[GLLUG] $199 Walmart PCs

[Gary Holbrook]

Thanks for the review!  I've been thinking of doing something very similar
for my Grandmother.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Timothy Schmidt" <tim@schmidt.is-a-geek.com>
To: <linux-user@egr.msu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 11:33 AM
Subject: [GLLUG] $199 Walmart PCs


> Just got finished setting up one of the now famous $199 walmart Linux
> PCs for my grandmother...  I decided to write up a little message with
> some interesting observations for anyone that cared.  Here goes:
>
> I ordered one of the computers from Walmart.com (none of the walmart
> stores in the area carry them in stock yet) on the 3rd of December.  The
> price was $199.86, $216.14 including UPS ground shipping (as I write
> this, it appears that the $199 computers have vanished from walmart's
> website, to be replaces by $299 versions with more RAM and larger hard
> drives  -- but you can still get to the page here:
>
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?cat=0&dept=5&product_id=2009643).
Walmart provides an on-line recipt and a simple button to click that takes
you to UPSs order tracking site -- a feature I bookmarked and appreciated.
After several messages from Walmart's order fulfillment and customer service
divisions apologising for a delay in shipment, it was finally shipped on the
14th and arrived in Corunna on the 19th.  Overall, Walmart did a good job of
keeping me informed.
>
> I opened the box to find a slightly smaller tower case than I had
> imagined, a cheap (to be expected) keyboard, mouse and pair of
> speakers.  Also included was a black power chord (the speakers have
> their own built right in), a Lycoris liscense and 'backup CD', a
> pre-paid label you can affix to the outside of the box to return the
> computer, and a bag of manuals, CDs and such that's to be expected with
> and new computer.
>
> My first suprise upon taking a good look at everything is that the
> motherboard used is Via's EPIA Mini-ITX all-in-one integrated
> motherboard
> (http://www.viavpsd.com/product/epia_mini_itx_spec.jsp?motherboardId=21).
We talked about these a little at the last meeting and it looks like a great
little board.  It has PXE support built right in, and every single part of
it worked great (and was auto-detected) when I installed Red Hat 8.0 on the
computer (you didn't think I ordered it with Lycoris for my Grandmother did
you?  I just wanted to liscense so I could play around with it myself!
Seriously though, Red Hat 8.0 suits her needs better, and if Walmart offered
a computer with it pre-installed I would have ordered it).  Sound, Video,
Networking, USB, everything worked first try.  I'm getting used to this kind
of thing, but it still impresses me.
>
> The other components used include 128Mbs of RAM (probably one stick,
> haven't opened the box yet though), a 10Gb IDE hard drive (very quiet,
> can't even hear seeks), a fast CD-ROM drive (56x or some such dribble),
> no floppy (no big deal), an 800Mhz C3 processor (which I find to be more
> than capable for surfind the internet, email, word processing, the
> occasional game of Iagno, and even *gasp* watching divx movies with
> MPlayer.
>
> For the curious, the least expensive I could find the specific VIA
> Mini-ITX board used on pricewatch was $114 including the 800Mhz CPU.
> Not exactly cheap compared to $34 for the CPU, and a Biostar M6VLQ which
> uses the VIA Apollo Pro PLE133 chipset to get on-board Video, Audio, and
> Networking for $39.
>
> Anyway, I'm pleased with the Walmart PC and more importantly, my
> grandmother is.  So while she's Mozilla'ing and OpenOffice.org'ing away
> this holiday season I'll be happily un-disturbed by calls about BSODs,
> hexadecimal memory address errors, crashing applications, un-cooperative
> printers, etc. etc. etc.
>
> --tim
> --
> Timothy Schmidt <tim@schmidt.is-a-geek.com>
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