Not one, but three LindowsOS-based PCs (in the value range of $199 USD) were reviewed online by WashingtonPost. A TigerDirect PC, the traditional WalMart/MicrotelPC and one from Nova Computech.The reviewer says that these PCs while are very low-end today, compared to PCs 2 years ago, are actually pretty good solutions for home usage. The reviewer found them lacking in the gaming (no respectable 3D gfx card included), expandibility departments and while he mentions that LindowsOS is affordable, is not a panakeia as it lacks in good USB support and other demanding areas of our modern times.
It is important to note that the Nova computer is using a… laptop 3 GB hard drive for their $199 LindowsOS PC (think “slow“, for a desktop PC – I also have a 3GB hdd on my 6-year old AMD K6-300 laptop and God is slow).
What did they expect…the machines cost $200. Of course they are not going to be very fast and have AGP 8x graphics cards.
I actually find this 1.0-1.1 GHz AMD Duron PC fast enough for usage. I still use my dual Celerons 533 Mhz as my MAIN PC, even if I have faster computers around me. There is not a problem with speed to do simple computing. As for games, I would have to say that if these PCs are equipped with the Savage4-PRO KM266 chipset which is included in newer VIA chipsets, then some older/non-demanding 3D games will work (under Windows). On Linux/LindowsOS, in order to get 3D support for S3 cards you need to pay about $50 I think, as the driver is commercial. But if you are not after gaming and… SETI, these PCs are just fine!
I would say that for home usage/internet usage, these $200 PCs are a good deal. Add a cheap 15″/17″ monitor that can do 1024×768 on 80-85 Hz (just so you make sure you won’t destroy your eyes
, and any home new user, or a grandma, should be happy.
What I DO have a problem with is what Nova Computech does. I am telling you guys, a laptop 3 GB drive IS SLOW. I have one here and even BeOS dies to load on it! Nova has NO BUSINESS to sell *this* drive to a desktop machine, even on the $199 deal. They should just find a good deal with a Taiwanese maker or with older/unsold DESKTOP drives that are least in the range of 6 GB, 8 GB or 10 GB. That 3 GB laptop drive really makes me think of the Nova deal very sourly.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this is (hopefully) a desktop effort in the earliest phase. As Linux and Lindows get better, the deal will look increasingly better as well…
All three came preinstalled with Lindows, a version of the Linux operating system designed for home users. But Lindows has drawbacks, notably poor support for USB peripherals such as digital cameras and scanners.
hmmm… i don’t know lindows, but if it is like the other linux distros, then i don’t know why they declare the system to have “poor support for USB”?
i did not use that much usb devices, but everything i tested with linux worked (cannon scanner, ibm usb mouse, ibm usb keyboard, ibm usb hub, logitech optical and cordeless mouse, pda sync cradle, etc).
the most difficult device was the usb scanner. however… i would not say that linux has poor support for usb. it has support for usb, but it is offten very hard to setup usb devices on linux.
anyway… maybe i am totaly lucky and other people have much much more problem with usb and linux?
The are perfect for family members who want to replace their “word processor” with a internet machine. Parents/grandparents/… who just want “word” and the web.
Walmart currently has a 1.2 Duron with 20 GB HD, 128mb ram for $209 (running Lycoris)
(10GB, 1.1 Duron for $199).
I have bought these for business terminals and family members. They run pretty nice. I like putting in at least 128MB more ram (256MB more can be gotten for $20).
I use RH9 (and now XD2) on them.
—-
If people want anything more, I recommend an Playstation 2 and one of these… (for most people, not everyone though!)
I consider myself a power user and I don’t see much of a difference between 1.2 and 3.06 as long as you have enough RAM!
Jesse
belive me or not, but i still use a amd k6-2 @ 333mhz with 256mb memory and a voodo 3 with 16mb as my windows xp computer. the system has only scsi discs (2 adaptec 2940 controllers and 4 scsi harddrives and one drive has eaven 10k rpm).
i have no problem with the system. writing in openoffice or ms office and using opera and using ssh to maintain the servers and developing in lotus notes/domino and using eclipse and from time to time using visual studio 98 and paintshop pro.
the only thing wich is slow is starting applications and sometime when minimizing windows.
i don’t know why pople are always so hungry for mhz/ghz. for normal office work, the system does not have to be the fastest of the fastest. anyway… beside that system i use a athlon xp 2400 computer with 1.5gb memory and serval ide and scsi (64bit 29160 adaptec controler) discs with 1 cd-rw, 1 dvd-r, 1 scsi cdrom and 1 ide cdrom and a nvidia 4 gfx card, runing gentoo linux. and while i am working at the place of my customers i have a ibm thinkpad a22p (intel p3@1ghz with 384mb memory) with 2 discs (original hd when i buyed the laptop: 20gb with winxp and an additional ibm travelstar: 32gb with gentoo linux)
all my employees have much faster desktop computers. and from time to time they make jokes about my old old computer. but i don’t care. as long it is working i will leave it runing. and when something dies on that computer, then i have serval other old parts i can use to replace them, until i will give up that old nice computer
cheers
SteveB
The PCs seem quite nice to me. They would all be VERY usable. My fastest PC is a 933 PIII. I would double the ram (that’s like $50 these days, right?), but otherwise they’d be fine. Even an 8 gig hard drive will work fine if you’re just doing word processing, etc. That said, using a laptop hard drive in a desktop is sad. And shipping a PC with a 3 gig drive is just pathetic. But shipping a desktop with a 3 gig REFURBISHED laptop hard drive is… wow. Now if they put two laptop hard drives in a simple striping RAID, that would fix the performance and storage problems and be quite nice because it would be quiet too. But that would cost too much, I’d guess.
That said, I’d like to see a statistic on how many people who buy these actually keep Linux on them (even if they change distros) vs the number who put a copy of Windows on (and old copy of 98 from their old pc that won’t boot, a copy of ME that their brother in law copied for them, etc). It would be interesting to see. I don’t think it would be fair of me to make predictions on this, as it would be a pure guess.
i think those people wich are able to switch that easy the os (installing another linux distro or eaven windows) are probably not very much interessed in such a low end computer (not the speed, but the possibility to upgrade the system in terms of hardware).
and the one interessed in such a low end computer, are probably the last one to switch the os.
what do you think?
cheers
SteveB
Most people who would want to swich the OS probably would buy other computers, you’re right about that. But I can’t help but wonder how many people who buy these things switch the OS because they don’t like it and get a knowledgeable friend to do it, and how many of the buyers are just really REALLY cheap and buy the PC to put windows rather than buy one with windows pre-installed for $50 or $100 more.
I didn’t see much in the line of a review here. It was like half a review. They told us that they bought the computers and how much they cost but not much else. Kinda seemed more like a home shopping network ad
What else do you expect to hear regarding such PCs? All you need to know if they work as they supposed to, they are the low-end anyway. Don’t expect SPEC and 3DMark benchmarks.
it would be nice to know, but i think no one has that statistical information. and i guess that those wich switch to windows are using a illigal copy of windows (eaven using a bundled windows licence is not allowed to be installed on another computer… and people going for that cheep will not give out $$$ for windows [not all of them, but most of them])
cheers
SteveB
A guy at work who lost it all (Big D) needs a cheap and I mean really cheap computer. This may suite him as he just needs internet access.
Well I just think that in such a review they should cover the various applications and how they ran. How easy the computer was to setup and what the overall feeling of the systems was.
I’m not dissing you for posting this.. just wondering why it wasn’t gone into much more than saying “here are the computers and this is how much they cost and this is what they came with”. I mean I can get that same info from going to TigerDirect.com and Walmart.com. Seems a rather pointless article as it really didn’t have much more info.
From what I understood from the reviewer’s mindshare, his article was focused on the actual hardware. He didn’t really care about LindowsOS. He even mentions (which is something that reveals that he seriously thinking of trying) on how “hard” would it be to install Windows XP on these machines.
holy sh*t, where do they get them from-can’t believe such things are still getting manufactured?!
that’s really unbelievable!
they must have bought them for $1 per piece or so from an hardware antiques dealer…:-)
such things definitly belong in a museum, not into new computers!
LOL
I to have been made fun of because I still have a amd k6-2 300mhz with 256mb of ram and a Voodoo 3 16mb gfx card that I use here as part of an internal network. Even though I do have a recently built 2000+ athlon and love it. I still like that old machine and its durability. Before I built the Athlon I used for years a PIII 450mhz and I to got made fun for using that for keeping that so long. But what most people dont understand is that for most people the computers that these companies are selling are more than enough power. Also alot of people that inherit old computers try to run newer software that require more ram and feel that there computer is to slow. Instead the trick is to try to use older software and oses. These old machines are still very useable for office work, and surfing the internet. I have debian stable and abiword on on the old amd k6-2 300mhz and when people come over they use it to surf the net. I to have a lot of older parts for this computer ready and i got them from others that either there power supply died or they just gave up on there old computer and wanted to toss it out after say getting a new dell or sony. I gladly took in there old machine and bring them back to life or just strip for parts for the old amd k6-2.
Hey, new computers are great but it is also very wasteful not to keep using these old machines. I remember last year I was chatting with a friend in hungary that was running a internal network at home using a combo of 386 and 486’s. He was using NT 3.51 and Nt 3.1 for this and was shocked that I had as something so fast a PIII 450mhz. He frankly said he could only dream to afford something like that. So yea $200 for a 1.0 or 1.1 would be a steal for anyone especially for my friend in hungary.
and God is slow
Not only they have yet to prove the existance of God (I’m BTW a evangelistical christian), they found out his moving speed!
How many people here have tried Lindows? Any comments from those who have given it a shot? It is an OS I thought about trying and would like to hear what others who have used have to say.
Well, for $200, understandable… which really begs the question: is those $200 really worth it? how about spending another 100-200 bucks and getting a Windows one that is far more faster?
I can’t say I have used it, I only tried it on someone else’s computer. But from the amount of time I have used it, I found out all my outstanding problems with Linux on the desktop (besides applications of course) have not been dealt with, and all the changes can be done almost easily (well, Lindows 2.0) on other distribution.
Frankly, I would rather get Xandros, which fixes some of the problems I have with desktop Linux. But Lindows? Maybe one day.
Just read our 3-4 reviews of LindowsOS we have already published here. Click on the Lindows icon for LindowsOS story archive.
panakeia = panacea ( Read More section )
feel free to delete this message 🙂
>panakeia = panacea
Sorry, but the real word is panakeia. 😉
My girlfriends little brother just got one of these and I helped him set it up. I don’t know if the article is wrong or the pricing is just wrong, but for $200 he got one w/ a 20GB harddrive and shipping was ~$15..it came w/ speakers, keyboard, and mouse too.
Anyway, he’s been using his sisters laptop(KDS P3 850Mhz w/ 256M RAM) w/ redhat 8 for about a month and a half(was using windows 98 on an ancient computer before it died). So when we got this hooked up he was pretty used to redhat and we pulled lindows off(said it reminded him of windows too much) and put redhat 8 on. For only having 128M of RAM it runs pretty smooth. It holds up to the KDS laptop fine, but it does get bogged down when it runs out of RAM and starts using swap. The graphics card kind of sucks too, can’t run tux racer well let alone quake 3(which he really wants installed). The system does have AGP 4x on board though and can hold a Gig of RAM, so it looks like we’re going to spend about $60-70 and get him ~1G of RAM(it’s pc133) and a geforce 2MX from pricewatch.com. Anyway from my playing w/ the thing it seems like if all someone needs to do is surf or chat on the internet and type up some papers this machine is great. Even if you’re a bit of a power user $60-70 worth of upgrades can make this system a great deal.
The latest Consumer Reports magazine reviewed the Lindows PC from Walmart. The review was not very positive (from a normal consumer point of view biased toward Windows apps). Link: http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv2.jsp?WebLogicSession=Pu…
Wow… they call that a review? Where do I sign up? I could write that “review” without even buying the computers, saving them $600 + shipping!
Slightly ironic that the machine sold by walmart may not work with the walmart ISP.
“may not be compatible with some dial-up Internet services, such as AOL or Walmart Connect”
Actually, it looked to me like the Walmart PCs were running Lycoris, and not Lindows. And I, too, find it ironic that the Walmart Connect is not compatable with PCs that they sell.