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The $299 PC 132

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-it-costs-as-much-as-a-tv dept.
Skeezix sent us a San Jose Mercury article that reports on a $299 PC being sold by Microworkz. For the first time I guess, PCs cost about as much as TV. The computer in every home dream is getting closer to reality. " Update: 03/16 03:29 by S : In related news, PC Free is to ship Linux-based computers for $40 a month including Internet-Access, initially as a trial run. Link from LinuxToday
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The $299 PC More

The $299 PC

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  • Yeah, a really shitty TV
  • I don't believe that the $299 computer comes with a monitor or keyboard though...
  • Posted by DarkYoda:

    what a shaft...
    i would rather watch
    grass grow
  • Can someone confirm if this $299 bargain comes with or without a monitor? It wasn't clear in the article.
  • No. The sr. model for $699 does.
  • Indeed it does make sense. I personally would rather purchase a monitor separately anyway. I've been burnt too many times with cheap monitors dying on me. The computer itself I can nurse along, and I know enough places to get free/cheap hardware that I'm constantly tinkering with my system. But the monitor...I don't know beans about fixing them...I pretty much have to buy a new one when mine dies.
    ------------------------------------------- ---------
    Jamin Philip Gray
    jgray@writeme.com
    http://students.cec.wustl.edu/~jpg2/

  • uh huh (Score:1)

    by PHroD ( 1018 )
    5 billion channels and nothings on
  • Hey I was wondering if anyone had any links to places that you could buy a decent mac for under $500. I would love to get a decent mac 233 mhz or more so I could run LinuxPPC :)
    Natas
    http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
  • What a rip...

    Anyone want to go into business with me making a $199 computer with fine print reading "monitor, hard disk and cpu not included"? We can at least say that it's upgradable...

    Really though - cheap computers are a great idea, but they should come with a monitor, and Linux so that you could put a 486 in it if you want, and still get decent performance.
  • I see nothing earthshaking here. Besides, clueless people who buy the cheapest computer available are likely to get themselves into a really big mess ("My computer is broken! What is a backup?").
  • Not that I'd want it with Windoze but, if it cost $300 with Windoze, maybe it could cost a $40-$50 less with that fine creation of RMS and Linus and the wonderful and beloved cast of thousands.
  • ...you could make with these.

    (Sorry. Somebody had to do it.)
  • Kids these days have mighty high standards. Now, back when I was growing up, a 9" b&w tv was a big deal. But a 27" color tv is "shitty" now? Sheesh.
  • "A Computer On Every Desktop (Running Windows)"
  • I bet this damn thing has a winmodem, so it won't work with anything but windowze98/95
  • That seems interesting, but they don't say what kind of system you get. It's nice that they seem to be reaching out to the Linux community. Think it'll work?

    kmj

  • Ha! (Score:1)

    by RichN ( 12819 )
    They're trying to bridge the gap between the data "haves" and "have nots". Yet half their sales are from the web!
  • ...cheap, low cost computers that everyone can afford, to get every house on the Internet. It's all good.

  • The $50 "Microsoft Tax" is primarily for technical support. (MS makes it's money in other ways, such as software bundeling)

    Guess how much the "RedHat Tax" costs for tech support? $50!

    Or are you going to sell a computer to Granny with no tech support?




    --
  • ahh the good old days!
  • Hmmm... Web browsing on a C64 running at 1Mhz. GIF decoding alone would take forever.
  • this is what beowulf was designed for.

    hmm 30000+ (for networking) for a 100 node cluster. Not bad.

    Or even better, 3000+ for a 10 node cluster. Truely afordable super-computing.

  • You bring up an excellent point. :-)

    I still regularly pull up my beloved Atari 800XL in a window of my PII 450 running the slightly more sophisticated Linux.

    The good old days...
  • that alone is $240...

    sux they dont have more info.
    this would be perfect for my
    g-parents or my friends parents
    who are looking for a cheap basic
    puter.

    -Z
  • I thought that was kind of odd, myself. Maybe the idea is to get the "haves" to piggyback the "havenots" down the Information Superhighway.

  • VMWare? (Score:1)

    by tgd ( 2822 )
    This makes it all the more disappointing that VMWare is planning on selling their software at $299. Why spend $299 for their stuff when $299 will buy one of these? Throw in a $20 network card, run VNC and you get the same result...

    I wouldn't want a $300 PC, but maybe the fact that they exist might entice VMWare to sell their software at a more reasonable $150 or something.

  • They pretty much explicitly say it doesn't. The two higher priced ones do. Its just like the $399 eMachine doesn't have one either. The $499 one does.

  • No CD-ROM drive. Check out this article from News.com [news.com]. Only the next higher models have CD drives. To Microworkz [microworkz.com]'s credit, the do include the following: 56K modem, sound, keyboard, and mouse. Anyone know how much memory they include for video, or is it a memory-sharing scheme?

    Lastly, on the monitor debate, I'd say that the salesperson who moves this product had better inform the buyer that it doesn't come with a monitor, else s/he's going to have to do a refund in a few days, and no salesperson wants to do that.

  • That's what I was wondering abut

    I hope it's a cheap 4MB card that's good at
    2d. 3d isn't important except for FPS games...

    It looks very decent; from what I've read
    so far;

    -300mhz Cyrix MII
    =3.2 Gig hardrive ( my hardrive is less than 3 gigs)

  • Check out eMachines at www.e4me.com
    They run $399-$499 w/o monitor
    Monitors go for @$100+
    They got rave reviews from users on ZDNET postback
  • Yeah, a really shitty TV

    Really $#!++y? You can buy a 27" RCA stereo TV for that. While its not exactly the top of the line, it is not "really $#!++y". Really shitty would be some crappy little 13" "Made In China" set, which you can pick up for well under $100 these days.

    What is your definition of not $#!++y? 36", 48", 54"??? Must be rough to have money falling out of your @$$.

  • no, it does make sense. some people may already have an old 14" monitor that they want to reuse, or can get a 2nd hand one for next to nothing. advertising a $299 PC w/o saying that it comes w/o a monitor is a cheap trick, but actually offering a PC without a monitor is a good idea. hell, if I was going to buy myself a new PC now, I'd keep my monitor...
  • I have their Cyrix 333 eMachine, and it's great with linux. Not that the average intended buyer is a open-source gearhead, but this is in re: Chris H.'s remark [slashdot.org] that linux runs well on Cyrix. Could it be a phoneme thing? =)

    My only complaints are that I can't get their (eMachine) on board audio to work at all, and I can't get their Rage IIc to run with the XF_M64 driver. It works fine with the SVGA, so I'm happy.

  • Both x86 machines at home run Cyrix chips, just fine. Nice inexpensive machines, sufficient unto doing all my Linux XWindows and Sybase stuff, and my wife running her AutoCAD.

    May not be quite up to the latest gee-whiz ultramegaflash 4D hyperaccelerated twitch games, but I grew bored with those a long time ago. (I once wrote a multi-player 'asteroids/spacewar' game for a VAX 11/780 with a Norpak graphics unit and a D-to-A unit for sound.)
  • Cripes, I can get a Magnavox 25" with stereo sound, and whatnot for $300, and I consider that to be a damn nice TV.

    People are so f'ing spoiled these days.
  • I would pay not to have a cyrix chip...I hate them

    I personally prefer AMD, but I have nothing against Cyrix, at least not their current products. I knew a number of people who had overheating problems with the 6x86-133 through 6x86-166 chips, but then again, they were using generic Pentium fans and not "Cyrix Approved" fans, or were overclocking. The integer performance of the Cyrix chips actually seems to be quite good, and while their floating point performance has traditionally fallen behind Intel's similarly "P-rated" parts, the price difference has been substantial enough that you can usually buy a Cyrix part with similar floating point and a lot faster integer performance for about the same money as an Intel part.

  • It's really not as interesting as you might think, with the weak floating point unit...
  • We have a first-generation 6x86 machine here at Blair High. It runs Linux and likes to crash on the weekend when no one is around to reboot it, eliciting many complaints from students. (Under Windows, this probably isn't a problem because Windows crashes so much anyway.) It could be a heat problem or it could be the motherboard is cheap. However, this machine has never been what you would call stable.
  • What a harsh environment. Your cold. I've seen systems advertised for $1200 without moniter. Geeze. It's $299 man. Did you think it was something more, like a $301 computer with a pentIII at 900MHz? Don't go shopping for a PC. You couldn't handle it.
  • Did it actually say 300 Mhz? I just saw an article today about Cyrix. They list their chips by a pentium equivolency scheme. The 300 M2 runs at like 233 Mhz.
  • <DeNiro> Are you talking t'me? </Deniro>

    I have an eTower 333c [e4me.com] and it runs linux fine. Here's a list of possible gotchas, depending on your perspective on things.

    1. Need a new modem to replace the LoseModem.

    2. It only has 1 serial port, so with an external modem, that's it.

    3. It only has 3 slots (1 ISA, 1 PCI, and 1 ISA/PCI), so it's a touch cramped.

    4. I didn't try 4Front Tech's OSS [opensound.com], though the list [opensound.com] says they support the Crystal CS4235 chip. I just plugged in an old SB16, taking up the ISA slot.

    5. It has only 1 5.25" drive bay, though thankfully it's externally accessible.

    6. RedHat 5.1 (and I understand 5.2) ship with XFree86 3.3.2 [xfree86.org] which doesn't support the ATI Rage IIc onboard. You need XFree86 3.3.1 [xfree86.org] (or maybe a commercial X server) to support it.

    Lest I seem completely down on the box, here's the good I have to say about it:

    1. It's up. I have it running the SVGA driver, and it works fine, and fast.

    2. It's cheap. Figure $20 for the SB16, another $20 for a 33.6, and $50 for a monitor, and we're still talking under $600 for a great box.

    3. It's good enough. 32MB of RAM is fine for me. So is 2GB of HD (I decided to dedicate the other 1GB to some other OS when I heard that eMachines was only refunding $25 for it.) Anyhow, there's still that free drive bay, and HD prices have hit rock bottom and started digging.

    Do I recommend it unconditionally? No. Do I think I got my money's worth? Hell, yeah. Will it work for you? YMMV.

  • Buy a used PPC Mac and throw in a G3 daughter card upgrade. Cheaper than a silly-assed, fruit-colored Imac.

    If I had more yuppie food coupons I'd do just that and sit it on my desk next to my P233 [It's that pesky informed opinion thing again].

    Check with *shudder* the Jan '99 Mac Addict for more info on upgrading Mac's
  • Perhaps someone should get one of these WINMODEM manufacturers to provide a linux driver for their
    WINMODEM chip. With the chip specs in hand I can't believe it would be too hard to write such
    a beast.

    Isn't that what free software is all about???
  • For over a year up here in British Columbia, Canada, there's been a company called "IPC" marketing such scaled down PC's - $329 CDN (roughly $225 US, i think) gets you a nice and fast processor, integrated network card, sound card, video card, etc.

    Well, we ordered one of these things to use as a quake server, flipped the top open and had a look. On the motherboard was a whole lot of empty space, all the integrated peripherials, and no room for expansion. Not a single bloody PCI slot to plug something into. If you want a non-upgradable machine, by all means, I'd suggest going for it... All in all for the price you pay, I don't think it's that bad of a deal, but I like to be able to rip my computer apart and put it together again. :-)
  • But we barely had BBS's back then, and the one Internet backbone was NSFnet and it was nowhere near as big as it is now. Having a computer (really what passed as a computer was barely a fancy calculator) was not as necessary or carried the benefit it does now.

    CMIIW but don't today's desktop boxes outperform the room-fillers of the era where Atari 800/XL/XE, Commodore 64/128, Apple II series, etc boxes were "the thing?"
  • NEVER buy from eMachines! They ship with Winmodems (actually HSP modems), substandard CD-ROMs, and are generally unexpandable pieces of crap. (I think I may have posted something a while back as AC about them, back when there was a problem with getting passwords via e-mail.)

    If I could go back in time knowing what I knew now, I'd tell my friend's mom just how bad the eMachines deal was and offer to put together my friend's Christmas present computer myself for minimal labor charges. I'm certainly never buying one of the damn things myself.

    If they shipped with a real modem, a real CD-ROM drive, and let Windows 98 be an option, yeah I might buy one. But they don't.
  • Teletext? Is that what we US people call "closed-captioning?" It's **required** on all US TV's bigger than 20 inches.

    A $299 computer though sounds like it's way too good to be true.
  • Teletext rules. Why is it that the US is one of the few industrialized countries without teletext on its TVs? Sure, it's not fully interactive, but it's a fairly good imitation, and reading a few pages of info about the program you're watching (without having to have a WebTV to go to the channel's website) is nice.
  • I'm gonna get 'im...;>
  • 1600x1200? What color depth? 24 bit would mean the screen is 1600x1200x24 is a hair under 6 meg.

    Of course that would be sluggish. But the few applications most people who run Linux need to be able to use under Windows don't need screens that big. For a couple years I've used VNC as a replacement for a KVM switch. I usually configure the Windows machine at 800x600x16bit, works like a charm, even over a 10mb network. Since the advent of the Mac server, I've been using that as well -- its slow, but its nice to be able to get to a mac from my desktop as well. I'm sure once the mac server matures some it'll perform as well as the linux and windows ones.

    My point is that on my machine at work (Pentium II 350, 176 meg RAM, ATI Rage Pro) I get pretty decent performance out of VMware's product. Its noticeably slower than Windows 95 or 98 on its own, particularly in a window as opposed to full screen (with the upgraded DGA XFree86). Video display is kind of pokey, and so is the hardware. I'm sure I'd get just as much performance to my linux desktop using VNC on a $299 machine.

    VMware is a good product at $300 for commercial use -- if I have to test a product against Windows 95, 98, linux, etc... its a great system. $300 instead of dedicated testing machines? Can't beat that.

    But $300 to simply run Windows, its a better deal to spend the extra $$$ to buy a second PC. (Although in my case I'd just stick to running Win98 on my 586/133 and using VNC as I am right now...)

  • No. Teletext is a psudo-interactive system that many foreign countries have on their TVs. Basically, up to 999 channels of text is broadcast simultaneously with each channel. You go to a start page (usually 100), then it gives you a list of subpages (hyperlinks, basically). If you want to go to, say, 150, you type that in. Then, since this isn't really interactive, you wait until text page 150 is broadcast (usually not more than 10-15 seconds, since the 999 pages are cycled through fairly fast), and it's displayed.

    It's useful for reading stuff about programs you're watching, getting more info about stuff, and seeing schedules. Quite a nifty system.
  • God those new trinitrons (XBR, ~$2000 I think?), but for the money, I had to with a 61" ProScan. Not the best, but if size matters, I like to watch TV from the other side of the house...
  • I have a PowerPC 7200/75 with 40Megs of ram, 15 inch monitor, keyboard and mouse that I am looking to sell for about $400.
    I'm not a Mac-spert (Expert, get it? hehe) SO I'm not sure if this qualifies for a decent mac.
    (Sorry, I would have emailed this, but NaTaS777 does not give an email address.)


    --Jason Bell
  • Microworkz.com is back up. Problem is that all it says is that the page has NO information on the 299 pc. You click the link they want you to follow, and get nothing but the same Flash intro.

    I wonder if their hardware stratagy follows that of their webpage...

  • Rathead:
    No flame intended, but what's wrong with the CD-ROM they include (It's a Samsung 24x on my box). Seems to work just fine for me.
  • Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:

    . . for the price of only a few pounds of heroin!
    ^^^^^^
    ^^^^^^

    A few _pounds_ of heroin? I think you mean
    a few metric tons, right?



    -----------------------------
    Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
  • that used to get you a bad TV or a bad stereo set , now it can also get you a bad computer... bravo.

    my TV was $400 (second hand 2 yrs old), my stereo was $700, my computer was $2,000. that gives me a pretty good TV, a pretty good stereo, and a pretty good computer. anything cheaper almost can't be "pretty good"


    )O(
    the Gods have a sense of humor,
  • so I'll have to hand you guys that one :-)


    )O(
    the Gods have a sense of humor,
  • I wonder what percentage of the $299 price is Windows if it is even included.


    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
    "We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"

  • $299? (Score:1)

    by Rick_T ( 3816 )
    > You can buy a 27" RCA stereo TV for that.

    Actually, a 27" *RCA* these days *is* pretty shitty. Those Panasonic GAOO models are pretty sweet, though.
  • The only trick to using the early 6x86 chips that ran hot was to be sure to use the Cyrix appoved fan.

    I have an early 6x86 150+ that's been running without any problems for over two years now.

    It's high time for an upgrade. I'm gonna replace it soon and give the Cyrix machine to my 5 year old who's becoming very computer savy!
  • Why would we want even more people on the net? It's bad enough as is. And you want to bring it to an even lower class of people?

    1. More people means the net is more powerful, and can better affect changes (for good and bad). On the personal note, it also means I don't have to pay so much long distance.

    2. class is a four-letter word, the way you wield it. I'm sure with sufficient research, I can find someone who would object to your demographic being given access to the net as well, for reasons of race, creed, gender, beliefs, or even class.

      Fortunately, the net tends to route around prejudice. Remember, "On the net, no one knows you're a dog."

  • I wonder what percentage of the $299 price is Windows if it is even included.

    Probably only $50, if Microsoft is smart. They realize that PCs are soon to be disposable commodities, much like telephones are today (and cell phones will be soon.) so they know their current license pricing structure is nearing the end of its useful life. With all these cheap and ~free PCs, they'll be smart to move to monthly licensing.

  • 10 years ago, $299 was a lot of money. It's a lot today, but then it was a lot of money.

    Mike
    --

  • It could be a heat problem or it could be the motherboard is cheap. However, this machine has never been what you would call stable.

    It is probably a heat problem unless you are using a "Cyrix Approved" fan and heat sink. Standard Pentium fan/heat sink combos are not sufficient to reliably cool an original generation 6x86. The "Cyrix Approved" fan runs at a higher speed and the heat sink is larger. The top surface of the Cyrix chips is also shaped differently than the Intel chips, so the bottom of the heat sink needs to fit properly, which the "Cyrix Approved" ones do, and the generic Pentium ones don't usually.

    Another thing to worry about is whether the heat sink is making good thermal transfer from the chip, which generally requires some heat sink compound (a type of silicone grease).

    A cheap motherboard can also lead to problems with 6x86 chips, because they often have substandard voltage regulations, and the early production 6x86's require a lot more juice than a Pentium (which is why they run so hot). I have heard of problems with overheating of the voltage regulator IC's on motherboards that people have cured by jerry-rigging a larger heat sink and/or fan to cool the voltage regulator.

    A little poking around inside the case can often help determine where the problem lies. Sometimes if problems either become more serious or go away when the machine is operated with the cover off, that can be an indication of thermal problems. If its a voltage regulation problem, then careful observation with a precise digital voltmeter may be necessary to diagnose the problem (watch for out of spec or fluctuating voltages).

  • Actually, a 27" *RCA* these days *is* pretty shitty. Those Panasonic GAOO models are pretty sweet, though.

    I have a 27" RCA, and I am quite happy with it. I have Sony DSS unit, and I get good picture and sound (stereo) from it, from videotape and even from antenae for local stations. Actually as far as the $299 goes, I think I paid $269 for mine on sale last year some time. There may be other sets that are better, but the one I have is far from $#!++y.

  • Sure, it's not fully interactive, but it's a fairly good imitation, and reading a few pages of info about the program you're watching (without having to have a WebTV to go to the channel's website) is nice.

    You might consider getting DSS. I have a Sony DSS unit, and the on-screen menus (which include blurbs about the programs is very nice.

  • It's useful for reading stuff about programs you're watching, getting more info about stuff, and seeing schedules. Quite a nifty system.

    DSS (Digital Satellite) and some digital cable systems have this type of functionality in the US. I have a Sony DSS, and I find the on screen menus, schedules and program blurbs quite convenient.

  • Winmodem? Why thank you, my wall of crappy modems needs another. Rip it out.

    Pricewatch.com is saying you can get a 56K modem for $20. Considering you just saved somewhere from $200 to $2000, order a modem. You dont even have to get up. :)
  • At least this particular one on my friend's box seemed to screw up royally when installing either the Red Hat or Slackware distributions of Linux. Funny how it worked perfectly under Windows 98.

    I think this one is a 32X, not sure of the brand. It acts like it doesn't like to move data in full 64K chunks; it misses two bytes every 6-7 64K transfers. dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/null bs=32k works well while dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/null bs=64K dies a horrible death.
  • FUCK YOU BIT?CH

    My, what an intelligent and literate response. I am truly overwhelmed.

    All I can say is that jealousy is very unflattering for you.

  • wow, somebody actually read a post of mine

    eMachines being, IMHO, an answer to the iMac, I don't think some of its criticisms are valid. Yes, it's not top of the line, yes it may have a winmodem and subpar audio card. But as the previous poster said, their not for the "gearhead". If they work fine with Win98, great. A lot of the problems cited are Linux or alternative OS - specific, and you can't really blame eMachines for that as they never make any claims to the contrary. It was my impression that they worked fine for and where a steal for their target audience. Anyway, what we think is crap today would have blown us away a few years ago...the point is that the price is falling disproportionately fast, and that is sort of a breakthrough.

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