Sunday, November 25 2007 @ 09:03 PM EST Contributed by: sde
It was time to buy my daughter a cheap Linux system to be used for schoolwork and playing flash games — well, mostly for playing flash games. In the past, I've bought the $200 Great Quality boxes at Fry's, and they've proved very reliable, but the salesman at Fry's told me that they were no longer carrying them, so in search of my cheap Linux fix, I decided to buy the new Everex TC2502 Green gPC being sold at WalMart. Er, supposedly being sold at WalMart. WalMart has sold Linux PCs in the past, but what was supposed to be different about this one was that it was going to be available on the shelf in stores, not just by mail order.
However, a bit of searching in the WalMart web site showed that the machine wasn't really in stock at any of the stores that were listed as having it. What was in stock was the GC3500, a $300 model that comes with Windows Vista preinstalled. (Since then, Everex has lined up a bunch of other distributors; since I'm not a big fan of WalMart, I'd probably use one of them if I was doing this over.) I ended up ordering the $200 machine I wanted via WalMart's "Site to Store" service, where they ship it to the local store (at no extra charge), and send you an email when it's arrived so you can come and pick it up. The price was $199, plus tax. A monitor and wifi card basically doubled the price.
