waterskidoo wrote:
> On 2007-07-25, DFS <nospam@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> p5000011 wrote:
>>
>> In the real world (see for instance the customers at www.newegg.com) we're
>> interested in the latest and greatest: overclocked Intel Core 2 Duos and
>> QuadCores and GeForce 8800 video cards and 2-4gb of Corsair Dominator memory
>> and 30" LCD monitors and 1kw power supplies and high-end sound cards. Only
>> on cola do you find wackos bragging about installing a command-line only,
>> stripped-down version of Linux on a 10-year old headless Celeron w/ 96mb of
>> RAM.
>
> But by the same token, what are the *true* requirements of the typical person
> walking into BestBuy or Circuit City to purchase a system?
> Browsing, email, IM, maybe a few games, a basic word processor and
> such. Does that type of person really need the kind of machine you
> mention above?
> Newegg caters to enthusiasts for the most part, just like Circuit City
> caters, for the most part, to average users.
> Older machines can be brought back to life with Linux, or people can
> just continue to use whatever version of Windows came with the
> older system.
> The entire hardware upgrade run-a-round is built on hype and the average
> person is never going to see much gain out of these super systems for
> average tasks.
> I would say gamers and people heavily into multimedia would be interested
> in the latest and greatest and could benefit from the technology.
> A older system running Linux is fine for the rest of the people.
>
There are over 500 outlets for Refurbished Dells in North America.
The refurbished Dells (533mhz cpu) start at $59 with speakers, mouse,
keyboard, tower, and another $34 for a monitor. Often, consumers
already have a monitor they will use. Refurbised Dells with faster
1.7Ghz cpu goes for as much as $219.00.
These systems are sold with the licensed OS such as Win98, WinME,
Win2k.WinXP. The systems include Dell 1 year warranty.
There is no more fervent GNU/Linux advocate than I. I genuinely know
that my answer is the absolute best and most efficient one.
I know that we can all switch and it will be the end to trojans, virus,
most spam. But, in some cases, for some people who resist learning how
to manage their desktop icons, and insist upon running a legasy
Microsoft computer on the internet, sans any hardware firewall
protection, the simplest answer for now is to use a really cheap
refurbished, warranted Dell computer, with the installed Free AVG and
Spybot S&D, hijackthis, crapcleaner programs.
http://cheaptronicsdepot.com is the outlet close to my home range. So,
I've checked them out, helped a few users get some.
Mepis runs really great on them all. But, ignorant folks will run slow,
and not know the freedom of Open Source.
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