Linare introduced today its newest product, an AMD-based laptop for $498. A $598 model with more RAM, DVD-ROM and WiFi is also available. My Take: Good & fair prices for the features.
Linare launches low cost Linux laptops for 498 USD
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Hmm. http://www.linare.com/linare-linux-notebook.php states that the LABBS250 comes with a CD-ROM drive. But http://www.linare.com/ladbs250.php says it’s a CD/DVD-ROM drive. I wonder which is correct.
I think that the $498 comes with a CD-ROM and the $598 comes with a DVD-ROM. But it’s really not clear indeed, they contradict themselves depending what page you read.
..ACPI support is good enough we don’t really have to spend a lot of time worrying about laptops and Linux. You’d think the site would have “Power Management FULLY SUPPORTED” in big huge letters..
I’m used to Apple iBook and IBM ThinkPad T series laptops, wonder how durable these laptops are. I don’t expect them to have much of a battery life, though.
I’d like to get one to put FreeBSD on.
-mojo
With the availability of sub $500 laptops and desktop computers shrinking (Mac mini), the ATX-sized computers will become things of the past. If trends continue at this pace, entry-level laptops could dip to $300-400 coming few years.
I wasn’t planning to get a laptop for atleast 7 months or so until college, but, I really want to get one of these, at just under $600 it’s pretty damn good for its specs, (can anyone provide a link to something similar?)
I’m not sure about their “Linare Linux”, to tell the truth I’ve never even heard of it before, but the screenshots show it looking like windows xp (no, really like windows xp), guess I could always put Ubuntu or something on it..
I wonder if there’ll ever be a company that creates a preinstalled Linux desktop/laptop that:
1) is a sensible price (not ridiculously cheap nor exorbitant)
2) ships with an interface that doesn’t look like a cheap Windows imitation
3) plays to the strengths of Linux software management (like relying on a simple apt-get)
4) actually looks cool on the outside (like Macs do)
5) ships with a ‘standard’, recognized distribution (maybe Ubuntu?)
Maybe there’s no market for what I’ve just outlined, but is there really a market for these Walmart cheapo GNU/Linux Boxes? Are people who are apt to run Linux really going to shop at Walmart? I think it’s only a matter of time before you can plop a Linux distro on a box and have it be accessible to anyone and if GNU/Linux were to really take over (or at least gain a significant market share) it would have to be something that just ‘came’ with the computer at CompUSA. Just my 2-3 cents.
Nice price. I’m trying to figure out a few things though.
1.) Is the RAM onboard for both the 128MB and 256MB models? Or is it using an expansion slot? So if you wanted to upgrade, would you have to “throw away” the existing memory?
2.) Is it shared RAM? Does the video card use 32MB/64MB of the main memory?
3.) Does power management actually work? Like, really, seriously, genuinely work? Close the lid, it goes to sleep. Open the lid, it comes back to life – as opposed to crashing the Operating System.
>1.) Is the RAM onboard for both the 128MB and 256MB models?
There is *probably* one more slot free, it usually is.
>2.) Is it shared RAM? Does the video card use 32MB/64MB of the main memory?
Most probably it is.
>3.) Does power management actually work? Like, really, seriously, genuinely work?
Probably not. I would be surprised if it was.
from the screenshots it uses anaconda, fwiw.
That is a good deal. A laptop for under $500, who cares what it comes preinstalled with. I’m sure 80% of the people that buy these will install a different os anyway. Upgrade the ram yourself for $50 and you have a nice little laptop.
—
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I have used Linare. Their 2.0 was offered for free a while back at Distrowatch.com. I think the $598 laptop is an excellent deal. I may purchase one of these.
Thanks to Roguelazer: The information is as follows (in case you don’t want to follow the link):
Memory: 256 MB DDR RAM; Expandable to 1 GB
Graphics: AGP V2.0 Compliant with AGP4X support;S3 Graphics ProSavage8x high performance 128-bit 3D engine with up to 64MB DDR memory
As for ACPi? Don’t know.
http://www.linare.com/ladbs250.php
Oh my god, Linare’s artwork is quite bad, as you can judge by the screenshots gallery. They need to do some SERIOUS work to make it bearable, and usually this IS important for new users.
Otherwise, the laptop seems to be a good deal overall. Just improve the artwork guys
I have given up on actually owning a laptop.
Oh well. Such is my karma.
I have given up on actually owning a laptop.
It’s understandable. Lately, I have heard it hurts one’s fertility.
Can’t complain about the price.
As the saying goes though, you get what you pay for – 128MB is pretty silly with a modern OS. The $598 model strikes me as a better option really – the cheaper one could well turn out to be pretty frustrating.
I agree with the anonymous guy in the last page of comments – it’s about time Linux machines were serious contenders rather than a cheap novelty.
Would also be nice to be able to get it on nicer hardware too – so you could choose an Inspiron or Vaio because you liked the design and still have free choice of OS, rather than deciding not to pay for Windows then finding that you’re limited to a few pretty bland models.
Oh well… a guy can dream… 😉
Actually, looks like a decent second machine. For the price.
I don’t get it. It’s pretty well known that the cost of the average PC includes $150+ to cover the cost of Windows included with it. I have bought several REALLY LOADED PC’s lately without an OS and they were around $500-$700 for a 3.2 GHz CPU, 250 Gig HD, 1 Gig RAM, 8X AGP 256 Meg Video RAM, etc. Since Linux is “free” why do these people throw Linux on a sh*tty laptop/pc and offer it up as a real alternative to Windows? Come on already – throw together some kick-*ss systems for around $800+ and insure they are fully Linux-compatible and let us have something we can REALLY enjoy, regardless of what distro we throw on it. Sheesh.
I recently installed Ubuntu Linux on a machine with 8MB of ram — it took a while to start up (4 mins or so) but was perfectly functional. I suspect that if you have a bit of patience you’ll find 128MB will do you just fine, even better if you are technically adept enough to switch to an even lower impact DE like fluxbox or XFCE4.
These notebooks look like fine products, but i would like to see a review, mostly since i am very sound sensitive and I would like to know what the avrage battery life is.
I know that this is a bit off topic, but does anyone know what Linare’s slogan “The Global Linux Automation” actually means?
ohhh more goodies to compete with lower models to finally get the prices of laptops down.
OK, well this is an old Athlon XP processor. You know Athlon XP’s have horrible heat protection and this is a laptop.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible for an AMD Athlon 64 Mobile CPU that has heat protection built in? a Low-power version to conserve battery life?
everything prior to AMD64 line up in my opinion is un-fit for anything except for gaming applications and a few home computers.
(I used to be obsessed with AMD and all my machines run AMD-based machines and once i got into the AMD64 series and compared em to intel’s I totally went against anything under the AMD64 CPUs. I used to even go bash intel and support amd regardless if athlon xp’s have higher failure rate than p4’s)
Wi-Fi 802.11b, 128MB on the board, one SO-DIMM slot open, DVD-ROM drive, 1.1 GHz Mobile AMD Athlon, 40GB hard disk
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=3163026
I bought a Compaq laptop about 18 months ago with the following:
14″ screen
AMD Athlon 1900+
512 MB of DDR RAM
40 GB Hard Drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM
USB 1.0
10/100 ethernet port
1 Type 2 PCMCIA slot
Some crappy winmodem
Radeon IGP 320m graphics card
No firewire, no built-in wireless
Windows XP Home Edition and a bunch of useless bundled software.
I bought it for $700 after rebates. Everything is supported in Linux, although the WinModem is supported only through closed third-party drivers. Still, based on what I had over a year ago, this doesn’t really seem like that great of a deal.
These sub notebooks are nothing to write home about. One can easily purchase a Toshiba, which is largely compatible with Linux and achieve the same goal.
” don’t get it. It’s pretty well known that the cost of the average PC includes $150+ to cover the cost of Windows included with it. ”
As far as I know, you arent paying nearly $150+ for Windows with your new PC unless you bought it seperately.
What is the MS tax anyways? Paying extra for Windows that you dont end up using? Why didnt you just buy a different computer without Windows preloaded? I guess stock stereo in my car was a tax, since I replaced it with a $ony. The back seat? Oh wait, thats not used so that was the “back seat” tax. I guess since its Microsoft, we can just call it a tax like its bad or something…
“I know that this is a bit off topic, but does anyone know what Linare’s slogan “The Global Linux Automation” actually means?”
Mabye they are planning to take over the world ala Microsoft – if you played Command and Conqueror you’ll remember The GLA (The Global Liberation Army……)
1800+ processor, 40 GB Hard drive, 128 MB RAM, CD ROM, Ethernet Interface, and Linare Linux OS. It also comes with Open Office suite
2 months ago we bought low-cost computers with Linux, an AMD 1.8Ghz processor, a 40GB HDD and 256MB DDR RAM with OpenOffice.org. The computers were almost unusable with OpenOffice and Gnome. The system was very unstable, damn slow and the staff had to re-start them 2-3 times a day. People were very frustrated and said the problem was Linux, they asked for Windows. They found out that the RAM memory was way not enough. They doubled to 512MB for each machine and all of the sudden the computers worked just fine. Less that 512MB is not serious. I’m writing from a 256MB RAM computer here with Linux, Gnome and Epiphany, the HDD red led is always lit, and the hard drive is always working, it’s very slow.
So, selling a 128MB RAM computer is no serious business unless you don’t even use a desktop environment. And forget about Mozilla, Evolution or OpenOffice.org
This laptop looks good. However higher end model should come with a bigger HDD (may be 60GB)
This might be a good choice for students going to collage who want a cheap laptop. (don’t some universities give discount on laptops?)
also if it doesn’t have advanced power managment then using laptop is pretty useless
I doubt Linare has launched this joke after a good market survey.
Junk hardware + bad software = cheap price + no sales
I have no idea what the targeted audience for this is. Who is going to make use of it? What can you do with such a computer? Use gedit or Bluefish?
Come on, this is a back to the 80’s. Today’s computers are either a good OS-X, Windows XP or Xandros. These are serious OSes. And 128MB, no one will be able to do any serious job with it…
“It’s pretty well known that the cost of the average PC includes $150+ to cover the cost of Windows included with it.”
Most Windows notebooks and desktops come with Windows XP Home. Big companies like Tochiba, Dell, HP, and others are paying $40-$45 US per copy of XP Home to Microsoft.
How much they charge you- it is another story.
Also, big OEMs have economies of scale they can pass to consumers if they want to (i.e., if competition makes them to).
As a result, Linux is getting squeezed for a simple reason of being late to the party.
Middle priced notebooks equipped by the Linux cost approximately the same as Windows counterparts. $45 deducted from $1,500-$2,000 notebook is 3% or less- you can just wait until next sale and save 15%-30% just buying in the right place at the right time.
High priced notebooks with Linux or Windows compete against Mac Powerbooks- and Powerbooks are above any competition.
The necessity pushes Linux to the bottom: $45 for OS is 10% of the price of $450 notebook- a sizeable amount. Also, major OEMs do not compete with small vendors on $500/notebook market.
“As a result, Linux is getting squeezed for a simple reason of being late to the party.”
Yes, that’s true. MS could sell windows for 5$ and still make a descent profit. However, you have to see OSS as a longterm investment. We already see that OSS is taking over the servers. When that happens on the desktop too, MS’ monopoly is history and so is their enormous revenues.
I would buy one of those in a second if it was thinner.
Does anyone know of a cheap PC laptop that is similar in size to the 14″ iBook? I don’t really want to pay more than $500, and i don’t care if its used. Speed is not a major issue, i just want it for internet and programming.
Not everyone has over 1000$ to buy laptop. I think it’s good product for students and people that do not demand those ultra realistic video effects. Maybe they give some stripped linux distro without unneeded overhead. You can always dig out copy of win98 (should work fine) or use some older linux distro. I’d prefer KOffice rather than OpenOffice. Anyway, if it had 512MB RAM, it would be better.
So, selling a 128MB RAM computer is no serious business unless you don’t even use a desktop environment. And forget about Mozilla, Evolution or OpenOffice.org
That’s your fault because you are using CrapLinux. Maybe you have unstripped binaries?
My machine has 256 MB. Right now, Firefox, Gaim, Rhythmbox, OpenOffice.org Writer, and Apache occupy 144.5 MB. That’s with Ubuntu Hoary.
This, like the cheap Via C3 that Lindows announced a bit ago, is made by ECS (www.ecsusa.com). ECS provides the mobos used in the entire line of Microtel PCs that serve as the base for ALL the cheap Linux boxes on the street (Tiger Direct, Sub300, Lindows.com, Walmart, et al.) ECS/PCChips, as perhaps you are aware, is not exactly the TOP of the foodchain when it comes to component quality/performance.
take a look at the ports: http://www.linare.com/ladbs250.php
there is one firewire port, and no usb? i think i’ll pass.
besides, for everything their website says about mobile athlons, the product specs suggest that it has a regular old desktop athlon. anything that uses a processor with that much heat consumption may be portable, but it can’t properly be called mobile.
it’s good to see computers like this, because competition drives down prices, but i wouldn’t actually recommend this computer to anybody. hopefully, though, it will drive down prices of refurbished computers, which are almost always a better deal. recently they haven’t been, because people don’t want to sell their computers for so much less than they paid – but of course no one’s buying them either, because who would buy a used computer when you can get a new one for the same price?
but, if anyone was thinking of buying this computer, i’d ask them why they wanted a laptop. if it was just because they thought laptops are cool, i’d recommend they consider a desktop, like some of linare’s own models, or the scarily-cheap dells and gateways, or, if they already had a desktop and were upgrading, a mac mini. or if they wanted one so that they could bring it with them and use it everywhere, i’d recommend they save up a little and buy an ibook or a centrino-based computer, either of which you can get for under $1,000 (though that might involve looking around ebay, for the centrino or for an ibook with a 14″ screen). if you actually want a laptop, the extra battery life will be worth it, and if you don’t, it’s pointless to pay the extra money for a computer whose only “benefit” will be forcing you to buy a new monitor if and when you upgrade.
Lets see; under $500, old processor, lack of sufficient ram, laptop parts (hdd cd rom), ships with a software library that puts windows based competitors to shame, virus and spyware free. Too bad it dosent have a multimillion dollar ad campaign, and a host of frothing, slavishly devoted followers. If it did everyone would be calling it the “next big thing”.
Oh I forgot, in many ways you get more for your dollar, including a keyboad, mouse, and monitor. Not to mention true portability (battery powered). Of course none of this will matter to fanatics of that “other” computer company, who will find some reason to hate it.
That’s your fault because you are using CrapLinux. Maybe you have unstripped binaries?
My machine has 256 MB. Right now, Firefox, Gaim, Rhythmbox, OpenOffice.org Writer, and Apache occupy 144.5 MB. That’s with Ubuntu Hoary.
… and Gnome occupies the other 110 MB, and your HD is probably thrashing, and you could physically draw the windows on the screen faster than X can.
“Oh I forgot, in many ways you get more for your dollar, including a keyboad, mouse, and monitor. Not to mention true portability (battery powered). Of course none of this will matter to fanatics of that “other” computer company, who will find some reason to hate it.”
Judging by their posts I doubt they even care to make any comparisons. HAHA!
Hmm… 128 MB RAM, laptop hard drive performance, S3 graphics (a laptop without a Radeon/GeForce in 2005???), power sucking == heat generating CPU, an OS that takes forever to boot and that in general does not allow me to play any of my favourite games (if I can get 3D to work at all!), and a lot of applications I don’t want to use nor pay for (even if open source they are still part of this $498 package, so I can’t really tell how much this software adds to the total cost, but Linare Linux alone costs $40). Maybe if it had a PowerPC and it was possible to install MacOS X on it, but $498 for this thing is waaaaaay to expensive – I can buy a Mac Mini for $499 which beats the crap out of it in terms of sheer coolness as well as usability!!!!! ;P
…as you can probably tell I am joking as well as exaggerating a bit; I was trying to turn the Linux zealot anti Mac Mini arguments around. That said, most of the arguments above are in fact valid – you may get a cheapo 1024×768 LCD screen, but everything else is equal at best to the Mini. Add to that the fact that you don’t get access to the unique MacOSX experience, and that you can not really run WinXP with only 128MB or RAM (at least not without a lot of swapping; the same argument used against the Mini with its 256MB of RAM). And compared to the Mini, it’s fugly, plain and simple! In other words, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but for me the Mac mini beats a cheapo PC like this any day of the week.
(PS. I have both an iBook as well as a desktop PC with WinXP/Ubuntu/BeOS, so hold off the zealotry flame war please…)
No, seriously, do they expect to sell this cr#p in developped countries?
This is fine for 3rd-world countries where $time != $money
I agree with qwilk, I’d better buy a Mac mini for sure!! It has the double in ram, lot better and nicer hardware, and best of all, it has OS X!
While 128MB is too low for the purpose of running a current Linux, upgrading to 256MB is probably $50 (or $100 if you buy their next largest machine – which adds in other hardware, too, so…)
People with minimum savvy will buy the next size machine (the $598 one) and maybe even pay for a memory upgrade to 512MB.
People with NO savvy will buy the cheaper one – BUT these same people aren’t likely to be running ten different nemory-hogging apps at once – or if they do, they’ll learn not to and live with it.
I’ve had several clients trying to use ANCIENT used Toshiba laptops with Pentium IIs and 32MB to 64MB RAM as their primary DESKTOP machine. Believe me, there are plenty of people who would view a machine of this power and price to be a God-send. Of course, some of these clients got their machines for free from relatives or wherever, but still…
This machine is targeted at newbies who don’t know Windows from Linux and at people who may know the difference but don’t care and just need a cheap laptop for minimal uses.
In any event, these machines will introduce Linux to a few more people and the experience isn’t likely to be all that bad for them unless they had unrealistic expectations to begin with (and assuming Linare Linux is not too screwed up compared to the main distros).
I could use for my PC tech support business as simply a portable “repair” machine.
Keep in mind, just because the company is putting out the machine doesn’t mean they expect it to be “The Next Big Thing” – no matter what their slogan says…They expect to make a profit, and while that may be optimistic, they might very well depending on their Wal-Mart contract.
Try to run a light version of Linux (My pick: Gentoo or Fedora) with only Gnome + OpenOffice.org (not more) on a computer with only 256MB Ram memory.
It’s damn slow.
I do not consider anything that runs Gnome a “light version of Linux.” OpenOffice doesn’t help matters much. KDE will run better than Gnome in 256 meg. of RAM, but that’s not saying much.
Here is an alternative: XFCE or IceWM with Abiword. Firefox isn’t bad for browsing, but Konqueror has a smaller memory footprint. For fast e-mail, there are a number of options, but I think I would use a Web based solution, or use Kmail. 256 meg. would handle that fine. 128 meg would run it, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty.
I think everyone is being just a little harsh about memory here. 128MB isn’t much, but a few quick tests on my laptop showed it using 125 for KDE, XMMS, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org. Obviously cache was fairly significant (about another 168MB) so it wouldn’t have been too pretty on 128MB, but 256 would have worked fine.
In my experience Linux works better with RAM than Windows does; it likes to use just as much RAM but seems to swap much less, and I rarely find it grinding the swapfile like Windows seems to.
I agree with Peter though; XFCE would probably have been a better choice for machines of those specs. While KDE or GNOME will work in little RAM, sooner or later users are going to push it too far.
!
I agree, I think a Mac Mini is probably a better deal. But I think the ad said the laptop came with 256 ram. Still light but not that bad, if you want a lap top at this price its gonna be somwehat junky, but it gets you mobile. Will not replace a desktop though.
.. but those boxes really should have _at_least_ twice the RAM. 512/1024 megs in standard set would be decent. At least one USB 2.0 port should be in it too. I wouldn’t care less for the 3D, so a nice low-end graphics card with good 2D performance would be good. Well anyways, with these options I’d consider getting one.
P.S.
Those silly winmodems in a Linux laptop should go, too
I’m not sure there’d be all that much of a specific market for high-end laptops/desktops for linux since, who would buy them? Geeks. We geeks can install Linux our their own brand-name computers, and would probably complain about all that, saying ‘well, I can get a Dell for cheaper/better/nicer looking even WITH Microsoft Windows.’ or, ‘I can build one myself that’s more powerful, why do I need this?’ or ‘I can get them from a white-box organization…’
Yes, you’d get it certified for Linux. But on the other hand, those geeks would most likely have their own favorite distribution, and who’s to say that it would work perfectly and completely on that?
Yes, I’m sure there’s a market, but these are, like the Mac Mini, primarily aimed at users who have OS-independent needs. It’s not for gamers, who need a system to play all the latest games (for Windows, usually) or for us, who’ve found replacements and alternatives for OUR needs.
the article says “…And obviously, the only way it’s possible for us to offer this laptop at this exceptionally affordable price is because of Linux…”
Not true. Wal-Mart sells a similar PC with Win XP Home for about the same price (maybe $50 more). But that extra cost is so worth it because Windows is a far, far better laptop OS than Linux especially if you want to do wireless.
So, its not true that Wal-Mart is able to sell for a lower price because of Linux, but… on the other hand… you can buy a similar computer for about $50 more with Windows on it because its “worth it” to pay for the “better OS”.
You just contradicted yourself. You can’t have it both ways. When you say “For a little more you can get Windows” it means you are paying for Windows and ergo the drop in price for the Linare computer is because of Linux being cheaper.
On a side note, noone buy Linare – I’ve been using it for testing purposes and it is extremely unreliable.
That BeOS will run on one of these things with sound.color and modem support,I would be fishing in my cookie jar right now to buy one,because with a BeOS /Linux combo I really don’t need Windoze for much of anything.as it is I have a Thinkpad 600E with win98SE/BeOS and a Jetta Jetbook with WinXP pro and Mepis Linux on them,and the Jetbook will run Mepis and everything just works modem and the whole 9 yards,but I cant get a display in BeOS. the IBM would probably do it but at 400mhz it really doesnt have the horsepower to be a serious Linux laptop.C’mon Eugenia get ’em to send you one in the interest of science!!!
I didn’t believe it until I saw it on the web site. Does this thing really come with one firewire port and NO USB ports? How is that possible? There must be a mistake.
Hello:
Thank you for your interest in Linare products . yes, Both Linare Notebooks LADBS250 & LADBS200 comes with USB(2.0) . If you have any further questions, Please feel free to contact us.
Best Regards
Customer Support Team
Linare Corporation
http://www.linare.com
http://www.linuxtimes.net