screen is 1600x1200. Responsiveness is nice and snappy. It comes with PS/2 ball mouse and PS/2 kb.
Let's not complain about my eclectic tastes, shall we? I have my reasons.
Anyway, this is a micro-atx, not a mini-itx. It has 2 SATA ports (both free), 2 DIMM slots for DDR2 (one filled with the 512MB stick), 2 PCI slots - one taken up with the useless modem. No AGP, no PCIe. In the back VGA and 4 USB ports, PS/2 mouse and KB, serial and parallel (why?), 100mbps network, standard power and that's it. Comes with a 200W PSU.
The case has bays for 8 drives (2-5.25"), three of which are taken. It's a standard chassis, and has spots for several case fans though none are provided. It's micro-tower form factor and my impression is cheap, but not too cheezy.
The drive is 80GB IDE. They get thinner every year.
I'm writing this on it. It'll do for my purposes. I doubt it would be good for gaming.