[GLLUG] $199 Walmart PCs]

[Timothy Schmidt]

The C3's no speed demon for sure, but I've used several of them over the
last year or two and they've proven to be incredibly low on power usage
(means smaller & quieter fans, and a lower electric bill! -- seriously,
some athlons approach 80 Watts).  Playing a 700Mb Divx movie encoded at
about 700kbit/s in divx4 w/ a 64kbit/s stereo audio track encoded in Ogg
seems to be about the most the 800Mhz flavor can do.  As long as you're
playing it from the hard drive and nothing serious is going on in the
background.  Sometimes, if gtk-gnutella starts computing SHA1 hashes
while the movie is running it will drop frames, but nothing that keeps
you from enjoying the movie.

All in all, I'm pleased with the CPU for the price and the purpose. 
Anyone interested in playing 3D games should look elsewhere however,
performance is _not_ good there.  A low-end duron will suit you much
better for very little extra.

--tim

On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 17:06, Ross S. wrote:
> 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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-- 
Timothy Schmidt <tim@schmidt.is-a-geek.com>
-- 
Timothy Schmidt <tim@schmidt.is-a-geek.com>