$298 Wal-Mart PC Has OO.org, No Crapware 422
cristarol writes "Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 PC (Everex IMPACT GC3502). It comes with Windows Vista Home Basic and OpenOffice.org 2.2, as well as a complete lack of crapware: 'Users accustomed to being bombarded with trialware offers and seeing their would-be pristine Windows desktops littered with shortcuts to AOL and other applications will likely be pleased at their absence from the GC3502.' The machine is targeted at the back-to-school market. The hardware is nothing to write home about: a 1.5GHz Via C7 with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics, but as Ars points out, it should be more than capable of performing basic tasks." Dell sells a low-end PC through Wal-Mart for $200 more, and one assumes it is loaded with crapware. Anybody know for sure?
Has VIA improved? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably. For $298, it doesn't even include a monitor.
Heck, I just built a dual-core Athlon 64 x2 3800+ with 1GB of RAM, a 250GB SATA HDD, in an aluminum "gamer's" case with a side window and lighted fans and an nVidia GeForce PCI Express graphics card for just a little more than that $298 with parts purchased via Pricewatch-participating stores. (it would have been less without the fancy case/power supply, even.)
Nice home Linux server box (Score:4, Interesting)
The VIA C7 is a nice low-power CPU, with enough kick for most server tasks. At only 20 Watts power, it's well below any of the Intel/AMD options.
Too bad there isn't a version without the Windows tax.. this box at $250 would be even better.
Re:Don't sell the students short (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem here is that I know people that throw away their P-IV 2.6GHz/1Gig RAM because they consider it "crap hardware". That's what sad in this world. People consider my 2003 AMD MP 2400+/4Gig RAM "crap" because it isn't the latest Intel Core Duo. Well with Debian on it, it flies... Thank you very much...
Heck with a price like that and a sane operating system, this is really nice hardware. I began computing on a "state of the art IBM PS/2 Model 50", so really, this system is nice compared to what we had.
Re:Funny (Score:2, Interesting)
Simple solution (Score:2, Interesting)
If they truly wanted to make it power efficient compared to other computers, it would as simple as forcing the monitor (which would be LCD of course) to go into standby if the computer hasn't been in use for 15 minutes. I shudder to think how much power was being wasted when I used to work at a national lab, where everyone left their computer running overnight with various ridiculous "screen savers" running on CRTs.
Silver platter syndrome (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd just like to point out the absurdity of describing such a powerful computer with terms normally used to describe a 4-function calculator.
When I entered college, I paid for my own 8086 turbo, running DOS 3.something, and a 1200 baud modem. It had a 32MB RLL hard drive. It was also "more than capable of performing basic tasks."
This recalls Wirth's Law (from Nicklaus Wirth of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich): "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Stated another way, "Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away."
Windows Tax Refund? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does MS just give them away "free" to companies like Everex/Wal-Mart, just to protect their platform marketshare for selling Windows apps (or reporting marketshare)? Isn't all of that anticompetitive, probably explicitly so under the various (though largely unenforced) monopoly verdict decrees?
Or can you get your MS tax refund if you delete it and send it back? Has anyone pulled that off lately? Or maybe, possibly, convince Wal-Mart to save the expense, and sell a cheaper PC with Linux installed - or nothing installed, but with a Linux LiveCD/netinstaller?
Re:Nice home Linux server box (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Where to start. (Score:5, Interesting)
This included:
Word processing
Web browsing
IM
Matlab simulations
Circuit design with Eagle
I did have a 1 GHz Athlon Thunderbird available, but with the exception of the Matlab stuff, I took no productivity hit. In fact, if anything my productivity was higher because I could work while laying on my apartment's nice comfy couch instead of sitting at my desk. (This is why I used the laptop when I had another machine available.) In some ways the slowness of the Matlab stuff actuall increased productivity because it forced me/allowed me to multitask while my simulations ran.
Admittedly, the laptop ran Linux. Running Vista on this machine is likely crippling it so that 1GB RAM might indeed be insufficient.
Re:It's in the processor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Where to start. (Score:3, Interesting)
My college computer was an Exidy Sorcerer with a 2.5 MHz Zilog Z80 processor, 32KB RAM and a Radio Shack portable tape recorder. I used it to do my compiler and assembler class assignments. In Microsoft 8K BASIC. My instructors loved it because they had never seen one before.
The CS lab had an Imsai 8080, but was used by the card reader and was unavailable to students.
Re:It's all good (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, many colleges either provide Microsoft Office for a very low media fee, or for a very low student discount price.
So perhaps Wal Mart is figuring that students will just buy the cheap PC and then get the $12 version of MS Office from school. They probably include OOo as the default just to have something to provide. "Use this until you get MS Office from school..."
Just guessing.
Re:Minimal crapware.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you sure about that? While I obviously don't know any details of the discussions between "freeware" AV companies and PC makers, I doubt that AVG would let the company bulk-install even the freeware AVG version. They would probably treat installing it on 100k computers as a corporate install, and AVG charges for those.
Norton is only willing to pay to put their version on since it's crippled and they expect people to pay up when the trial ends. It's a lot different when giving someone a full featured, uncrippled version- it costs AVG money since they have to pay for the bandwidth & servers for updates if nothing else.
Re:Nice home Linux server box (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/c7/ [via.com.tw]
I don't work for VIA and I posted anon b/c I forgot my username and I'm too lazy to go through the recovery process.
-Randall
Re:Where to start. (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone remember how we use to have to "crack" these games? For you younger peeps, gather 'round, grandpa's got a story for ya.
It involved 1 of 2 things (let me know if I'm remembering this wrong):
* Some games had a key you entered every time you played. The crack here was simply copying the paper or card with the keys as well as the diskette(s), which was harder than you might imagine as photocopiers only existed at big companies and libraries. Sometimes they made it harder by having this little wheel you had to spin around or the keys were on the bottom of the book it came with (go to page 56, type in key 5, sort of thing).
* Some games had copy protection on the diskettes, so you couldn't copy them; this was done in various ways (similar to how some CD/DVDs are done today). Usually we would have a program, that would have a list of games it could copy, and for each game it would have specific instructions on how to make a clean copy of it. We all had these "cracking" programs. You would have to get new versions every once in a while with the latest list of games.
My friends and I would have "LAN" parties, which, of course, as there was no networking, involved us dragging our computers over to our friends house and playing games NEXT to each other, rather than with each other. It was cool though, as when you found something new, your friend could walk over and verify that indeed, you are the ultimate Ultima fighting champion.
Re:One Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Alternatively, watch the dumpsters... There are gems to be found in there. Usually spyware infected and thrown away by the user because it's "become too slow". No, I'm not kidding, I have personally found such gems. It's up to the level that I don't even take machines below AMD Athlon and P-IV. I used to have "must have an USB port" as criteria for taking the machine with me, but I'd need a whole warehouse to store those computers.
Re:Where to start. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where to start. (Score:2, Interesting)
The Atari 800 was my first computer - and well indeed am I acquainted with the "hole punch" trick, only we used a pair of scissors to snip a notch into the side. That was a pretty nice machine, for the time: letter perfect was a nice little word processor, and I can remember my dad using about a half dozen floppy disks to create a database in Data Perfect - not only that, but he was awed by how "few" disks it took! He called his brother to brag. He got his Ph.D. in Ecology in 1977 at the University of Tennessee. When he got computer time, he would use a hand truck to take his boxes of punched cards (do NOT bend, spindle, or mutilate) from where he stored them to the computer.
And here I bitch about my 80GB hard disk being too small.