No, this PC didn't fall off the back of a lorry, but you will have to travel to the United States to buy it. WalMart is selling an entry level spec PC from low-cost specialists Everex loaded with what they call the gOS. That's 'g' as in Green, not 'g' as in Google, although plenty of people have called it a Google PC. Although to be fair, John Dvorak put Google PC in quote marks. It runs on a Ubuntu Linux kernal with Google apps bundled and a simplified, light-weight file manager, Enlightenment. It's definitely not Gnome or KDE, but looks eerily like a green-theme of Mac OS X.
The other part of the Green PC is that this is a low-power PC running at an average of 2 Watts and operating at a "whisper quiet 28dB". One thing though that dents its green image is that there is actually a tiny mini-ITX motherboard in there. Slash Gear says: "Apparently people equate the size of the PC with the power, and they wouldn't buy it if the case were as small as it could be". They could have cut the waste by making the computer a lot smaller.
This isn't the first time that WalMart has sold a Linux PC. Three years ago, they began selling budget laptops with Linspire, which sells a version of Ubuntu with added proprietary codecs, drivers, software and CNR, which appears to be something like the Synaptic Package Manager (basically a GUI for apt). The $198 gets the box, plus a keyboard, mouse and stereo speakers, but no monitor. If you want Windows, it will cost you $100 more.
Technorati Tags: budget PC, Everex, Linux, WalMart
