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Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek)
InformationWeek
notes that Wal-Mart is selling a lot of Linux-based Everex gPC machines.
"The Everex TC2502 Green gPC will again be available at Walmart.com "in the coming weeks," said a spokesman for the company.
Wal-Mart began selling the Everex gPC online for $199 earlier this month, but it's currently listed as "Sold Out". Wal-Mart's spokesman wouldn't disclose precise sales figures, but said the gPC "has been one of the top performing desktop computers on Wal-Mart.com over the last few weeks.""
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Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 1:06 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Paul Kim from Everex talked about the return rate of the gPC, compared to the return rate for a recent "Vista Home Basic" machine from the same company. The questions they're watching are (1) compared to how many sell, how many stay on the software update system and how many drop off because the user has installed something else? and (2) what percentage of the systems get returned to the store?
Retern rates Posted Nov 16, 2007 6:29 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] Does "talked about" mean "revealed"? All I see there is a link to audio that I don't have time to listen to. A couple of numbers might enlighten.
Return rates Posted Nov 16, 2007 10:00 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I agree about need for text summaries of podcasts! I did listen to most of this, here are a few points the Everex guy made: - return rate for a different PC running Vista Basic was 34% - the gPC return rate isn't public yet but are much lower - they also haven't published rates for how many gPCs are bought vs. request gOS updates from their repositories, vs. drop off the radar (though latter could be due to installing another Linux distro or going for Windows) - they don't get a fee from Google for search traffic It's worth a listen if you have 10 minutes - the fact that this Linux PC is selling out indicates that Everex have got something right. I suspect a lot of it is good marketing, pricing and positioning, and use of Web 2.0 apps - it would be great as an economical second PC for households that already have broadband, or for people who simply want a very cheap PC and are getting broadband at the same time.
Return rates Posted Nov 16, 2007 11:01 UTC (Fri) by adamoell (guest, #33953) [Link] The guys from Everex did mention that the return rate projected from limited data received so far was down around 15%, which they view as excellent. The Windows Vista Home Basic laptop, with a return rate of 34%, was Everex' worst ever product for return rates.
How fast is it? Posted Nov 16, 2007 1:09 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I cannot find any speed rating for VIA C7-D. Saying that is runs at 1.5 GHz doesn't mean much these days. Can does it compare to Intel Pentium III running at 733 MHz I'm using on my test system? Can I expect that it will compile the kernel twice as fast?Hardware review sites are mostly interested in the high-end products, and VIA processors are nowhere near the high end. Even self-imposed "pentium ratings", as skewed as they have been, are not in the vogue these days.
How fast is it? Posted Nov 16, 2007 2:27 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I doubt that it'll do kernel compiles twice as fast. I am having a hard time finding benchmarks also.. but in the past clock-for-clock they are not very efficient when compared to the P3 stuff. So it'll be faster, but more like if you overclocked your system to 900mhz or 1ghz or something like that. In the mini-itx formfactor they realy shine if your interested in hardware accelerated crypto engine. They call it 'padlock'. With these low-power machines and proper libraries they can trivially outperform the fastest pentium machines you'd care to throw at them. But it seems like these boards lack padlock support, which isn't suprising. These things would probably make great desktops for surfing the web and would perform especially well as X terminals.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 4:04 UTC (Fri) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link] Is the processor 64-bit or 32-bit? Via introduced its first 64-bit processor in 2004, but I think the C7-D is a 32-bit processor (a low-power design originally intended for use in embedded systems and set-top boxes, looks like).
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 10:51 UTC (Fri) by danielhedblom (guest, #47307) [Link] When does it come to europe, i want one! This is a perfect computer for most people who only use their computer for surfing the web and writing occasional documents. I know many people who would have great value just to get a second computer so they can surf while the kids or the spause use the other one. Its like having that cheap second car.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 14:12 UTC (Fri) by iflorin (guest, #47370) [Link] Just last night I got the motherboard/cpu combo used in this PC (It is VIA PC2500E) and I ran an informal benchmark, comparing it against a PIII/1GHz. The benchmark consisted of running md5sum over a large file (260MB) 5 times on each machine and retaining the last values. The scores are: Via C7/1.5GHz takes 3.51 secs and Intel PIII/1GHz takes 2.09 secs to compute the same checksum. I did not have a hard disk connected to it so I cannot say what is the speed measured in kernel builds/hour. Just the bare board, with no hard drives and with 2 GB of RAM installed, pulled 30W at idle and 39W under load (this is with a generic PSU, not a 80+ efficient one). The main advantage of this combo over the PIII is that it can take up to 2 GB of RAM, compared with the microATX PIII which are all built around i815 chipset. Intel did not want i815 to eat into the workstation and Rambus markers, so it limited it to 512MB. For a file server, CPU vs. Memory is an important trade-off.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 15:27 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Thank you very much for conducting the test and publishing the results here! The results are pretty disappointing, actually. The PIII/733 machine I mentioned earlier is quite slow at browsing. Just opening several pages in Firefox can make the CPU utilization jump to 100% for about a minute. Memory is not a factor - about 200M out of 512M is used as buffers.Perhaps an average web page is much more complex these days, but it can also be my habit of opening many pages at once, learned on a system with a 3.2GHz Intel processor with hyperthreading. On the other hand, I don't visit flash-intensive pages. It would be interesting if users find gPC suitable for their everyday tasks. But the "greenest" thing for me would be to keep what I have.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 18:17 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] Firefox is nice, but Opera is much faster on the PIII/700 that I use, partly due to memory use and partly due to not having CPU-heavy UI and extensions written in XUL. Epiphany might be a good option as well, it's Gecko based so it should be compatible with more websites than Opera. In any case, having a fair amount of memory should help, as will using Enlightenment rather than GNOME or KDE. Even with Firefox, the PIII/700 is not bad, and I can use Foxmarks and Sage to sync all my bookmarks and RSS feeds to/from a Windows PC, which is very handy. I tend to use both Opera and Firefox as a result.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 18, 2007 14:34 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Epiphany supports Webkit engine (from Apple/KDE fame) nowadays also. It's in Debian Unstable right now and it works pretty well. It's kinda weird seeing the subtle differences in how webkit renders vs gecko. There is probably more work going to go into it to improve performance but my general impression is that it's a bit of a trade off between rendering pages slightly slower and having a reduced memory footprint. I haven't had a chance to do any real comparisions, but openning up Epiphany on one machine running webkit versus Gecko-Epiphany on another and then visiting the same websites resulted in both having about 3-4% memory usage.. But with Webkit-running machine having 512 megs of ram and the Gecko-running machine with 2gigs. Of course this is entirely informal.. Gecko is known for taking agressive use of memory when it knows it has plenty. All in all it seems that it's worth looking at Epiphany webkit if you want something with relatively low memory requirements, but still want a full featured web browser.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 18:13 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] Good discussion of how Linux could disrupt the PC market, based on the success of the gPC so far: http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2007/11/02/the-ir... The argument is that just getting more share of desktop PCs is not the way to go - Windows is entrenched here. The way to win is to change the game, by focusing on a simpler appliance-like PC or device that delivers Web 2.0 applications. The gPC is one example for desktop use, and the Asus eee is another one, for mobile use. (Actually the Palm Foleo was another one that I think could have succeeded, but suffered from terrible marketing...)
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 16, 2007 20:06 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Vendors don't need to sell a lot of desktop Linux to make a difference, though. (In that podcast, Paul describes getting a call from a certain vendor at 3:00am.)PC users will switch to thin clients when car drivers switch to light rail. Why link the success of home Linux to the tired old "network computer" fantasy of turning the cheap, messy PC model into the orderly, profitable cell phone model? You just have to get the Linux box compatible enough to work for enough people, whether that's through better bundled apps, more available "click-n-run" options, or just having a good enough browser for users who mainly use web services. If Everex can sell enough of these that they represent a meaningful chunk of ad space, and the users don't return them or blow them away, then it's likely that MSFT will retailiate with a cheap, ad-supported Microsoft Windows for low-end machines. That shifts the revenue in the PC market away from MSFT and toward Everex and its component suppliers—and it won't take that many actual Linux sales to do it.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 23, 2007 10:35 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] This is a different model to the old network computer, and people are already using Web 2.0 apps a lot, on their existing PCs. The gPC is a full Ubuntu capable PC on which you can install any application, including OpenOffice etc, but some people just want to be able to get to their Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, Youtube, etc. The gPC is more like the Google Android model (open low-cost client with good web browser, low enough cost to be sold unlocked) than the old subsidised cellphone model. You can reformat the gPC and install any Linux version, or just install different apps - some of the Wal-Mart website review comments suggest buying more RAM for $45 and installing full Ubuntu with GNOME. I don't think Microsoft is agile enough to do an ad-supported Windows - it's taken them years to launch Windows Home Server, and they really want to protect their Windows OEM revenue stream. Slashing that revenue stream to get ad revenue is a very bold move and means they need to push Windows Live ahead much faster. If they do launch this, that means Google would take the gPC model much more seriously to help defend their ad revenue.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 23, 2007 14:24 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] I just saw this - Sabeer Bhatia, who built Hotmail before it was sold to Microsoft, has just announce his new Web 2.0 Office application site, Live Documents: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_s... Free for up to 100 MB storage, this is a competitor for Google Apps and others. A little bit more evidence that the Web 2.0 model may just change things, and of course help Linux PCs be equally as usable as Windows PCs for the most common home / office tasks.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 18, 2007 14:46 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I have a Asus EEE right now. It's very impressive and everybody I've shown it to likes it a lot. People at work are planing on buying several to be used for testing usb hardware. Linux on the desktop can and do work, right now. And people will find them attractive. It just takes advertising and vendor support.
Wal-Mart Plans To Restock Hot-Selling Linux PC (InformationWeek) Posted Nov 18, 2007 14:48 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Hell, there is so much improvement that can be made it's mind-boggling. It's still not unusual to have a otherwise computer-savy guy go: "Linux? .. oh I heard of that. Isn't that that DOS-based system with the penguin and such?"
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