$200 Everex gPC desktop featuring gOS proves to be popular
By Jonathan Schlaffer
That $200 Everex gPC that Walmart has been advertising has proven to be quite the hit in its online store, currently being out of stock but can still be picked up at select brick and mortar locations.
The “g” in gPC and gOS is not associated with Google in any way, shape or form, just so we’re clear on that and it stands for “Green.” To my (and probably others) surprise, it is receiving “good” to “excellent” reviews and ratings at Walmart.
Tech.Blorge.com reported on the gPC a while ago but just to recap it features a VIA C7D 1.5GHz processor, 512MB of memory (which can be expanded to 2GB), a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, an 80GB hard drive and the ever awful VIA Unichrome integrated graphics and if I read the specs right there is no chance to improve that as there appears to be no PCI, AGP or PCIe slot.
One anonymous review points out quite clearly what this PC is and is not for…
“This is not a windows computer… This is an “Internet computer” and solves the needs of most people nowadays.”
That’s a statement I can get behind, the weak hardware would never get you up and running with Vista but might be capable of running XP and even then it’s still just an “Internet PC” as it could not play games or do any heavy lifting with PhotoShop or video editing.
In other words, this is a novice’s computer, it’s what you would buy your technically lacking parents or grandparents just to get them online and it comes bundled with a number of web apps, mostly provided by Google.
At $200, and just to be used as a Internet access computer, it should serve well and I hear it is a fairly quiet operator but I wouldn’t trade it for my pixel pushing-power sucking gaming monster (even if it is as loud as a window fan some days).
The only con, I suppose, is that the mini-ITX motherboard could have fit in a much smaller case than the relatively full size case it comes in but our previous post delves into that matter.
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on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
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Stumble It!
November 12th, 2007
I thought Linux was for technically advanced gear heads who enjoyed spending all their time recompiling programs and typing in incomprehensible commands at the CLI? Now it’s for Grandma and a beginner machine. 512 meg of RAM and an 80 gig HD won’t run the bloated DRM’ed Vista, but would certainly run GIMP and open sourced video editing software. Not well, I grant you. Most folks never upgrade anything but RAM and HD anyway. At least Granny won’t have to stress over viruses and malware. Hopefully the hardware won’t crap out because of cheap componets.
November 25th, 2007
although i agree with you about the command line, using linux for the basic surfing, web mail, spreadsheet, cd burning, etc., is no more difficult than your first glimpse at a windows machine.
i’ve been using linux pretty much exclusively for the past year plus. nothing to tough. may even go look over one of these machines
can always throw a different distro on it, or even W2K or XP.
November 25th, 2007
although i agree with you about the command line, using linux for the basic surfing, web mail, spreadsheet, cd burning, etc., is no more difficult than your first glimpse at a windows machine.
i’ve been using linux pretty much exclusively for the past year plus. nothing to tough. may even go look over one of these machines
can always throw a different distro on it, or even W2K or XP. don’t give a rats patooey about vistame2, anyway!