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Hardware

Lindows.com Hypes An Upcoming $199 PC 169

Posted by timothy from the low-end-of-whatnow dept.
prostoalex writes "After having struck a deal with Walmart on $299 PC, Lindows is planning to introduce $199 PC. ExtremeTech has the story, the official message from Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows, is posted on Lindows.com. Robertson claims that "for under 200 dollars, you'll be able to browse the Internet, check email and run a variety of software products for far less than the price of most handheld devices! A certified version of LindowsOS will come bundled with the PC"." I wonder if such a machine would fare any better than Larry Ellison's ThinkNIC.
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Lindows.com Hypes An Upcoming $199 PC More

Lindows.com Hypes An Upcoming $199 PC

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  • CUT THE HYPE. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vengie ( 533896 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @04:52PM (#4079249)
    You know, i often get sick of seeing this. 199/299 is not the FULL price. There's no freaking monitor included in this system. OK YES -- Its still 199/299 for a box, which for most of us is all we regularly upgrade, but for joe public, A MONITOR IS NECESSARY. "You can browse the web, etc etc /snip/ for $299" -- no you cant! you need a monitor. Jesus....what people will write just to get onto /.

    • Re:CUT THE HYPE. (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What do you want them to say, "$199 without monitor, up to $13,198.99 with monitor [bestbuy.com]"?
    • Y'know, if you're so strapped for cash that you'll buy a $199 computer, you're strapped enough to buy a monitor for five bucks from a thrift store or a garage sale. That's where I've gotten my last three, and I have no complaints.

    • You know, i often get sick of seeing this. 199/299 is not the FULL price.

      Where do you see that it has a lack of a monitor? I can't seem to find anything that says that. Based on all the other statements ("browser the web" etc), that seems to imply that it DOES have a monitor.

      • Re:CUT THE HYPE. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Vengie ( 533896 )
        Have you tried following the link *IN THE ARTICLE*? If Not: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?cat=395 1&dept=3944&product_id=1870914&path=0%3A3944%3A395 1%3A41937%3A86796%3A96356 *sigh* its a direct link FROM the article.

    • Re:CUT THE HYPE. (Score:5, Funny)

      by hugesmile ( 587771 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @06:25PM (#4079427)
      OK, for $199, you'll be capable of browsing the internet, reading email, and run a variety of software... BUT the following items are required:
      • a monitor
      • an internet account
      • power
      • schooling to learn to read
      • food
      • water
      • shelter
      ALL of these items are necessary, where do you draw the line? We all take for granted that you have food, water, shelter, power, schooling, an internet account... why not assume a monitor as well! For that matter, assume the PC, and you can do it all for free! :)

      • Re:CUT THE HYPE. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dmarx ( 528279 )
        Because Joe Sixpack never sees computers without monitors. He thinks "computer=box with that TV-like thing attached to it". If they're trying to sell this thing to the general public, they must understand how the general public thinks.
        • Joe Sixpack doesn't buy computers. He only buys six packs of beer and drinks all of them in the back of somebody's pickup truck parked outside a sports arena. He is kind of a useless, irrelevant person.

          General Public, on the other hand, is the guy who buys computers and tanks and ICBM's and rocket powered grenade launchers. The general knows how to kick ass and take names. I don't know why he would care about a $199 PC, unless it had hard-core encryption software or could be used to control space lasers on sattelites orbiting around the earth.

        • Sure, you are absolutely right about that. And if he sees a computer without monitor, he thinks it is a harddisk. And if he sees just a harddisk, he has no idea what it is.
        • ..when she learnt that most of the important devices are in the box under the desk!

      • OK, for $199, you'll be capable of browsing the internet, reading email, and run a variety of software... BUT the following items are required:
        • a monitor
        • an internet account
        • power
        • schooling to learn to read
        • food
        • water
        • shelter

        ALL of these items are necessary, where do you draw the line?
        You draw the line after "internet account" and before "power". Anymore stupid questions?
      • Hey i got kicked out, don't take anything for granted!

    • Re:CUT THE HYPE. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hendridm ( 302246 )
      Let us not forget the $99 membership to the Click-n-Run warehouse. Without it, it takes away from the appeal of Lindows.

      That is how partially how Walmart sells a $299. They almost automatically are gaurenteed another $99 upon booting the thing up. What newbie can live without the Click-n-Run Warehouse? Or maybe they just have really good source code compiling instructions?
      • I'm thinking about getting one of these for to use as a "public computer" on my home network... something for the roomates to use to check e-mail and whatnot. They won't be getting my $99 bucks... I'm going to format it's ass and load redhat. I'll play with Lindows for a day or two first, but I really don't see myself using it.
    • Its still 199/299 for a box, which for most of us is all we regularly upgrade, but for joe public, A MONITOR IS NECESSARY.
      So what do you suggest? Include a poorly-made piece of landfill-bait, an nice 19" CRT (which is going to increase the base price and shipping significantly, or an LCD monitor... And whatever they choose is bound to not work for someone.

      I'm not trying to flame, but the price without monitor is the best "one size fits (almost) all" solution for the bargain-hunting crowd. And anyone with the savvy and willingness to order a PC over the internet is probably able to use a Pricewatch-type site to find a good deal.

    • You'll get a better deal locally on the Monitor. The stores get theirs shipped on pallets, much cheaper than one-at-a-time on UPS. You can pay anything you want for a monitor, say $150-1000+ I got my monitors for $20.00 each. ADI MicroScan 4V, at a salvage store. I got lucky. A lindows computer is still Linux, and a "hardware modem" has to be installed, included in the $199 price. The hard drive has to be at least 20GB, so you could install Redhat too if you wanted ;-). That reminds me. Do you suppose they don't have a CD ROM drive for $199.00? That Warehouse setup Lindows has will be a download off the internet deal, not an "install via cd". I have installed Redhat without an "installed" CD ROM drive, but I have a $50.00 one that I temp-install until not needed, then I unhook it. The typical user of a $199.00 box might have only that one machine, however, and no spare cdrom drives, etc. Can't wait to see how they are going to market the $199 box, but looking at Lindows website leads me to believe that they will sell it direct, now thru Walmart.
      Their legal dept is gathering info on the use of the term Windows before 1985 or so. I emailed them just now about the Coleco ADAM, with 8086 processor, than had ADAMCalc, a spreadsheet program, very nice, and no toy, that used Windows. You set up one window where you entered spreadsheet data, and another one down at the total's area. You could set up several. ADAMCalc was very very good for it's day, and considering that it ran on an ADAM, with no hard drive. ADAM's had two tape drives, and a floppy drive, and you could add more RAM. I had about 120K in mine, and had a nice chess game that required more RAM than the stock 80K. Any of you that has any information on the ADAM, might consider emailing the Lindows folks.
      They did make about 200,000 ADAMS, and at one time, there was quite a following.
    • I could swear that I had a reply to this earlier than must have gotten moderated out or something. Hey, I actually looked at the Lindows website, read their litigation story, felt sorry for them, emailed them with some 1985 info on windows before windows, etc. WOOPS! That's what did it! M$ had my post moderated! Quick! read this one while you can! Soon as "breaktime" is over, this post's toast!
    • You can get 15" SVGA monitors for $20 at Goodwill Computer Centers. They're used, you won't have years of use out of them (they are usually fairly played out by the time they get there) but you can get 'em there.

      I'm guessing this is based around VIA's Eden Platform, aka EPIA [lowendpc.com]. Which means that there won't be a floppy because EPIA HAS NO FSCKN FLOPPY CONTROLLER. If you want a floppy, use a USB floppy. Teac makes a fairly good one [teac.com].

      With floppy drives barely above $5 at the computer shows and prolly $5/drive right on the dot in the OEM channel, the lack of floppy makes no sense unless they are using EPIA or something like it.

      BTW EPIA is not a power-user platform by any standard. The VIA CIII is very underpowered and best for low-stress applications. TANSTAAFL applies here.

    • It may have a TV out, like a glorified net-ready console. You could always pick up a monitor later, then.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @05:10PM (#4079286)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • > That'll be a great reliable system, just like the eMachine I threw in the trash last year!

      True, it won't be a very good primary desktop machine, but I could see it being a good secondary machine. Some examples:

      1. I want a PC in the living room so my roommates won't use my computer all the time, but they are too cheap to help out much.

      2. I want a computer next to my bed/in the kitchen so I can minimize e-mail down time. Oh yeah, and I don't want an appliance that I can't customize either (*ahem* I-Opener)

      3. I'm a budding young MCSE who wants to set up an Active Directory for study. I've got my primary machine as the DC, but I need to clients to work with. Voila!

      Just some ideas. Of course, #3 is unlikely to subscribe to the Click-n-Run, which will piss off the Lindows peeps.
      • just get a laptop and set up a wireless lan; you can lock it to prevent other people from using it and it doesnt fall apart and waste $200
        • "just get a laptop"

          Yeah, why didn't I think of that? How about I get a couple of them while I'm at it?

          I think I'll "just pay my car payment" and "just pay my rent" before I do that.
      • Exactly. Having roomates use your machines suck. One of mine got a virus in her email, she was annoyed that nothing happened when she double-clicked on the .exe ( I run linux ). I found a previous roomate staring at the Matrix screensaver... I asked her if she was OK and the answer was that she was "trying to figure it out". She thinks linux is from outer space and assumed that I was connected to the "real" matrix. Yes, I do some weird things with my computer but not that weird. A disposable comp for the roommates to use sounds great to me.
    • 200 usd, eh? i just bought a 64-bit hp-server that cost 15k 3 years ago (200 mhz, with 512 mb of ram) for 200 usd..and DAMN is it cool :-)

      QED
    • I still use my modified Iopener, and it does exactly that for about that price :)

    • I ordered a system off WalMart about 2 months ago (a $399 one, a week before the $299 one came out)... and I was extremely surprised at the quality of the system... I can't remember exactly, but I think the motherboard is an Asus one - not some branded noname.

      This machine has since been running as a server with Red Hat 7.3 and has been stable as f**k.

      The only gripe I had was that they forgot to ship the mouse and keyboard - which they quickly remedied.

      • We just ordered one in the office. we have about 40 win98 licenses and were looking for a white box system with no OS. We ordered one of the $599 systems to see how they were(no lindows, no OS). I have been very impressed with the quality of the system. I was expecting a tin foil case, this thing is solid as a rock. I can build better sytems for a bit cheaper, but for mass quantities, these things are perfect for businesses. With Ghost, I can roll out dozens of these a day and still have time to do my actual job :-)
    • Heh heh. Do you live in or around Alabaster, Alabama? I just saw an eMachine keyboard at the local thrift store today.
    • hehe, i bought a box of front panel fillers the other day from an auction,, one was from an Emachine,, it had a big sticker that stated, "this machie will never become obselete" , and went on to state why,, how ironic that i found it's parts in a$2 box of itenms less than 2 years later :)
    • FWIW, I use an E-machines box (E-monster 600) as my primary computer. It's dead-solid reliable, reasonably well built, and completely compatible with every goofy OS I've loaded on it, which is the real advantage of buying a generic Taiwanese white box over a name-brand PC. (FWIW, I've tried various versions of Caldera, RedHat, Mandrake, Corel, and more recently, NetBSD and FreeBSD, which is now my open source environment of choice.)

      Kinda hard to beat cheap and good in my book.

      A lot of people seem to slam E-machines, but my experience has been very good - good enough that I'll definitely consider them when it's time to upgrade. I'd buy E-machines over Dell or Compaq any day, and either keep the money left over or use it to buy all the stuff I wouldn't be able to afford if I went with their proprietary hardware.

      P.S.: Performance is decent, too - I did some early iSCSI testing using this machine as a client, and although it wasn't able to run wire speed, it did far better than I expected, with a good high-performance NIC like a SysKonnect or the Tigon2-based 3Coms.

  • ThinkNIC? (Score:4, Funny)

    by JamesOfTheDesert ( 188356 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @05:22PM (#4079307) Journal
    I wonder if such a machine would fare any better than Larry Ellison's ThinkNIC.

    ThinkNOT

    • ThinkNIC + Knoppix [knopper.de] is a pretty cool combo. Knoppix kicks butt. Take just about any computer have it on the network and streaming DiVX ;-) files off of a central Windows / Samba server. No HD required.
  • Damn I was going to make a really cheap pc here from pricewatch....but it came to about 175, so hell 199 is really good, cept itll be a pos and last about 9 months.
  • I got my X-Box last week! It runs all my favorite Microsoft software.

  • $200 cheap? try $1.25! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15, 2002 @06:03PM (#4079335)
    for under 200 dollars, you'll be able to browse the Internet, check email and run a variety of software products for far less than the price of most handheld devices! A certified version of LindowsOS will come bundled with the PC

    Ummm... my SparcStation 4 can do all of this, and I only paid $1.25 for it on eBay!

    • these are not targeted at people who can use a SPARC. Nor are they targeted at people are who EBay savvy.

      Get real.
    • Public library card. Free book. Paid 10 cents for overdue book. Show library card to librarian, allowed into computer lab. Free T1 internet. And I didn't even have to pay for shipping.
    • I got a HP Vectra (200 mhz P-Pro, 32 megs of ram, two NICs) for one buck at a church sale. Another buck for the montior, a mouse someplace for a buck and keyboard for 50 cents. Total cost: $3.50. Runs FreeBSD + IceWM great.
      • Well, I got a PS/1 for $5.00, but had to upgrade the processor for about $75.00 and the memory for nearly $160.00, then salvage some junk computers for larger hard drive, sound card, modem,cdrom drive. $199.00 doesn't sound too bad. These old machines we get for a song require too much to upgrade them, especially if you want to run something like Redhat 6.1. (7.1 won't install unless you have pentium). Windows 98 runs a whole lot better. Opera for Windows is also good for
        32 mb antiques.
    • Yeah, except those old pizza boxes tend to sound like an aircraft taking off. I tried using one as an X Terminal (had a nice big monochrome fixed frequency monitor to go with it) but in the end, the tinnitus wasn't worth it :P

  • Okay this is a bad joke... BUT (Score:5, Funny)

    by sofar ( 317980 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @06:12PM (#4079361) Homepage

    Imagine a BEOWULF cluster of these!!!

    (damn that will save some pennies, and who said you NEED a monitor?)

  • Robertson's looking for information? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bshroyer ( 21524 ) <<bret> <at> <bretshroyer.org>> on Thursday August 15, 2002 @06:12PM (#4079363)
    Note: This is an honest question, as I'm confused.

    In his letter, Robertson (CEO of Lindows) comments on their legal battle against Microsoft over the trade name, and asks all of us out in userland to chime in, as they'd
    "like to hear from anyone who had personal experience in the industry during those early years and can recall the history of the early windowing products such as Xerox's Star, VisiCorp's VisiOn, Apple's Lisa, Digital Research's GEM, Quarterdeck's DesQ, IBM's TopView, and others. "

    This strikes me as odd - shouldn't it be pretty easy to get copies of not only the documentation, but even the software to which he refers? Is this a real request for information, or merely a request for sympathy?
    • Half those companies don't exist, and the products haven't been marketed for years. Even if documentation could be found, Robertson's real interest is probably in the cultural and historical record and the interplay between those windowing products and Microsoft's. One way to break Microsoft's stranglehold on the word "Windows" is to demonstrate that Microsoft brought no new concepts to the mix, only its own particular implementaton of an accepted and common interface.
    • Hello Legal, I read your latest Microsoft Corp. v. Lindows.com Update on your web site. You should change your name and try to be a little more creative/original and less cute/clever. I really don't give a rats ass about the future of Microsoft or Lindows. You don't think Coke would sue if someone making soda drinks called there company Loca-Cola. Change your name and get back to work. Best regards, David Brown P.S. Your disclaimer is an admission of guilt, "Lindows.com is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft Corporation in any way." Loose it.
    • You would think so; Google finds lots of information about GEM. Funny thing is that it's now owned by Lineo (Caldera), and is, I believe, GPL'd.

      Just the same, I sent a quote from my old 'Gem Developer's Toolkit' mentioning 'windows'. Maybe they'll send me a tee-shirt like when I answered Mozilla's call for help:-)

  • Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 11thangel ( 103409 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @06:31PM (#4079461) Homepage
    I have a ThinkNIC that myself and several friends bought a year ago to tinker around with. It's actually quite the capable little machine. It runs Linux, comes with a basic TWM based X11 setup, Netscape (with proper plugins, etc), a terminal emulator, and a few other neat little things. It boots off a combination of an NVRAM chip and a CD. The CD they give you is the basic system, but we asked them for some information and they gave us the ISO for that same boot CD. They were even polite about it. We hacked it up a little bit without difficulty, so the machine is slightly configurable.

    The downside is that yes, it lacks a harddrive. Personal preferences, like Netscape bookmarks, etc, get stored in the NVRAM, so you don't lose everything. But it's alot like web tv, where you get to surf, use basic email, but don't have the full complications of a complete computer. I admit, I wouldn't use one of them for my home system, but I'd easily give one to my grandmother if she ever changed her mind and decided that the internet was not in some manner connected with Satan.
    • (* I wouldn't use one of them for my home system, but I'd easily give one to my grandmother if she ever changed her mind and decided that the internet was not in some manner connected with Satan. *)

      It *is* full of Satan. Porn, penis spam, gambling, Nazi-ware, etc.

      Why do you think it is so popular?
    • Tried Knoppix on it?

    • Re:Actually... corrections... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It boots complettely off CD and read preferences from the SansDisk/NVRAM. It uses BlackBox as the WM, not TWM. Dependings on the size of the web page being viewed, the 64MB of RAM several times was not enough to handle the Netscape with "proper" plugins, let aless the other stuff (keep in mind there is *NO* swap space since there is no hard drive). Despite how much RAM dropped in price, they never produced an updated model to address this performance issue. And then the most damning piece of all. The AMD processor they use is marketed as being "like" an Intel 266 Mhz processor. In reality, the floating-point unit was more compariable with that of an Intel Pentium 100Mhz processor. This became an important issue in the fact that the driver for the soft-modem included in the system was very floating-point intensive. In fact, the soft-modem manufactor even wrote in their documentation *NOT* to use it with AMD or Cyrix based systems. The result was that if you ever used a ThinkNIC for dial-up (which was still VERY popular at the time ThinkNIC came out), then it became unusably sluggish. None of these performance issues where ever reasonably addressed. In the end, you could get a better performing dial-up web browser system for $50 by investing in a DreamCast and you could even take your NVRAM to someone else's DreamCast without lugging the entire thing.

  • First hand experience... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @06:34PM (#4079478)
    I convinced one of my room mates to buy a wal-mart PC with Lindos to ween himself off of Windows. It shows up and it's nearly unusable due to all the crap they did to it. They've got this active installer where they basically sell you the ability to install applications. It really really sucked. He would have been off a ton better just installing the latest SuSE.

    The PC died before we could try it though. Took it back to a local wal-mart. Not sure what was wrong with the PC. It got to the point where only the fans came on. No beeps or video or anything and we didn't touch the inside of the box.
    • Hmm. I bought one of those too. I threw it on an existing KVM switch, so I didn't need a monitor. I just ignored the auto-installer and downloaded and installed the standard x86 binaries for Opera and Infocetera (www.infocetera.com), and now have a very nice little collaboration server, that only cost me $300. It's been running like a champ for 2 months with nary a problem so far. Not a bad deal, I'd say.
  • Ok. Besides the monitor and other issues that other posters have brought up, $199 will not get you what you need to do all that. Lindows comes very stripped down - all as an "incentive" to use the "Click-n-run" warehouse. In Robertson's message, he mentions that it comes with a trial membership.

    Trial translates to THREE. You get THREE packages you can install - and if they don't work right on the first install, they still count. See this [newsforge.com] article for more information. A more accurate price would be $298, as the Click-N-Run membership costs $99.
    • Is Click-N-Run still $99 for access to public Debian mirrors, or did they actually come up with their own hosting by now?

      Lindows and Wal-Mart deserve each other. Wal-Mart is one of the companies that's been caught taking out 'dead peasant insurance' and we already know about Lindows- mp3.com veterans have known about Michael Robertson for a long time.

      Just be sure and get the word out to any of the people who might be considering this computer- make it so the most cursory web search will give them the resources they need to not pay Mike a cent of that $99. Put Lindows out of business- that kind of friend you don't need.

    • Yeah, that seems really lame. Clearly a better business model for them would be to raise the price a little bit and provide the Chicken-Run thing for free. How hard is it to figure out that the people buying $199 computers aren't just throwing their money around?

      On the other hand, I like this model for my own purposes because I'm perfectly happy to buy a box with a cheap/free OS that I can immediately replace.

      In general, Lindows seems a little wishy-washy. Weren't they pushing their whole Wine modification? Whatever happened to that. I looked through their website and found almost no mention of it. There was one FAQ page that mentioned it but was pretty well hidden.

      I think Lindows fell for the classic dot-com lie. The one that says - get a lot of exposure and the business model will take care of itself.
    • If you're stupid enoough to pay for the Click-n-Run versions of apps, then you get what you deserve. You can just download and install the apps yourself: Mozilla, Opera, Apache, you name it. The Click-n-run business model depends on idiots not realizing that they can just bypass Lindows and get the software from Sourceforge, or wherever.
    • This confirms everything that annoys me about Lindoze. Lindoze has taken everything we love about Linux and OSS and made into a "Den of Robbers" (Matthew 21:13, RSV [umich.edu]). I believe Lindoze will be gone before you know it.

  • XBOX (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thelinuxking ( 574760 ) on Thursday August 15, 2002 @06:51PM (#4079539)
    The xbox would be a better choice to get...costs the same price, and hopefully the linux kernel will be fully working on it soon. Also, it has an excellent video card...the lindows machine probably has a really crappy card. Also, you could even use the xbox with your tv, so you don't really have to pay for a monitor like you do for the lindows pc!
    • Sure, an excellent video chipset... provided you can make it work. The devs of that project are still smoking crack and thinking that nvidia's drivers would work on XBox+Linux. I'm extremely skeptical, to say the least.

      -Erwos
    • i thought it was $150....is it or is it soon to be 150?
    • Um, not to sound too trollish, but..

      In order to run Linux on your Xbox, not only will you need an existing PC, with dvd-r drive (ok, there's a good $1000 at least), you'll also need an Xbox modchip (tack on another $70 iirc) and the skills to make something like 40 tiny solder connections inside your Xbox. Just a tad more money than $199.

      Or has that damn hard drive finally been 'cracked'?
      • You're REALLY out of touch.


        XboxHacker.net [xboxhacker.net] and Xbox-Scene [xbox-scene.com] will update you.


        The X-ecuter modchip is one (tough) wire, 10 easy solderpoints (no wires, pcb to pcb). You boot the box with the Evo-X cdrw, after that you install what you want via FTP to the box (Evo-X includes an FTPd) and off you go, running everything you want from the harddrive (which you can switch for a new 120Gb if you want).

  • Up until now it seems like vaporware. I plan to buy an OSless pc from walmart, maybe i should try the lindows version to see if it really works.
  • "Ok, your Lindows levice lrivers are not working with your ATA 44.5 HD and Wintellisense chipset... hrm.."
  • I'm curious if anyone has tried LindowsOS or noticed that it is still in beta? i.e. Go to the LindowsOS site and pay $99 for a "sneak preview"?!?!?!
  • Back in the early 80's the C64 was priced at that point and it sold like hotcakes. If this new machine is marketed correctly, it could sell just as well.

    The monitor is a problem though. Maybe they'll figure out some way to output it to a tv....nah
    • In the early 80's? It was more like $300, and that was like $600 in today's money. The PC market will be saturated soon. The profit margins are on laptops, which are not quite as generic as PCs yet. Who cares. The Lindows "business model" is a pain in the ass. Why on earth can't they just install all that software on the computer, like other Linux installs. The one thing that impresses people about Linux is the sheer volume of included apps. They're ELATED that it does so much, without requiring installers. They DON'T CARE about the latest downloads, because the free apps they get are "good enough". Here's reality restated... People love their data. Most people love running familiar apps. People HATE installing software, and HATE losing data. Make a computer that satisfies those desires, and you'll have a popular machine. Believe it or not... people don't really like to customize their systems much. They want to alter their desktops, icons, and sounds... They do not want to reconfigure all their software.
  • Of course, I still have an old 486, but my case rocks!
  • My one gripe with the Lindows company is that they insist on continually referring to themselves as "Lindows.com"... I thought Dot-Com-Ism was considered passé these days after the big tech stock collapse. I always thought naming a company anything .com was stupid -- hey, idiots, your Web site is at blahblah.com, but calling your company that sounds really idiotic! You might as well name your company "PO Box 123456" after your postal address... So why don't they call themselves and their operating system simply Lindows, and leave the dot-com for when their Internet address is specifically being referred to.
  • Well as quite a few people probably know, its today possible to build a PC for $199 if you get the right components. And it looks like some enterprising souls have already done that. You can buy a brand new $199 PC (Yeah yeah minus the monitor) from this place and website - http://www.softwareandstuff.com/h_dsk_asusme99700. html [softwareandstuff.com]
    Of course this one doesn't come with an OS but hey there are so many alternatives for that. Its a very decent configuration with an ASUS motherboard and can be easily upgraded later to a higher speed Pentium III CPU and you can also disable the onboard video card and add a better one. Though only PCI video card is possible but you can easily add a cheap PCI version of nVidia GeForce MX cards. All in all pretty good for the price. And if you happen to live in the Bay Area you can drive up to the shop and check it out for yourself before buying it. I intend to see if it is really that well built as it sounds.
    • Well as quite a few people probably know, its today possible to build a PC for $199 if you get the right components.

      It can be fun to build your own computer, once you know how. It isn't too hard, once you know how. It can be impressive, to those who haven't tried it themselves. I've built quite a few myself, over the years.

      But I no longer try do so. Why? Because I can't save money doing so. I keep an eye on prices, and I can't build one for as cheap as my local clone shops. I can't build one as cheap, even if count the value of my labour at $0 per hour. So, I am going to buy a clone next time, at a place where they look clueful.

      A friend of mine isn't convinced by this argument. She has started to build computers for her friends. So far she is doing for fun, and love, and is only charging for the parts. (But she thinks she could be making a profit, if she just got her volume up a couple of hundred percent.) And sometimes her buddies bring them back. I am cruel. When she asks for my advice, I tell her. "Just take it back to the manufacturer, and let them worry about it."

      You can buy a brand new $199 PC (Yeah yeah minus the monitor) from this place and website... [softwareandstuff.com]

      Worth noting that while these computers may be "new", they are not really comparable to other new computers. Here in Toronto the slowest new computers are all 1 gigahertz. The computer you pointed uses a motherboard that maxes out at only 800 megahertz. Why is that? It is an old motherboard -- released in June 1999. Is it really fair to call it a "new" computer if it uses such an old motherboard? This motherboard is the old AT form factor version, not an ATX form factor.

      Its a very decent configuration with an ASUS motherboard and can be easily upgraded later to a higher speed Pentium III CPU...

      Okay, I just did a google search on this motherboard. It got some okay reviews, and some crappy ones. Here is the .pdf version of the manual [motherboards.org]. FWIW the manual doesn't say a word about mounting a Pentium III. Maybe the ability to mount a socket 370 Celeron implies that? I wouldn't know. I have stuck with AMD processors the last five or six years.

  • The claims of running Windows applications on their website have now been drastically scaled back. It now claims to be "Compatible with a few "bridge" Microsoft® Windows compatible applications to help users migrate to the new world." No indication of what they are! There are going to be some very disapointed Wal-Mart customers when they find they can't play their favourite games.
  • Seems to me a significant number of people might upgrade their CPU and keep their existing monitor. I see nothing wrong with pricing this way.
  • there is no monitor coming with this box.
    Also assuming that it is for the average joe to browse, chat, check mail etc etc.
    And assuming that he won't do any kind of big gaming,
    Why ain't there any company releasing more mini-itx based computer?
    Their is more and more case for those mobo, they are REALLY cheap, no fan, and you can connect it right away on your TV.
    It ain't a big machine which could drive you anywhere near 40 FPS in Q3A, but it is not the market targeted by the Lindows machine anyway.
    Those (mini-itx) would be smaller, cooler, cheaper to produce and could serve as a DVD player.
    Add to that a small remote to control de DVD, a wireless KB and Wireless mouse, and this is the perfect piece of hardware to surf on-line sitting in your couch!

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