[GLLUG] $199 Walmart PCs

[Ross S.]

Nice Review.  I may get one of those for my family
members that don't have a computer and can't afford
one.  I'm not impressed at all with the C3 benchmarks
or performance.  But hey, at $199 it's still a deal...



--- Timothy Schmidt <tim@schmidt.is-a-geek.com> wrote:
> 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>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-user mailing list
> linux-user@egr.msu.edu
> http://www.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user


=====
Thank You,
fusion812
http://ross.liquidweb.com/

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