hi everyone -
yesterday and today i've been trying out the $99 ubuntu linux computer (dell
optiplex gx1 -- 600 MHz) being sold for $99 from pcretro.com, a mail-order
company in the washington dc area.
this is one very sweet computer. it surfs plenty fast on the web using
firefox. i have a slow cable modem connection at my apartment that is equivalent
to a 768 kbps dsl connection.
when i go to a web site, there's a pause for 2 or 3 seconds, and then the
web page loads quite rapidly. scrolling thru long word processing documents is
fast. (i.e. almost no noticeably delay in scrolling thru a 100 page word
processing document.)
applications launch relatively quickly. this computer boots faster than
my new pentium 4 windows xp system.
for word processing and web surfing, this is a very usable computer.
with both firefox and openoffice.org writer programs loaded in memory, i was
using 121 megabytes of 251 available megabytes in RAM. that leaves ample free
memory for running one or two more applications concurrently.
the 20 gigabyte hard drive on this computer has 15 gigabytes free. if
this computer had itunes for linux installed on it, i'd be in heaven. (apple has
not announced such a program, but wishful thinking sometimes produces results.)
the version of ubuntu on this computer is version 4.10, from late
2004. presumably newer versions of ubuntu would work even better.
i'm really pleased this computer is available to community members at
such an affordable price. the small size of this computer is also impressive.
it's barely wider than a foot ruler. (it's 12.5 inches wide and 14.9 inches
deep.)
i'll be writing up a more detailed review that will include some photos
and videos. just wanted to share this info early in case it could benefit any of
you.
for families that have the new $15/month dsl service from verizon or
sbc, this would make an ideal extra computer to have in the house. (or it could
function well as a person's only computer, too.)
this computer has a built-in ethernet port, so it could share a
high-speed internet connection using an ethernet hub or switch.
- phil
Phil Shapiro [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/pshapiro
http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/pshapiro
http://www.his.com/pshapiro/stories.menu.html
"Wisdom starts with wonder." - Socrates
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