Under $300 laptops coming in 2008.

[Centurion]

Everex, the company that brought us the $200 gPC, has announced plans to market a line of laptop computers for under $300. These will not be "ultraportable" subnotebooks like the Asus Eee PC or the Intel Classmate, but full-sized laptops with 12.1 to 17 inch LCD screens. Although details of specific models have not yet been announced, Everex reports that these laptops will, like the gPC, feature the gOS operating system. Everex anticipates that the laptops will become available in the retail channel in the US during the first half of 2008. It is not yet clear whether these computers will be marketed through Wal-Mart, as are a number of current Everex laptops and desktop computers.

The inexpensive laptops will follow the model of the gPC, reducing costs by featuring lower-powered processors, standard RAM configurations of just 512 MB, and Linux in place of Vista. Because Linux generally runs well on lesser hardware platforms, performance is not expected to suffer.

The gOS operating system is a slightly modified version of ubuntu 7.10, using the "Enlightenment" desktop in place of Gnome or KDE. Enlightenment offers fewer desktop features than Gnome or KDE, but runs faster as the tradeoff. gOS also features one-click access to online Google apps, although it also includes the latest version of OpenOffice.

The recent emergence of a market for lower-speced PCs bucks the trend of increasingly ever-more-powerful hardware platforms as the starting point for new computers which has been the model for personal computer marketing since the development of personal computers 30 years ago. The low-spec market seems to have been created unintentionally by the United Nation's noncommercial OLPC project. The OLPC was designed by the UN in conjunction with MIT and Red Hat as a not-for-profit attempt to offer a cost-effective tool which might promote education in the developing world. The OLPC's success in squeezing impressive functionality out of inexpensive hardware is suddenly being copied by a number of commercial entities.

Everex is a US division of Taiwan's First International Computer Corporation.


http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Ever..._200_PCs_and_300_Laptops_Coming_Up_10231.html

 

[mike_n_herrin]

wow cool! maybe it'll make it in time for my niece's graduation from high school. i was going to give her my old one, but this might be better.

 

[Just_Believe18]

This is wonderful to help bridge the gap in the Digital Divide.

 

[Centurion]

I know dfwjacker has been kind to give his impressions of gOS in another thread. If anyone is curious enough to want to try gOS themselves, you may download the iso as a torrent Here:

http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=4822

(You need to register first with LinuxTracker.org, or your torrent client will be rejected by the tracker every couple of minutes.) The gOS disk can be booted and run "live," but the OS and all the apps are a little bigger than 700 MB, so you'll need to burn it to (and boot it from) a DVD, not a CD. Also, the free downloadable version does not play commercial DVDs and certain media files for reasons of copyright. You DO get the ability to play DVDs and everything when you buy the gOS computer itself, however. The license fees for all that copyright stuff are included in the cost of the computer, and all the necessary codecs, etc. are already installed in the retail version.

In any case, gOS is just ubuntu 7.10 with the "Enlightenment" desktop instead of Gnome or KDE. "Enlightenment" is considered by some to be a more intuitive interface (which means it looks more like Mac OS X than Gnome does). Enlightenment also lacks some of the features of Gnome and KDE, so its smaller and runs faster.

gOS includes the latest version of OpenOffice, but also features one-click shortcuts to on-line Google apps. I've been wondering if Google pays Everex and/or gOS an advertising fee for this. Is "crapware" coming to Linux?

gOS looks rather plain but functional. Not much "eye candy". Here are a few screenshots, just to give you an idea of what gOS looks like:

Here is the gallery from which these screenshots come: http://thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.php?linux_distribution_sm=gOS 1.0


Everex also says they will be offering a Linux-powered subnotebook computer in 2008 to compete with Intel's Classmate and Asus's Eee PC. Some people are predicting a small flood of cheap Linux PCs (both desktops and laptops) into the low end of the PC marketplace during 2008. It will be good to have a choice.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkWY7S1JmQw




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QUJffGbEvM


I had been thinking about buying a cheap laptop this year, but I think I'm going to wait to see what these Everex computers look like. Mostly I just do word processing, surf, play music, watch DVDs, edit pics from my camera, etc. None of that requires a particularly powerful computer. These cheap Linux computers look pretty attractive.

 

[kibashyho]

you can get great pcs for 150 now <3

 

[Jeffs0418]

you can get great pcs for 150 now <3

Really? Where?
Maybe a not so great one on Ebay and hope it works.

 

[star-warrior]

I'm glad we got an update