[Tigerabbit]

<a href="http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search.gsp?search_constraint=3944&search_query =LindowsOS" target="_blank">http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search.gsp?search_constraint=3944&search_query =LindowsOS</a>

That's right, LindowsOS, not Windoze. No M$ tax. No M$ at all.

How do these compare with build-your-own in price? Does anyone have experience with Lindows? Will some/all/none of the current projects run on these boxes?

Opinions? Granted, they ain't Macs, but then several aren't exclusively running Macs either.

[cdhostage]

Hmm..

Durons and Celerons.

Running EMULATIONS of Windows code.

Sounds very slow to me.

Unless you format and make them *nix boxes.

In which case, Durons and Celerons/.

[Shaktai]

(lurk mode off)

You might want to check out <a href="http://shop.explorermicro.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=6&Product_ID=1403&CA TID=15" target="_blank">http://shop.explorermicro.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=6&Product_ID=1403&CA TID=15</a>

You can pretty much design your own box with choice of processor, motherboard, RAM, HD, graphics and OS, including Red Hat or Mandrake Linux and even Windows if you want it. Stay away from the Celeron's if you are looking for a good cruncher. They do okay at Folding@Home, but the AMD Athlons do much better and the celerons really do poorly at most other projects on a megahertz per megahertz basis.


(lurk mode on)

<small>[ 06-16-2002, 05:39 PM: Message edited by: Shaktai ]</small>

[SkiBikeSki]

I'm really surprised that Wal-Mart is selling anything but Windows boxes. Seems like those boxes have some decent specs, but if you look at the real details they're using slow hard drives, and horrible video cards, and such. I'd still build my own.

PS If you look at all 8 boxes, some of them have Athlons or P4's.

PPS Those boxes use a similar case to mine. Just that <a href="http://65.119.30.151/productimage/11-108-156-01.JPG" target="_blank">mine</a> has one more drive bay.

[Tigerabbit]

Wal-Mart is just proving to M$ that there are some fish too big to intimidate.

Hypothetical WSJ headline: Wal-Mart buys M$, writes-off as quarterly charge of $.10 per share.

Yes, it's cheaper to build your own, but not if you don't know what you're doing. Remember, I'm the one that sat on and broke a G3 upgrade card!

I'm so Mac-centric that I don't know what qualifies as good in the PC side, and I know that I can't be the only one.

Is a poor video card REALLY going to make a difference in a CLI client? It doesn't look like it would to me. I can see where a slow hard drive can affect performance, but enough to insist on bleeding-edge technology?

[Shaktai]

If you just want a box for crunching, the video isn't that important, but the HD might be. From what I have learned (from my own mistakes), if you want a box just for crunching, go with AMD Athlon, and a decent DDR Ram motherboard. An adequate hard drive (10 gig is plenty big) and just minimal sound and video cards. CD reader is probably adequate unless you think you will use it for other things, then it might be worth getting a CD-RW, and of course the default floppy.

The link I posted a couple of messages above is for fully assembled boxes, but you can specify how you want them. An Athlon 1900+, 266mhz bus, with 256 mb DDR Ram, 20 gig HD, CD Rom, floppy and 8 mb video card, ethernet and basic sound, is about $463 assembled. Then you can add your choice of OS. $99 for Win XP home edition, $3 for Red Hat Linux or $6 for Mandrake Linux (CD's only, no manuals or support). I use Mandrake Linux, because it is a little more user friendly for a "mac-centric" person like myself, with the default install.

[SkiBikeSki]

Silly me. I forgot that the real reason we're talking about PC's is only so they can crunch DC stuff for us. With that in mind, the Athlon system would make a very good cruncher. Although the video card won't perform much better than a Rage 128, it's more than enough for DC and Linux. The 40GB hard drive is also more than enough for DC, but I still wish it were 7200 RPM's. I also would forget about Lindows, and just install a real Linux like Mandrake or RedHat.