A reason to shop at Wal-Mart (other than the cheap DVDs)
Wired: $200 Ubuntu Linux PC Now Available at Wal-Mart
The cool part: that system is built on a Mini-ITX motherboard with a 1.5GHz Via C7 processor. Boards like that usually sell for $200 all by themselves; with this deal you’re basically getting the RAM, hard drive, DVD drive, case, power supply, keyboard, mouse and speakers for free.
It would make a great home server as-is, or you could use the components to build a very capable HTPC or carputer. Oh, and the Via C7 has a hardware AES accelerator, so performance with encrypted filesystems should be excellent.
Yep, that’s going on the Christmas list.
Well, I suppose a volume discount could explain the price.
With all that extra case space, an ant farm could be inserted.
Comment by Alcibiades McZombie — November 1, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
I wonder if this could replace my mom’s aging Win98 machine…? I’m really not sure Vista is for her or dad since they don’t have any digital home media or any of that crap - she just needs to run Word, and AOL for email…
Comment by DirtCrashr — November 2, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Do you want to keep them on 98 or maybe upgrade to XP?
XP should run great on one of these things. I don’t know about 98; you might have a hard time finding drivers.
Comment by TD — November 2, 2007 @ 2:02 pm
I’d like to get them the hell away from 98 and up to XP, but my mom doesn’t really care about the OS as long as she can clicky-clicky and get to her files (mostly e-mail), use the word processor for church stuff, and run the Ancestor Worship (geneology) program for .
Actually the Zonbu thing looks like it would work fine too - the ‘Green’ BS would appeal to her, and she could keep using her keyboard and the other archaic bits, (monitor, printers) that she won’t give up to the Lords of Landfill…
Comment by DirtCrashr — November 2, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
The Zonbu seems to be a Via Mini-ITX system just like Wal-Mart’s offering, except it runs from a flash drive instead of a conventional flash drive. You’d have to get creative when it comes to installing Windows since there’s no CD drive…
Comment by TD — November 3, 2007 @ 12:10 am
Hmm, this Walmart Unix box is perfect for me - I’ve been wanting to get into Linux for a while(Ubuntu specifically) and not wanting to sacrifice any of my existing winboxs. It meant building a cheap box to learn on, but this is even bettter - it’s cheaper than I can build it, plus it doesn’t have the install headache.
Very interesting indeed.
Comment by HTRN — November 4, 2007 @ 3:17 am
They’re preinstalling some kind of customized Ubuntu variant which may or may not be worth a damn (my bet would be on “not”), so I’d go ahead and install the standard Ubuntu distribution anyways.
The Ubuntu installer is about as simple and painless as possible. You boot from the install CD into a full desktop environment so you can explore the system without touching your hard drive. When you’re ready to install, the actual installation program is a simple “next-next-done” wizard-type affair. No headaches
Comment by TD — November 4, 2007 @ 7:05 pm
Really? I heard that some of the loaders can be (to be generous) “finicky”.
Even so, that’s still a deal. Mebbe buy it, fool around with it to get my feet wet, then rip a disc and install a proper version.
Comment by HTRN — November 5, 2007 @ 4:16 am
It sounds a bit over my head…
Comment by DirtCrashr — November 6, 2007 @ 12:25 pm