[Gllug] Lane Fox promises sub £100 PCs - running Linux

[Andrew Davies]

On 17/01/2011 11:47, John Hearns wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/17/lanefox_pcs_for_all/
>    

Checking ebay for computers you'll find plenty of Pentium 3, Pentium 4 
and equivalent machines for less than £30 (as I write this there are 3 
Compaq P3 SFF units that sold for £46 including postage). I've managed 
to pick up an Athlon X2 4400 base unit for £51, admittedly it had Vista 
but that's not really a concern if you're going to replace it with 
Linux. CRTs are being given away now, LCDs are moderately expensive but 
available and input devices are commonplace.
The tech support line is almost certainly going to be a premium rate 
number and the chances that it'll be routed to India with an intelligent 
person being forced to read from a script are reasonably high.
The actual machine itself would probably be required to run a browser 
and possibly an email client (although only web-based email need be 
offered). This specification negates anything fancy from the hardware so 
the software choice available (in this case Linux and applications that 
are packaged with the distribution) is almost any OS that will run on 
that hardware.


So £98 for a refurb machine running linux is nothing special, the 
interesting area will be the level of support they'll be willing to 
offer. The length of warranty, the cost and quality of the help-line and 
how quickly, if at all, a fitter is available if things go wrong.
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