How low can you go?

Posted on October 24, 2007 by watfordgap

What’s the lowest price you can find for a desktop PC?

The Sunday papers always have adverts for best value machines from the likes of ‘Dixons World’ or ‘PC Comet Express’ at the bargain price of £299, if you go to an on-line shopping site you can pick one up for around £230 (inc VAT), but now it gets better… and in more ways than one.

Next time you run out of baked beans, beer or …. big bunches of bananas (Alliteration too!) and nip to that shopping behemoth known as Tesco, you’ll be pleased to hear you can fill your basket with a PC for £139 as well!

However this isn’t just a PC like any other … it’s running Ubuntu (V6.06).

Yes, that’s right Linux on sale in one of the mainstream retail outlets!

Although you don’t get a monitor for that price, you do get it delivered, Open Office is installed (the others don’t have an office suite) … and Clubcard points thrown in too!

Can it get better? These it seems are merely imitators, because if you want the ultimate bargain, contact the guys at Bristol Wireless as they’ll do you a PC (albeit refurbished) running Linux and Open Office, complete with a monitor for just £50. Maybe no Clubcard points on this one, but you are  buying a green PC and helping a voluntary sector organisation - who need the revenue more than the supermarket giants!

Anyone go lower?

Filed under: FOSS, ICT Hub, Ubuntu, WEEE, nptech, nptechuk

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7 Responses to “How low can you go?”

  1. Tony, on October 25th, 2007 at 9:06 am Said:

    Tesco is also selling same PCs with Mandriva 2007 in our local Tesco

  2. watfordgap, on October 25th, 2007 at 9:28 am Said:

    This can only be good news - the more Open Source available to the masses and the less geeky it all looks the better.

  3. Somebody, on October 25th, 2007 at 11:44 am Said:

    Sweet monkey jesus! That’s better than my Linux computer (I use the good one for games and so cheep!)

    Is there any way of knowing how relyable the hardware is, and what kind of RAM it uses?

    If it has a good lifespan I’ll grab one, swap some of my RAM over for a nice 512MEG and use it!

  4. Somebody, on October 25th, 2007 at 11:44 am Said:

    After putting Debian on of course :)

    (sorry for the double post)

  5. watfordgap, on October 25th, 2007 at 1:04 pm Said:

    eSys wouldn’t be in my top 5 if I was looking to buy a machine, but they are popular.
    The RAM does look a bit weedy so I’d swap to 512MB immediately (i’ve run Ubuntu on 256MB before and it was OK but not sparkling).

    Be interesting to hear from anyone who has bought one…??

  6. Tony Okotie, on November 6th, 2007 at 5:07 pm Said:

    Well, I can’t beat that for a desktop, but…….how about an ultraportable laptop (7″ screen) , 16GB of solid-state storage, Wi-Fi, 3G support and an SD card slot….for £200. From Asus. Reviews at http://stuff.tv/review/Asus-EeePC-701/default.aspx or http://eeepc.asus.com/en/product.htm

    What’s interesting is that I’ve never seen the attraction of OS before, but this is at a tipping point for functionality and price…and so I’m about to order one.
    I’ll let you know how I go

  7. Where the link goes, nobody knows « watfordgap’s travels, on November 7th, 2007 at 12:15 am Said:

    [...] the link goes, nobody knows Posted on November 7, 2007 by watfordgap It wasn’t meant as a challenge, but Tony Okotie, the East Midlands Regional Champion has been doing some research into [...]

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