Friday, November 23, 2007

More On The OLPC G1G1 and Now T-Mobile

There is still one week left on the "Give One Get One(G1G1)" campaign which is the promotion to give an XO laptop to a child in a poor county and also get one for yourself. The cost is $399 of which $200 is tax-deductible. One of the sponsors is now adding a one-year complimentary T-Mobile HotSpot access.

The offer is worth a look. Currently I pay $20 a month ($240 per year) for AT&T wireless access which works fine and is available at most McDonalds, The UPS Stores and Barnes and Nobles and other places. I could drop that and switch to T-Mobile, saving $240, which brings the G1G1 cost to $159. Add in the tax deduction and the XO laptop is quite reasonable.

The unique appearance would certainly draw attention at a Starbucks and would be a great conversation starter to promote Free/Libre Open Source Software.

More info is available at - http://www.laptopgiving.org -

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Thoughts on $199 Everex Desktop PC (gPC,gOS) at WalMart

Since November 1, WalMart has been offering a $199 desktop pc (no monitor included) via their online website. I believe it can be purchased online with delivery arrangements made to your local WalMart. The web address is
- http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614 -

This new offering is creating quite a buzz in the world of low-cost computing and in the FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) - http://flosstoday.com/ - world.

Why?

Primarily because it runs gOS - http://www.thinkgos.com/ - instead of WindowsXP or Vista.

gOS
is new and is "An alternative OS for the masses". gOS may stand for green Operating System or it may stand for Google Operating System. That's for the bloggers to sort out.

Do I like the pc?

Yes, it is an ideal pc for 3 out of 4 computer users. It can't compare to the $4000 gaming pc that your son wants for Christmas or the $2800 media center pc that your brother-in-law just had installed in his home theatre.

That is not the target market.

Most people are not gamers and I only know a handful of people with a home theatre.

Word-processing, e-mail, internet, flickr, slide presentations, spreadsheets, databases, blogger, etc are all available and are more than adequate for most users.

The pc does fall into the category of "Internet appliance" as it requires a broadband internet connection. Goodby dial-up, hello cable/dsl.

Is it a google pc? Google has long used a GNU/Linux/Ubuntu-based operating system in-house. This may very well be a marketing test to see how much interest there may be for google to enter the os world.

Meanwhile anyone looking for a quality, low-cost pc can take advantage of this bargain.