PC for under US$200

Apparently, two weeks ago, Wal Mart sold out its 10,000 units that cost US$200. The specs include a 1.5 GHz VIA C7 CPU embedded onto a Mini-ITX motherboard, 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive.

Sounds pretty ok, considering if you are just using your pc for normal usage eg: typing, reading emails, updating your blog, surfing the net. So what makes it so cheap? Well the answer is pretty straight forward. No Windows.

The PC is not bundled up with Windows in here, and no Microsoft Office, this PC runs on Linux and Open Office, both are open source and free! So that keeps the costs low.

You can read more about it here.

If you think abt it, the PC does meet your basic needs. Unless you are a High-end user like me, then this PC meets your requirements for a PC on a budget. There is already a lot of bad publicity on Windows Vista and that is one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging. I been currently trying to downgrade to a Windows XP because Vista is taking such a long time to load and shut down!

Anyway, I think because of that, people are opting to stick to Windows XP or buy a Mac or in this case, switch to Linux. And best of all, it's cheap. This period reminds me of the Concorde era. It had the ability to reach places at the quickest possible time, and providing good service to it's passengers, but in the end, it is just too expensive to travel in it and it too had it's own terrible disaster which led to the end of it's career.

Comparing that with the current wrap on Vista, M$ is goona have a hard time trying to sell it's Vista. Windows has been the standard for most part of the world users, but if Vista is not keeping to it's promises, people are losing faith in M$. I think, now other OS are springing up soon to offer a better alternative and Linux is probably becoming a contender, maybe not enough to beat M$ but at least it is trying to get it's share in the market. Now I read, Google is making it's own operating software.

You can read more abt it here.


So what do I look for in an OS?

1) Light weight
2) Ease of use
3) Quick Loading time

Hopefully someone can create such OS. I am not into nice cool graphics, I just need an OS that works fine and doesn't load forever! Till then, it is XP for me.