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$200 Linux PCs 106

Posted by Nathan from the oh-so-cheap dept.
Gekko and Webslacker were the first of many to tell us about the stir over at ZDNet, which is reporting on the arrival of sub $200 PCs due Q1 2000. These new desktops from Taiwan's Tatung come in eye-catching candy colors a la Apple's iMac. Tatung has opted for Rise and Cyrix K6 chips instead of Intel Pentiums, and a CD-ROM drive is an option. One wonders with the increase in the cost of DRAM how this will impact the price?
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$200 Linux PCs More

$200 Linux PCs

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  • The Mystery of the Missing Killer App (Score:5)

    by Clairvaux ( 98631 ) on Tuesday October 12, 1999 @01:24AM (#1622004) Homepage
    About two years ago, when PC prices began their long, unrelieved slide to levels today which would have amazed the PC buyers of the early 90s, I did some hard thinking about whether this was a whole new ballgame and what factors were at work here which I later turned into an unpublished article. Let me restate a few of the relevant points here.

    NOTE: this turned into a GIGANTIC post, but I strike a blow for Penguin at the end, so hang in there! ^_^

    * * *

    First, pricing is a result of supply and demand forces. This is axiomatic. Thus when I observe some kind of systematic trend in prices, I infer that there are systematic changes taking place in demand, supply, or both.

    On the supply side, we have Moore's law and it's cousins perpetually at work bringing down the cost-per-unit of processing power, storage, bandwidth, and every other dimension of computing. There are some irregularities to this which I'll address later but fundamentally, the past 20 years have been characterized by remarkably steady progress on the supply side.

    If you accept this, then the relative stability of the average selling price of a PC between its advent in the early 80s up until roughly 1995 meant that there must have been concurrent, offsetting changes on the demand side stimulating demand for the constantly increasing supply of computing-units.

    We even have a name for these demand-side stimulants. We call them Killer Apps. I my opinion, these Killer Apps are so significant to the history of the PC that one can even slice that history into phases characterized by the Killer App of the day.

    I. Early DOS Era (1981 - 1984)

    Spreadsheets and word processors! The first Killer Apps that drove initial sales of the PC, pushing it into the corporate mainstream. Spreadsheets, running in text mode under MS-DOS, supported several generations of hardware upgrades, because the performance improvement from each upgrade was visible and appreciable -- and contributed to
    productivity.

    Typical CPUs: 6502, 8086, 8088 Typical RAM and storage: 256K RAM, 180K floppies, 10MB hard disks

    II. Late DOS, early GUI and Graphics Era (1984 - 1989)
    With growing sales of PCs came the development of lots of other uses for them, and the advent of rapidly improving graphics. The Mac GUI and page layout software like Aldus Pagemaker were acknowledged Killer Apps. And GAMES baby!

    CPUs of this Era: 80286, 80386, 68000
    Typical RAM and storage: 640K RAM, 100MB hard disks

    III. Late GUI and LAN Era (1990 - 1993)
    As the set of tasks for which one could employ a PC grew, users began needing to easily switch between applications. Several methods were developed that allowed the PC to run concurrent programs.

    The GUI imposed a significant system overhead, once again supporting demand for several generations of CPU progress. Furthermore, all the software for PCs was eventually rewritten as graphical Windows applications to facilitate multitasking and incorporate new features that the GUI environment made possible. The new code was fatter, driving demand for more/faster RAM and disk space.

    This era also saw the emergence of widespread local area networks (LAN) allowing shared storage resources and launching the client-server paradigm. This segmented the PC market into client desktops and network file servers. The PC-based server was a Killer App that definitely pushed demand for computing power and divided the market into today's enterprise/desktop segments.

    CPUs of this Era: 80486, 80486DX2
    Typical RAM and storage: 2MB - 8MB RAM, 400MB hard disks

    IV. The 32-bit Era (1994 - Present)
    The next Killer App that continued this saga of seemingly perpetual demand for more hardware performance was the advent of 32-bit GUIs in the form of Windows NT and Windows 95. Applications ONCE AGAIN being rewritten for the new OS consumed even more system overhead and incorporated yet more functionality, creating another cycle of appetite for better hardware.

    CPUs of this Era: Pentium, Pentium Pro, AMD K5, K6
    Typical RAM and storage: 16MB - 32MB RAM, 1GB hard disks

    V. Today: The Internet Era (1996 - Present)
    Today's Killer App which drives sales of PCs is the Internet.

    Unfortunately for the companies that had planned on continued geometric demand growth for CPU speed, RAM, and drive space, this latest Killer App doesn't require those things. Applications for browsing the web, chatting, and communicating with e-mail, in their existing form are very "light" applications which don't require supercomputing horsepower.

    Meanwhile, nothing new has emerged in other areas that offers appreciable functionality for mainstream users to carry the upgrade cycle further. Spreadsheets, word processors, presentation builders, and so on have apparently attained a "functionality saturation point." I'm sure we've all heard the comment, "What MORE can a word processor do?"

    Clearly, the situation bodes ill for companies such as Intel, Micron Tech, and Western Digital, who have benefited from past generations of killer apps, but look to be out in the cold this time around. In the past, killer apps doubly pumped companies like these: by (a) shifting demand curves outward, and (b) simultaneously reducing price elasticity of demand, tilting the demand curve toward the vertical. A more detailed discussion of this effect is in a separate article; here, suffice it to say that these effects combined to heavily reward vendors of these products with each advent of a new killer app.

    CPUs of this Era: Pentium MMX, Pentium II, AMD K6
    Typical RAM and drive space: 32MB - 64MB RAM, 2GB - 4GB hard disks

    So -- are you still with me? Amazing! ^_^

    The way I concluded this article two years ago was to predict a recession in the PC industry unless a new Killer App emerged. Well, I was WRONG. No new killer app surfaced, but the PC industry has been booming.

    Why is this? I believe it's because although the demand level for stuffing a ton of power and storage into a single box has plateaued, the demand for the number of boxes has continued to climb, as legions of new, first-time buyers, attracted by the "network effect" enter the market. Geoffrey Moore would describe them as "Late Majority."

    Supposing that this continues for a while, and average unit selling prices of PCs continue to decline, I see a couple of interesting consequences of this. The first has to do with Milton Friedman's theory of component elasticity. This theory is very simple so don't worry if you didn't make it through Econ 180. The relevant part of it states that those parts of the whole product which are a big chunk of the cost of that product will be most sensitive to changes in the market for that product. Here's how it's relevant to the PC situation. Back when the average PC cost $2000, a $100 license for the OS was only 5% of the total. So nobody worried too much about the price of the OS.

    HOWEVER -- for a PC that costs $400, the OS is now the BIGGEST COMPONENT COST. Vendors have a tremendous incentive to try and reduce that cost ... and guess what they're all thinking about right now?

    LINUX.

  • hmm this gives me a few ideas. I like the idea of a kitchen computer (make use of all those damn recipe sites my mom keeps sending me) and a bathroom computer (mostly just so i can say that I have one)

    lessee if i move the microwave over near the sink I can put the kitchen puter in that snug little corner the microwave used to be. all i would need on it would be netscape, licq and maybe an irc client, same for the bathroom box. this way i can obsessivly stay in touch through the whole food consumption proccess!
    Only problem i see with the bathroom computer is humidity from the dangerously hot showers i take, hmm i suppose i could shut it down and rig up some kinda plastic cover.
    Ohh the bathroom computer would be a big hit at parties i'm sure... specially when i get the MP3 jukebox with the web interface hooked up to the stereo....all requests from the bathroom could be grouped together as the shit list!

    *sigh* this is what happens when i post to /. at 2:30 am ;->

  • BTW: The iMac is ugly, these PC's are even uglier. How about something which looks more boring. Technology shouldn't bee seen, it should just work for you.

    Why is it that people that think like this are convinced that everyone else must as well?

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • That being hex 12...

    --
  • A very salient observation you've made there; except that the Killer Apps are still around, but instead of hitting a PC bottleneck, they are restricted by network bandwidth.

    Just think of video conferencing, VR environments and other such bandwidth-sucking beasties...

    Indeed. The Industry Bigwigs know that killer app is just sitting there. Waiting. Just out of reach.

    Sure... Intel tries to dance funky animations in front of us, wave a "door" around on the screen, and claim that CPU horsepower (specifically, THEIR brand of horsepower) will make your Internet experience better. We all know that's hooey. What we need is bandwidth. Intel knows that too.

    Witness the investments in both cable and ADSL that Bigwigs like Intel and Microsoft have made. They really don't care what high bandwidth hardware religion comes out on top. What they DO know is that once the bandwidth is there, the next wave of resource intensive apps will become commonplace. They need those apps to sell product.

    I agree. The next Killer App is dormant. Its only waiting for the telecommunications infrastructure to get around to laying a path to your home. Its a slow process.... but its just a matter of time.

  • I hope I dont get called to do a service call on one of these. Although, AMD's processors are great the rest of the components have gotta be crap. Consider if nothing else, that the price of just memory has recently shot through the roof because of the earth quake in Taiwan. Computer hardware is one realm where the "ya get what ya pay for" term is really true. God forbid my mother gets one of these. I'll be over there every week. It's a P.O.S.

  • It's finally gotten to the point that the only way to reduce system prices is to reduce the OS fee... My theory on this - MS refuses to give up or reduce their licensing fees for Windows What-Year-Is-It-Again, at least for a while. System manufacturers, in the drive to compete, find that the only way they can be a contender price-wise is to drop said fee and go with something free. The public won't care as long as the systems are easy enough to use. MS loses it's chokehold on the market, and we've won.

    The only thing that can prevent this is, if the systems are too hard to use (for average, non-CS degree users) or are made of really inferior hardware, the term "Linux Computer" could go right up there with "Betamax VCR" and "AMC Gremlin." (And "AMS laptop" for anyone who's ever owned one...) Even if they start out difficult and get better, there would still be the damage done, as the public tends to remember being burned this way.

    We'll see, I guess - It's going to be a bumpy ride...

    Comments welcome!

    bp
  • Games. PC technology is pushed forward the most by games. Color graphics, sound cards were considered fluff when they were available except to game users, until they became common enough that business can justify it. "Multimedia" was a pretty good excuse after the fact to incorporate sound cards and CDROMS which are now considered normal for business PCs.

    The killer app is games. I know I have a seemingly continuous flow of money to make games play better. If it weren't for games I would still be using my 486. (I did use it until 1998, forgoing the ability to play Quake, but I didn't have any money then.) Once I had the chance I got the best computer I could afford. I got a PII/266 so I could play Quake II. I got a Voodoo I, then a voodoo II for beautiful and smooth graphics in Quake II. When I found out 32 megs of RAM was slowing me down I got an extra 64 megs. I got DSL so I could play Everquest for hours without tieing up the phone line. (high quality streaming audio (shoutcast) was also a factor for me) Also to improve my ping times for quake II servers. I recently got a celeron 466 and a tnt2 ultra when I noticed Everquest was getting choppy. (and freed up 3 pci slots in the process by taking out my pci 2d, 3d, and dvd cards) Now I'm getting a new motherboard because it isn't up to snuff in the agp slot area. Like I said, I was fine on the 486DX2 66 except for games, and even then it ran Duke Nukem 3D fine. I have to admit though, it doesn't take much money anymore to keep just one step behind the bleeding edge. (celeron 466 only $100 as compared to $500 for the fastest CPUs)
  • I need a pretty inexpensive Linux box to use as a firewall and router for a home LAN. If there is a local market for used equipment, I don't know of it. I would love to be able to order a $200 linux machine, as long as it's Pentium-class I don't care how fast it is. I have a couple of extra monitors and an old CD-ROM drive, so I could easily make it work.

    I wouldn't buy one for just typing and web-surfing, though. Linux doesn't really support a lot of low-end peripherals that I'd wanna use if I was looking for a computer on a budget. Maybe in a year or two.

    Take care,

    Steve
  • "I wonder how (a PC vendor) can get to $200 with Windows 98. But if they can do it, that's a real PC -- that's a breakthrough," he said.

    What the hell was this guy thinking when he said this? I thought it was the greatest thing in the world when the article said they were going to charge $500 for a Windows box and only $200 for a Linux box, then this idiot has to imply that a Linux box "doesn't count as a REAL PC". Arg.

    Well, you know, it doesn't. I mean, since Microsoft's operating system is so great, we wouldn't need a monopoly to force people to keep using our OS.

    I mean, not that we have a monopoly. But if we did, it'd be because people like using our software, not because we've been able to strong-arm the OEMs into bundling Windows on all of their machines.

    Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that we like strong-arming OEMs. If they'd just sell users the operating system that they (the users) prefer, we'd all be a lot happier.

    Oh, and if they'd bundle MS Internet Explorer, too. I mean, what's the big deal? It's not like anyone likes using Netscape Navigator; I mean, we were able to take all of their business away by giving away copies of our browser for free. That proves MSIE is better, right?

    Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah; it can't possibly be a [quote marks with fingers]"real PC" if it's not running Windows 98 and MS Internet Explorer.

    Thanks for letting me ramble. Oh, and sign up for your Passport account already; my stock prices are slipping, and I need to add another wing to the house to hold some more redundant NT boxes...

    --billg@microsoft.com
  • My parents just bought a nice little computer for $650 (yeah, Cdn) at the local CompuSmart (I'm sure any halfway decent chain has similar offers). That's with win98 and the Corel suite, a modem, ethernet capabilities, and all the other standard trimmings. Only 32 megs of RAM and a 4.3 GB HD and lame hardware 3D, but it's still an awesome machine for anything but the newest games or video creation/editing. They could have a decent monitor and printer for under the $1000 mark (if they didn't already have those from the old computer).

    If they'd sell these things without the commercial software, the price could easily be under $600, and you'd have a great little Linux box. Even for the current price I'd like to buy a couple for testing my network code when I can afford it.

  • Re:eToaster (Score:1)

    by J4 ( 449 )
    Actually on a system such as these that has a narrow range of hardware and a limited potential for expansion there is no reason that an end user would be recompiling a kernel. Anybody that says Linux isn't suitable as a consumer operating system either

    A) Never used it
    B) hasn't used it in the last 2 years
    or
    C) has an interest in preserving the status quo.

    I gave my 10 y.o. nephew a linux box about 6 months ago. He uses it everyday... the kid is hardly a geek. Likewise his mom and the rest of the family. As a matter of fact I'm giving one to his oldest sister, who, until _she_ used it, thought she had to have a windows box. KDE is the key here. Interestingly enough ppp is easier to set up under KDE than under MacOS.... For the record I have nothing against Gnome (actually I prefer certain Gnome utils) but right this very second KDE is more mature.
  • By my definition, a killer app is one that is so indispensible, someone will buy a new or different computer just to have it, right away. In my pathetic little opinion, there have only been two killer apps in the history of PCs.

    1. VisiCalc - The application that transformed personal computing from a hobby to an industry.

    2. NCSA Mosaic - The application that made Internet access must-have. Parent application of both Netscape and Internet Explorer.

    I cannot think of any other PC product that changed the world, overnight.

    Products that I regard as influential but fail the killer app test include Macintosh (MacOS + MacPaint + MacWrite), LAN technologies, and Wolfenstein 3D.

    If you want to see Linux become a/the dominant OS, you have to figure out what the next killer app will be and write it for Linux. Preferably in such a way that it won't run adequately on any other platform. :-)

    Of course, it's the nature of killer apps that if anyone knew what it would be, we'd have it already. It stands to reason that the nature of the next killer app cannot be extrapolated from any product we have and use today.
  • Can you all say Beowulf Cluster? I knew you could :)

  • When I read that quote, I assumed that he simply hadn't looked carefully, and thought it came with Windows 98. Oh well, clueless, or skimped on research (or both).

    Those computers look pretty good, though. Not the most up to date, but for the price...
    I also have to like the case. They followed the iMac's lead, without blatently ripping it off. Emachine should take note...
  • Techies wouldn't want them for their personal workstations, but imagine using one as a router [linuxrouter.org], firewall, mail server, etc on a home LAN. All you'd need would be the slots in the back for ethernet cards.

    I might pick up a couple.

    Take care,

    Steve
  • Maybe they are not for CAD, but they should at least be a decent platform for Quake 2
  • FWIW, a search for "Cases black ATX" on Google returned 200 matches. amoung them:
    http://www.baber.com/baber/products/mpemd2.htm
    Granted, $120 is a bit steep for a case, but it sure looks cool, and it goes to show that They (tm) are starting to listen.

    Kishar
    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
  • The thing that is coming is the ubiquitous computer. The way to make a business out of it is not to think, ooh 9 computers in the house - each with a monitor, a keyboard, yada-yada, but to embrace the fact that we have too much processing power. If you use a PC you only get 100% loading for a fraction of the time. Stick a linux PC on your central heating system, your oven, your video, etc, etc. Make it accessible to a structured e-mail, your home page, SMS messages and then you can set the video from work, from the back room etc. Pile on the processing, have a box in every room playing music web-casted from your livingroom to your home domain. Mix your interfaces - why would you need a monitor, mouse and keyboard for your central heating, access it's web page from one of your 9 linux systems with a keyboard and screen... The man that fixes your computers should be a plumber! The appeal of Linux is not paying hundreds of licences for one household full of computers, the down side is that all PCs should be as easy to use as a Mac. Users use, plumbers plumb. The next computing paradigm will be ubiquity, computers everywhere, and the cost structure (ie free please) will drive the OS market for the ubiquitous chip. Your main machine will be a state of the art chip, good graphics, blah-blah, but the ubiquitous ones will be so-called 'obsolete' technology... (so-called cos anyone that minds BBC Micros and ZX81s can never think of a 386 as useless...). What I am saying really is that producing cheap machines for use as computers is not the answer, thinking of what these cheap computers are going to do for users (normal people, slashen dotten niene danke...) is the problem. How to use them without peripherals, how to access them remotely, how to boot them off your local network, how to keep the cost down, down, down and how to make them plumber-friendly and user-invisible are the tasks... That's my tuppence... I gotta getta new job and my mind turns to these things a lot too....
  • Is this going to be anything like the e-machines. All the cheapest stuff you can get, winmodems, non-multiread cdrom, no 3d accellerator, etc... Sure you can word process on them, but the computers were REALLY meant for games, otherwise Best Buy wouldn't have 5 rows of games and 1 of useful software.
  • You know, those annoying booths they have in public libraries, connected to the council Web site or whatever, or that provide employment advice.

    Why bother with a regular PC when one of these will do just as well?

    The colours are groovy, too.
    --
  • "I wonder how (a PC vendor) can get to $200 with Windows 98. But if they can do it, that's a real PC -- that's a breakthrough," he said.

    What the hell was this guy thinking when he said this? I thought it was the greatest thing in the world when the article said they were going to charge $500 for a Windows box and only $200 for a Linux box, then this idiot has to imply that a Linux box "doesn't count as a REAL PC". Arg.


    Myopic
  • Funny -I was thinking the same thinkg -I'm not the only one that reads /. while takin a digga
    -Kris
  • Whoops. I just posted that and duplicated your idea. A beowulf cluster was certainly my first thought.
  • You want a games machine for under $1000? They're called "consoles". Sony, Nintendo, and Sega make 'em.

    My eMachines has a multi-read CD-ROM. The included modem doesn't matter since I have an @Home cable connection[1]. And while it may not have a separate 3D accelerator card, it's got on-board ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo 2x AGP graphics with 4 MB of SGRAM.

    Damned good deal for $520, including tax, printer, and monitor, after mail-in rebates (not the "internet" rebates, the real ones). I can spend $300 on upgrades and still come out ahead of a new Gateway or Dell machine.

    [1]The 56K external modem I mentioned in a previous post on this subject is now on another machine. I still prefer externals to internals anyway.
  • One of my friends has a computer in his bathroom. This is a source of great amusement at parties, as can be seen in the following excerpts from logs...

    -----

    /I have officially baptised a strange bathroom... Long live my contribution to the stains of yore.

    huhuhuh... that's disgusting.

    I am a space mutant.

    It's not just char. It's char *

    Who chown'd the throne?

    you men... keep the damn toilet seat down! there are drunk women here that can fall in!

    Matt says lifes a bitch and then you die. His only question is "when do we get to the dying part?"

    Don't make me kick your ass in the morning...

    Oh man, I'm so drunk right now that I m respoinding to by owb comment and It's cufnny... hehe

    commando chickens of death. "Moo!"

    Hmm, I think I like this computer-in-the-bathroom thing!
    ---
    yeah, it makes looking at porn in the bathroom MUCH easier

    btw - i hope everyone washed their hands BEFORE typing on this. maybe i'd bette r wash my hands again, just... in... case....

    na tualyetye, ya picala eti slova.

    what about the tatoo that says "die bart, die!"
    oh, no, that's just german for "the bart, the"

    for (i = 0; i
  • This means one of two things if this box is running Linux:

    1) This is a hardware modem (I doubt it)

    2) They are writing drivers for a winmodem

    If it means that a driver is being written for a winmodem (lets hope to god its not one of those pctel linmodems we were hearing about earlier) this could be interesting. Yes, winmodems suck, but they are cheap. I have a LTWin that I get connect at 48k on at home, it would be really neat if I could use it in Linux (assuming it was the modem they were planning on including)

    Andrew (hoping that it isn't a Rockwell HCF (puke) either)
  • Frankly, no matter how good Linux is, it isn't a consumer operating system yet. I am sometimes baffled by the things mentioned when it gets down to kernals and roots and compiling (oh my!), so an average consumer would just be out of their league.

    A real techie (many of which use Linux) would not buy one o these things. They would want the 700 MHz Athlon with 256MB ram and a 20gig hard drive, a GeForce 256, blah, blah, blah.

    What techie wants a computer that looks like pastel dung(TM), a puny hard drive, and a general lack of features. The thing is cheap, and I don't mean cost-effective.

    Most people don't understand Linux and the ones that do would not want this piece of crap.

    Apple when it started it's iMac series was known for being a big player in the education market, and thus a natural move was to actually introduce one that they could afford. But Linux? Cmon now.

    CD-ROM optional..... so when you go to buy software is has to be on floppy? Or do they expect that every single person that buys these is going to set it up or the internet and download all their software?

    Most consumers don't understand how to do that. All they could figure out to do with this pastel dung(TM) is to stick bread in the thing and have the K6 make it toast.
  • Try running IE5 and NS4 on a 8MB Pentium machine, and you might get my original point. My argument for labeling is that neither NS4 or IE5 is appropriate for underpowered cheap computers. It has been the industry trend, that the latest and greatest feature bloats get the good hype, and a lot of good and fast software is forgotten. It is perfectly possible to create a fast, reliable browser supporting HTML 4.0 and CSS2 in a much smaller footprint than the two big browsers. What we need is some incentive in the software industry to promote good software design. I think it would be great if there was some mechanism in the software marketplace which drew focus from the feature list to more important things like quality, support, speed and size.
  • The author also didn't disclose how much RAM.

    You'd need 10MBytes for an xterminal + 4MBytes of video ram, at least.

    I wonder if the price goes down if you throw away the disk?

    Is their a built-in NIC on this?

    Finally, how fast is the processor?

    Chris

  • COOL! (Score:1)

    by kijiki ( 16916 )
    Am I the only one thinking an X terminal for every room of the house?

  • Excellent... (Score:3)

    by Xuff ( 99173 ) <xuff AT xanthra DOT com> on Monday October 11, 1999 @11:09PM (#1622046) Homepage
    Ahh, finally, the bathroom computer comes home. No more printing /. to keep me entertained during #2, now it's all gonna be live!

  • Cheaper by the sixpack? (Score:4)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @11:11PM (#1622047)
    Now that would be something. Maybe a hacker's dozen? Buy 16, get the 17th for free.

    O rbuy as many as you need, and another for a spare, so when one of them dies, you just quickly configure its net address (or use DHCP in the first place) and you're back on line.

    Heck, get two for each room, that way you have some hot standbys!

    Yeh, I see some potential here.

    --

  • Re:COOL! (Score:1)

    by MSZ ( 26307 )
    Nice idea.

    But it kinda loses it's appeal, when you have to add decent monitor etc :-(
  • Has anyone said Beowolf cluster yet?
  • From my personal point of view I prefer an AMD CPU than the Cyrix they are planning to use in their sub-200 PC.
    Hopefully the AMD prices will get lower also and it will be possible to have the sub-200 machine with an AMD CPU and in that case I want one.
    About the plans of building machines with windows 98: Who needs to pay $200 more for a piece of software that is going to be uninstalled later on in order to install Linux. They should be reconsidering there's really no good business with Win98; after all, who needs it?.
    And about the lach of CD: I don't need to get a new CD with each machine I buy, I already have many CD players at home so I can use any of them.
  • My question is simple: why not allow the customer to choose from a list of colors.. a LONG list. Not everybody that doesn't want beige wants some prissy pastel color.

    I want BLACK. Charcoal gray. Matte finish dark blue. What about my needs?

    --
  • Yeah, i agree! ALL consumer electronics except
    computers come in either:

    1: Colorful design
    2: Aliminium
    3. All Black
    4. Combination of the three

    I am not all sure about the iMac, but they
    sure were brave to make such a radical change in
    design. IBMs Abtiva series look pretty good too.
    In BLACK.
  • I wonder what graphics-card they are going to use?
  • Ya, remember ACER computers? Now THOSE were consumer devices!

    At least the G4 and new iMacs come in clear and Graphite. That looks pretty damned decent if you ask me.

    --
  • I hope those guys will deliver internationally, 'cuz it seems that hardware in Europe is still more expensive than in the USA.

    Didn't see any monitors btw. Are we still stuck with a grey monitor next to the very colorfull puter?

  • My parents are goign to buy a new computer.
    They are going to buy a $2500 (canuckian) machine.
    With Windows 98, a printer, and probably a winmodem.
    Arrrgh!
    Even if these little things cost $600 by the time
    I pay for them in Canadian funds, they can't say
    no to a GNU/Linux powered machine...can they?
  • They look like you could pick them up with one hand, but they could easily be two or three times that size. Also, an example of a colorful case that's not pretending to be an iMac.

  • ??? (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )

    Um... Cyrix K6 chips? Sorta like those AMD MII chips, huh?

  • And a mega bonus discount if you buy a 124 node Beowulf cluster :)
  • I know a guy who bought an e-machine a few months ago for $400 (flat, no rebates, no monitor either). He thought he was getting a good machine for a low price. So far he's had to pull out the modem and put in an old 33.6 because the cheap HSP Micromodem kept burping out and stuck in an old SB16 because the onboard sound sucked. He also added a Voodoo3 and is having problems with the onboard graphics, there's a short on the disable jumper or something, and e-machines wants to just replace the whole damn computer.. so he's planning on buying a K6, 100mhz RAM, and a new board. The only things he will be using will be the floppy, cdrom, hard drive, and case. (Oh, he bought a 6.4 gig hd because the 2 wasn't near enough). Next time I see him I think I'll ask him how his $400 case is working out.

    This point is that cheap PC's are just that: cheap. The only difference here is that they are linux boxes, so you don't need as much power as a windows box. But for a home user looking for a cheap PC, it's not a good solution. For your average geek, it's pretty cool to just add another linux box, though.
  • A dozen is 12, a baker's dozen is 13. Closest "geek-type" number is either 8 or 16. I prefer 16, but 64 would be nice too...
  • Yeah, one in each room would be great, but the problem I'd have is space for the monitors, keyboards and mice. I've been toying with the idea of touchscreen LCDs. Here you could do a basic user-interface giving access to the common functions with only the flat panel screen visible. I've seen touchscreen LCDs available but only at horrendous prices, anyone know of a cheap way to get hold of these? Being in the UK it would be useful if the supplier was in Europe.

    One other point, every cheap PC I've seen makes a horrendous amount of noise, everyone is talking about continuously on systems, but would you really want that continuous drone in every room of the house? I've a decent high spec PC in my bedroom that is quite quiet but it never stays on overnight. Unless they start supplying devices to alter the speed on the fans, and decent ultraquiet fans at that, and linux starts to power down the hard disks appropriately, I don't think this will change.

    Course I could just splash out on a load of laptops....

  • My question is simple: why not allow the customer to choose from a list of colors.. a LONG list. Not everybody that doesn't want beige wants some prissy pastel color.

    I want BLACK. Charcoal gray. Matte finish dark blue. What about my needs?



    Beige is easy to paint over, I go for beige + spray paint/model paint. I just wish the cases were cooler looking, I'm getting tired of just Square. Someone throw in some nice curves or something.

    Kintanon

  • Cyrix chips & cheap PC's (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wanted to point out a couple of things that Slashdotters are not keeping in mind: 1) The Cyrix MII series chip is fine. It is no good for playing quake or ripping CD's->MP3's but for word processing, email, web surfing, etc. it works great. My primary Linux box is a Cyrix 233MHz and I am quite pleased with it. Though I am going to build a new system off the ABit BP6 with dual 500MHz Celerons because of the wave of games hitting Linux now, including Q3A. 2) For us Linux folks, these machines don't make an ideal primary box. But it makes a hell of an X terminal. Put them all over the house. A decent monitor will cost more than the whole computer but you don't need decent monitors everywhere. 3) Imagine what public schools can do with this. A PC for every student? 4)I'm surprised nobody said it yet, but.... BEOWULF!!! :-) Okay this isn't going to be worth crap as a real cluster *but* it is very useful to teach parallel computing concepts at the high school level. 5) Can I get it a little cheaper with a beige case? I'd prefer a plain little pizza box case for something like this. Pastel colors aren't my thing.
  • Although really cheap PCs are viable, there is one problem: What kind of software will run well on it? It is pretty obvious that bloated software like Win 2000 + Office 2000 + IE 5.0 won't run very well on these systems ... but a lot of excellent software will!

    It says right in the article. These "PC's" will be running Linux.

    It is a misnomer to consider these as "PC's". Because they are not. They will never replace the PC's that are typically imagined when a PC is mentioned. They aren't intended too. They are market to consumers who just want to surf the internet, get e-mail and do word processing.

    Maybe there should be a cheap PC labeling system to help people decide what software to get for their new $200 PC.

    These devices have no CD-rom. You won't "get" software for them. You'll get them to use the software that comes setup and ready to run.

    The people who these devices are marketed to are people who heard they could shop online, or do email, or perhaps some word processing, or typical use like that. Instead of spending $600 on a PC just to get e-mail and surf the internet, they go to Best Buy and buy one of these $200 devices. The salesperson sets them up with an internet account, not unlike is done now, and they go home.

    Once they are home they open the box, take out the device. Plug in the power cord, monitor, and telephone cord. Turn it on. When the Wizard comes up type in your name, account name, ISP number and GO!. All the important information which the user wouldn't understand was, of course, filled out on the quick-start card at the retail store. Once they've done that they get the "desktop" with the icon for email, web and word processing, and perhaps a few other standards apps. Turn it off from the menu. Turn it on, it boots right up to the "desktop" and there are their icons again.

    And this is the killer app on the desktop for Linux. Linux is extremely user-friendly in this use, much more so then Windows. It has all the apps that the user needs. WordPerfect and Mozilla. And there's no need to worry about running 3rd Party software. OEM's are free to customise however they want, something that Microsoft won't allow with Windows. And it is "their" package. Not Microsoft's.

    Ah, yes, the future is bright for Linux in low-cost computing devices.

    -Brent
    --
  • You can surf the web just fine with an old Mac LC carrying about 10 megs of ram. I should know I did it for quite a while. Really! That little box packed 10 megs of ram, 540 meg hard drive, 14.4 modem, and a wicked 12" screen. Hey don't knock it, I could do everything any non computer minded person would need to do, get mail, surf the web, write papers... Oh well, it didn't play games though, thats what a 300 or so mhz machine is for :)
  • Windose is only considered a gaming platform because games are written for it.
    That is based on marketability not platform quality. Since Linux will become more marketable, games will be written on and for Linux. This means you will get the same perfomance from a game on a P2 200 running Linux then you would get from a P3 500 running windose. (It will also mean that software will become less of a driving force behind hardware)
    Now Clustering and parrell processing will become the next big "Thing" for the home users allowing for more resources to be put into it. This will lead to huge technical leaps in compilers that can take advantage of compiling for parrell processing.

    SO whats this mean?
    for the same money as a top of the line machines you can have 10 machines each with half the processor speed, but with more processing power.
  • If you want a touchscreen, Fujitsu's Lifebook B series notebooks come with them standard. They're $1500, but you'll end up paying close to that for a comparable desktop with a LCD/touchscreen anyway (won't you?)
  • OS fee's for even small computer shops is not even close to retail price. When NT 3.5 came out it cost the shop I was working at 25 dollars.
  • Can you say vaporware?

    That's pretty much what this is about.

    This computer will not come to be manufactured at that price point any time soon (particularly by Q1 2000).

    Want a serious machine at that price point, buy a dreamcast!

    Or an older Palm.

    Still looking forward to the Nokia 7100 with microbrowser.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Last year my dorm room wasn't wired with Ethernet jacks. We had to use Localtalk to network through the phone jacks. My expensive, wicked-cool PC wouldn't do that, so I bought a Mac LC at a state surplus warehouse for $40. It wasn't much, but it did everything I needed it to do, even as a CS student. Besides, "Oregon Trail" was awesome.

    Actually I had three Macs total -- I added a Classic and a Classic II to my fleet for $20 each. I pillaged them for parts and software and when I was done, I gave them to friends, who used them daily for e-mail, essay-typing, and stuff.

    A computer that was made in 1991 or whatever performs very well, as long as you relegate it to the tasks it was designed to handle. Or until the HD dies.

    Take care,

    Steve
  • Mac LC?!?!? I used to use a Mac Classic (7Mhz 68000 processor) with 4 megs of ram ,a 50 meg HD, integrated 9 inch B&W monitor and a 9600 baud modem with Lynx or if I was feeling adventurous NCSA Mosaic. Still have that box...makes a great sequencer.....
  • this kind of news is depressing for someone who might some day like to get into the business. The competition is already daunting but this borders on assanine. There's no real point in trying to work for yourself anymore, everything's already been done and done cheaper.
  • As of now it still looks too good to be true. After all, still no monitor, some highly outdated components, and no mention of a warranty. Not to mention the eerie IMac-esque focus on color and looks (now in 6 delicious fruit flavors). Might make a nice gift for granny or the kids or a halfassed web machine (ew), but i dont expect too much use from it yet.

    However, the option to have Linux preinstalled on the box is a great idea that is finally coming around. Yes, self installation does teach a user a large amount of necessary information and skills, but then again, how many mainstream pc users could deal with installing windows by themselves from scratch? It's great that buyers are finally getting some choice on what OS they can run on their box instead of having windows foisted upon them. Of course this may result in some clueless newbies inadvertently screwing up their new boxes, but it's definitly worth it to establish Linux as a true mainstream force. The trend, if sucessful could convince software companies to port all their products to Linux and provide more tech support for Linux users. Plus, if Linux hits the mainstream, MS might actually have to start working on fixing Windows instead of relying on their market monopoly. I hope this trend continues in full force.
  • When the PC is still sold at $1000 and above, the cost of operation system is relatively lower. Now, PC with Linux only sold for $200, it is 2/3 of the one with Win98. So we can expect that, when $100 Linux PC appear, the price of PC with Win98 is DOUBLE. If you are home users, you would choose which one?
  • The VIA MVP4 contains a trident blade graphics core.

    The memory for the graphics could be taken from main memory (UMA memory architechture). All helps to keep the price low - as well as performance.
  • Yep, this kills one of my ideas: I was thinking of building sub-$200 Linux boxen from the MachZ [zfmicro.com] "PC-on-a-chip". Oh well... guess I'd better stick to PPC [openppc.org].

    --Tom

  • Well, so the forgot a "," big deal!
  • Why not make a kit for mounting your new computer in a wall? It would be nice for kitchen recipes, and the like.
    Another kit would be to make arm-chairs with build-in computers.
    "What's on tv now?"
    "Don't know, I'll just check the chair."

    -----------------------------------
  • It all depends. Seen from a producers point of view, it is all about obtaing your goals. In this case the goal is: Keep the computers retail price as low as possible. All leads to

    1. Linux
    2. Cyrix,
    3. Onboard everything
    4. Only one type of ram (graphics and main memory IS the same memory)

    As a personal note. Linux and Cyrix is quite a good combination as long as you don't require floating point performance.
  • fear not. Not all users are looking for the cheapest PC they can find. Look at the specifications of these machines closely and you will say to yourself well, I need a monitor - and a good one will double the price of the PC! If you do get a good one then perhaps you might want a better graphics card. You want graphics? perhaps you should get a beeter CPU and more system memory. Well, there's no point having a PC if you can't load software onto it so you should also add a CD-ROM, if you're going to get CD-ROM you may as well take advantage and get DVD. Want to ensure your data is safe? then perhaps you should look at SCSI and RAID 5 arrays or perhaps a backup drive will suit you.

    These $200 PCs are so stripped down that it's not really worth buying if you're seriously looking at running Linux. I used to work for a Taiwanese manufacturer: they once decided to remove a 25Mhz clock from one of their sound board and wire the circuit to a 33Mhz clock, small problem however, when you sampled sound at 11Khz, you would have to play it back at 8khz on other sound cards to get the sample to sound right!

    Sometimes it's always better to pay a little premium, just to ensure good workmanship and guarantee.

    If you're looking to get into the system integrator business then I would recommend that you concentrate your marketing and production on quality, leave these tacky PC makers to waddle in their own £$%*.
  • Anyone who cares what kind of processor is inside this kind of box is shopping for the wrong computer.

    This type of "Internet Appliance" is tailored to be sold at the consumer electronics level to people who "Want to get on that Internet thingy" for the least amount of cash. Think WebTV.

    We should be happy that the box will be at least somewhat useful when they're thrown away after the new models (with new colors) come out. If they have the foresight to include an ethernet port on the thing, that is..
  • Although really cheap PCs are viable, there is
    one problem: What kind of software will run well
    on it? It is pretty obvious that
    bloated software like Win 2000 + Office 2000 + IE
    5.0 won't run very well on these systems ... but
    a lot of excellent software will!

    Maybe there should be a cheap PC labeling system
    to help people decide what software to get for
    their new $200 PC.

    There has been some initiatives for defining
    performance requirements like MPC2 and MPC3, but
    both of these labels required a CD-ROM to be in
    place.


    BTW:
    The iMac is ugly, these PC's are even uglier.
    How about something which looks more boring.
    Technology shouldn't bee seen, it should just
    work for you.
  • Since when does Cyrix make the K6(hint: AMD does)? Before you know it, it'll be Microsoft Linux!

    Peter Pawlowski
  • Here's how it's relevant to the PC situation. Back when the average PC cost $2000, a $100 license for the OS was only 5% of the total. So nobody worried too much about the price of the OS.

    It's amazing that in Microsoft's Anti-trust trial they *still* tried to argue that the cost of a typcial PC was $2000.

    HOWEVER -- for a PC that costs $400, the OS is now the BIGGEST COMPONENT COST. Vendors have a tremendous incentive to try and reduce that cost ... and guess what they're all thinking about right now?

    The concept of the black box. People buying a "computer" to do a few limited tasks. They don't care one bit what OS it runs as long as the web browser lets them use eBay.

    How can Microsoft compete when the OS is no longer important? They can't. I predict that we'll see a lot of marketing by Microsoft saying that the sub-$200's PC's are a "bad thing". (IE, Microsoft will keep computer out of reach of the consumer). Then when they realize they can't stop it they will subsidize the licensing of Windows to "Black Box" OEM's. But hopefully by that time it will be too late. OEM's won't want to give up their freedom to have their product dictated by Microsoft just to accept money from Microsoft.

    -Brent
    --
  • Linux is my personal fav for OS but BeOS is also free to distribute as long as it is the OS that loads on boot. It'd be interesting to see a partnership there and maybe have them port more of the Linux programs to Be, especially drivers. I think $200 PC's is a great idea, especially for computers not using Winmodemish parts. Most people really don't need a lot of speed and without the bloat of Windows the hardware goes a lot further. Heck I still use a 486 w/ Linux to web browse a lot of the time and it preforms better than the PII 333 w/ Win98 that I am using right now. As long as these babies have enough RAM and a decent NIC I'll consider buying a few. I prefer having a dozen lowrange computers over one heartstopper anyway. Now what if they start offering these with GLite ADSL as a package from the phone co? :)
  • Cyrix K6 = AMD K6

    Also, am I the only one who thinks those look incredibly tacky, like Pez or lighters...20 years from now we'll say, "Man, did we wear weird clothes, and what about those funky computers!?".
  • check out tatung's site...they sell plenty of other normal computers
  • A very salient observation you've made there; except that the Killer Apps are still around, but instead of hitting a PC bottleneck, they are restricted by network bandwidth.

    Just think of video conferencing, VR environments and other such bandwidth-sucking beasties...

    If there was fibre layed to every door, the prices people would be willing to pay for computers would go back up.
  • As much as I'm a total linux geek, I have to admit, since I installed win2k rc2 on my k6-2 450, 128mb, tnt2, sblive monster, it flies faster than I've ever seen X go. True, you need a monster machine, but w2k is looking to be a fairly good OS for the high-end computers. (And i've always thought NT was so much better than 95/98 anyway) Still can't compete with my speed in console though. I think it's mostly GNOMEs fault anyway, has anyone else noticed how much slower GNOME is than KDE?

    To keep this on topic: Linux is good. But if everyone could live off a low end machine and have no problems, why would we have advancements? The large article up there a bit failed to mention today's "Killer Apps", games. Games are the main driving force in today's hardware, always pushing it to the edge. Yeah, Loki is bringing a lot of gaming to Linux, and Q3 is out for linux, but let's face it, Windows _is_ the gamer's platform, hands down. We need OS's that require monster computers in order to keep pushing the hardware further. I'm in the process of building a less impressive linux box, to give myself more hd space on the win2k box. Linux is great, and I'd never give it up.. but frankly, for a home user, on a high-end computer with high-performance hardware (the TNT2 ultra and SBLive come to mind), Windows is the place to be for the time being. I can't really use linux that much on my new box because the SBLive drivers aren't very good (no 4 speaker support!) and I just feel dumb not being able to go play Descent 3 or Half-life without rebooting.
  • My only real worry is that a sub 200 dollar PC running Linux is going to seem like buying a Hyundae in stead of a Toyota...

    My point being many people really do feel that you "get what you pay for". I know many people who would feel that spending 900 bucks for a machine with Windows on it is going to be 700 dollars better than the linux box.

    It probably won't be true, but that does not stop them from feeling it to be true.

    We can't "Sell" Linux to the masses simply because it is free. There has to be some kind of perceived value. I know Linux wins on technical merits but what about the masses?

    Microsoft actually gets "perceived value" with their little "Certificates of Athenticity" and Registration cards etc.

    My worry is someone is going to walk into a warehouse type computer store, first baited by the 200 dollar PC, then switch to the 500 plus dollar one because it has a CD-ROM and Windows 98 on it.

    What are we going to do about this?
  • Nothing. Let the facts speak for themselves.

    Windows is overvalued. We get publicity every time it crashes.

    Anyone who reviews them both will end up saying *and* this one is $100-$200 cheaper! (remember, if you're paying that little, you probably don't know what an operating system is, or a monitor... They'll find that out when they know better.)

    Also, if they craft the distro properly, it'll be sweeet! (anything that might be able to connect to the internet and loads Word docs, and 90% of the Windows world is happy. When it doesn't crash, everybody is happy!)
  • :::From my personal point of view I prefer an AMD CPU than the Cyrix they are planning to use in their sub-200 PC. ::: who doesn't? =)

    but anyways, it would be nice to have the extra option of a celeron processor too. Pay an extra $25-35 or so...

    love,
    hdj jewboy
  • Thats it? For $200 I can buy a computer that's about two years out of date? And why are all of these components still sitting around in warehouses anyway? Because they sucked the first time, that's why. So are these companies trying to say that if you want a cheap, low performance, obsolete computer then you should get one that has Linux? But then I guess most computers are purchased today soley to get on the web, and how much processing power do you need to keep up with a 56k modem? Umm, do things even come with modems?

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