Wal-Mart To Sell $300 PC
Wal-Mart is introducing a new Everex PC which uses a Via microprocessor, has Microsoft Vista installed as well as Open Office - and that's it. No bloatwear, no trial software. There is no monitor, either, but it's an interesting concept.
Wal-Mart Inc. opened its campaign for the back-to-school PC sales season on Wednesday by unveiling a US$298 desktop from Everex that combines three of the most popular industry trends– open-source software, a power-efficient processor, and a lack of "bloatware."
The Everex Impact GC3502 uses Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista OS, but substitutes the OpenOffice.org 2.2 version of word processing and spreadsheet tools for the traditional Microsoft Office variety. The computer runs on a 1.5GHz C7-D processor from Via Technologies Inc., a chip that meets lead-free environmental regulations and saves energy with low wattage demands.
The sales price does not include a monitor, but is still lower than comparable packages sold on Wal-mart's Web site, such as a Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) Compaq Presario, an Acer America Corp. AcerPower FH Minitower and a Dell Inc. Dimension desktop.
The system features 1 GB of RAM, 80GB hard drive, a DVD/CD-RW combo drive, integrated Ethernet (but no wireless), and VIA Chrome9 HC IGP integrated graphics. Sounds like a pretty decent system. One analyst quoted says she isn't sure people will be confident in the Open Office software - which is kind of a silly objection. I run Open Office on all of my Windows computers with no issues at all - even the ones that have Office. I actually prefer the Open Office. In fact I have decided never to buy another copy of Office. Of course if you're moderately handy, you could build a very similar system with an Intel Pentium D for somewhat less, but with no Windows Vista. (I bet Ubuntu would run flawlessly on it, though. For free.)
Geek Stuff | Gaius Wednesday, 18 July , 2007
By clifto, Thursday, 19 July , 2007 @ 11:33 am
You say it has Vista, and in the next breath you say it has no bloatware.
P.S. Not to start a religious war, but Kubuntu has KDE…
By Gaius, Thursday, 19 July , 2007 @ 11:40 am
Heh. Good Point.
By Donald Sensing, Thursday, 19 July , 2007 @ 2:23 pm
One gig of RAM? Vista?
Good luck! Be prepared to shell out another$75-$100 for another gig.