"We've seen a profusion of relatively low-cost PCs and tablets over the last few years, but Taiwanese electronics company Via's APC is cheap even by these standards: it's a $49 low-power desktop computer running a modified version of Android 2.3. Announced today, the APC is meant as a simple way to connect to the internet, so you won't get a great deal of computing power. It contains an 800MHz processor, 512MB of DDR3 memory, 2GB of flash storage, and can connect to a monitor or TV to output a resolution of up to 720p. It also consumes a fraction of a standard desktop's power: 13.5 watts at maximum and only 4 watts when idle."
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2011-05-12
Sounds like a pretty fine Linux machine!
When my Linux PC started to become too slow for comfort I'd switch to the CLI programs for mail, usenet, irc.
A few days ago I dusted off one of those machines and updated it to the latest Debian. It has no GUI, but it ran very fine. I remember when it did have a GUI I couldn't play Flash stuff, it would stutter all the time. So I swapped the 350 Mhz Pentium II for a 400 Mhz one and it ran fine!
It's a VERY large desktop, but that's cool: 2 screws you could remove using your hands you could lift the cover and you could easily get to anything and it had a number of extension slots/bays.
Member since:2005-07-06
Not really very fine, given the circumstances...
Linux doesn't (and didn't, back then) work out very well if your internet access is just via per-minute-metered (and expensive) 56k dial-up*, when virtually nobody around toys with it, and hardly any optical disc burners in sight. It's also hard to play with installing random OS in general, when you have only this one PC.
Plus with one smallish HDD, hence troublesome repartitioning (where to keep the data?), and the case even sealed... (over which I had no influence, or generally where the PC was bought; lucky just that it was)
...it were strange times, weird things many people took for granted (another unrelated one: cooling fans - I remember how one shop salesman looked at me as if I were an alien, when I requested "as silent as possible" - and I still ended up with IMHO ridiculously loud one, I believe they just didn't have anything different; think how much collective productivity, human thought, was wasted by such whining CPU fans)
On top of it all, the distros I did try at some point (CDs included with magazines, like the Red Hat ~7 I still should have somewhere; I still like the ncurses style of installer much more BTW) didn't work well with my GFX card (which I couldn't just change - no spare around, no easy means to get another one; NVM the seal...)
*such 56k meant I hardly used mail and IRC back then in the first place, Usenet never. It all revolved more around sneakernets (probably greatly helping to strengthen the "dominant" platform; perhaps those factors - demonstrated not nearly only by my place - were more significant than the overall MS leniency towards piracy).
Even in my high school with a LAN of Macs, we kept our projects on FDDs... (stored in the classroom...)
Though Duron 600 wasn't exactly slow back then, just slowest on Socket A - still, luckily, I already seemed to have other priorities than "as high number next to the CPU as possible" (but again, tragically, tied to mere 64 MiB for a year, due to RAM price spike - IIRC I paid more in 2000 for 64 MiB than some did in 99 for 128 MiB...)
WRT old clunkers: some time later, in 2004, I got my hands on a surplus dual Pentium II 266 with 384 MiB - now that's a nice machine to toy around with, and has a decent amount of RAM. Even LXDE is quite decent, as is win2k - generally, with Opera 9.27 (no flash of course, and js disabled on most pages), it's even almost bearable as a "browsing and stuff" PC. In fact, I think that Opera 9.27 works better now than in its heyday - probably due to pages abandoning "works best in IE & FF" mentality, with Webkit around.
Edited 2012-09-15 10:50 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2005-07-06
When my school got Pentium 100 machines in '97 or so, they still had only 16 MiB - seems some people always compromised otherwise fine PCs with low RAM amounts.
(of course, they were used mostly for Wolf3D, NFS1 and Worms, with a touch of MS Paint and... Norton Commander, DOS version; so it didn't make much difference)
More tragically: when I was getting my Duron 600 (note: the slowest CPU for the platform) in 2000, it was during the period when memory prices spiked up for some reason, so I had to live with 64 MiB for a year ;/ ...no more than Celeron 300-400 machines bought a year prior, and no win2k for me then.