I agree completely.
I built one around this "barebones" chassis from ASUS last year:
Still purchased a DELL monitor and I am very happy.
D
Aaaeeeiiiii!!!! That's the first time I've ever heard anyone describe Gnome as "lighter weight"!!
This happened when people migrated from Windows 95 to 2000 as well.
I strongly believe you have that bass-ackwards.
in one box. Disk drives are not normally an added techical risk, but graphics cards can be. Equally, ASUS is a solid motherboard manufacturer, and if one selects a reputable video card, that is low risk. Generally it seems that anything with NVidia chipset is a bit more solid than ATI.
Linux is a good choice here.
I agree. I have one too.
================================== I agree entirely. In fact I find that the best way of getting the required compatibility is to buy all the essentials from one knowledgeable supplier who's prepared to 'guarantee' compatibility of the bits he sells.
Cic.
That's an issue with only one particular manufacturer's software.
The last time I built one was 3 years ago, and even then, it wasn't worth building completely from scratch, but from a barebones system. Nowadays, not even that's cost effective in most cases, although there are reasons other than cost one might still do so.
Make that NVidia and AMD, now. Given how closely AMD and NVidia work together on chipsets, I wouldn't be surprised if this drops to one main video card player by some means or another.
and which type/how many slots you on the m/b and case drive bays.
Yes, these are still much more manufacturer specific, which is driven by significant development/innovation in a market where there's fierce competition between vendors, not just on price but also on features such as lights-out-management, live system component replacement and expansion, power consumption reduction, performance, size reduction, effective multi-core/multi-socket designs, etc.
Compared with KDE with all the bits?
I reckon the actual building takes at most about 1.5 - 2 hours. Installing the OS and upgrades will probably take a lot longer, but you can usually let it get on with upgrades on its own.
As Tim says, the biggest part is deciding what you want. It's so different each time with changes in marketing/technology, but still straightforward.
You can often get a bundle of mobo, memory and processor, which saves having to faff on with finding compatible bits.
Often best got from one supplier as a 'bundle'. Saves the hassle.
I just put a post on Groklaw about the OLPC campaign. I thought that I'd add it here for advice on getting or not getting one and because I think my post will end up in the can.
The Economist puts OLPC to rest Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, January 05 2008 @ 05:55 AM EST This is perhaps off-topic but then again, perhaps not. Any way The Economist has a very depressing review of the XO: One clunky laptop per child "Great idea. Shame about the mediocre computer"
My reply:
It's dated January the fourth. Perhaps that means last year? So how did he know what Intel was going to do?
This is a comment from the link:
I listed all the complaints that one poster on here wrote about when he was sent a dud and the post -if not the entire thread, was pulled. So don't come looking for too much parity here.
I'm not saying the article is accurate. It sounds like it was written by an Intel salesman. Just that things can get slightly unecumenical on here about certain topics.
Without being able to get my hands on one, I can't speak for myself. Then I asked on another post what the reason was for not making them available in supermarkets in North America and Western Europe.
So if it isn't clunky and tired, what is the reason?
The one missing feature on this ASUS box is on board RAID controller. Not a showstopper though.
Processor is Core 2 Quad, and lots of memory. Great for video editing and rendering..
The one mistake I made was choosing a "noisy" HDD. Going to get an (allegedly quiet) 1Tb Samsung Spinpoint shortly (
I see their cheapest Laptop comes with Ubuntu installed as the OS.
I wonder how many people have bought one of these on price alone without realising what they were getting. :)
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Bang on. After having Ubuntu, which is supposed to work out of the box not work out of the box on three systems, I decided there's no point messing around with it. I've got enough things to do without spending time making a PC work.
The website automatically selects the three year warrenty for you. You have to put it back to one to get the flyer price (usually).
I've always found mail order of things that are too big to go through the slot in my front door to be a PITA (perhaps I have been very unlucky).
You can almost certainly match the price elsewhere
tim
If they've gone via the dmxdimension site then that may indeed happen!
However to get Ubuntu on a PC from the Dell site itself requires some digging - it doesn't even appear in the 'OS choice' list. I wish they would promote it a bit more however I do concede that for many it would be unsuitable and indeed verging on potential disappointment!
Mathew
Yep, I've just bought a 399 laptop. It was virtually impossible to buy a desktop with monitor for less (and absolutely impossible to persuade the droid to unbundle the monitor from the deal).
tim
I prefer "It's broke, fix it, give my money back or send me another one" to "It's broke, I've got to work out what's broke, then send it back, then fit the replacement myself" etc. Some hardware faults can be very hard to diagnose, and of course, there's no real comeback if the software packs up.
Any saving that you might make on the parts disappears once you have to add in the much higher cost of buying a single copy of Windoz (even the system builder version).
Or were you expecting Dave to fight with Linux.
tim
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