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Rep Power: 6  | Your Next PC Will Cost $159
Your Next PC Will Cost $159
By Loyd Case, ExtremeTech
Holy tightwads, Batman! A better PC than what you're running costs less than a pair of designer jeans? What's happened to the computer industry?
Were GQ magazine to design a computer, it would sport a Gucci leather jacket and stroll in slick Prada loafers. It would also cost eight, maybe nine thousand dollars. But when Fry's Electronics designed the GQ system, it wasn't thinking of luxury linens and leather. It wanted something cheap. The surprising thing is that the GQ (short for "Great Quality," by the way, not Gentleman's Quarterly) turns out to be a powerful PC. It's low-cost, in other words, not high crap.
Why should you care about a cut-rate Californian computer? After all, you've probably got a PC or two at home already. But consider: This one is probably faster than yours. It contains an AMD Sempron 2400+ chip, which runs at 1.67 GHz; unless you've bought a computer in the past year or two, that's a faster chip than yours. And if you're up to your eyeballs in speed already, a fast, cheap box like this would make an excellent office system or home server. Plus we're willing to guess Grandma doesn't have half that power at her place.
You're Kidding, Right?
We're not kidding. But that said, can a PC that sells for $159 really be viable? We took the plunge and bought one, just to find out. We didn't expect a colorful, jacked-up gaming rig for under $200...and we didn't get one. Unpacking the GQ 3131 from its box revealed a compact minitower case. But it was black, at least, not beige. We popped the screws off the side panel and peeked inside.
The GQ's purple motherboard (wouldn't the fashion mag be proud?) is an ECS 741GX-M—a socket-462 board suitable for AMD's Athlon and Sempron processors. It's got four USB 2.0 ports, built-in six-channel audio, and 10/100 Ethernet. The board isn't exactly bleeding-edge, although it does offer an empty AGP graphics slot in case you want to add a card. It also comes with a generic modem, for people who still dial in, and a single 128MB memory module in one of the two DIMM sockets.
As you might guess, this PC for tightwads doesn't run any flavor of the Gatesian operating system. Instead, the computer ships with Linspire, the OS formerly known as "Lindows." Even though the GQ runs a Linux variant, 128MB of RAM still seems a bit thin. But what do you want for $159?
Well, you'd want a keyboard and mouse. And the GQ3131 gives you one of each. You also get a pair of (terrible!) stereo speakers. The keyboard is surprisingly good, with decent tactile feedback. The mouse seems generic—not particularly responsive in an era of 2,000-dpi gaming mice. But who cares?
Rounding out the system are a fast 40GB hard drive and a 52X CD-ROM drive. No, you don't get a burner for $159. Nor a monitor, though Fry's offers a 17-inch companion CRT for $119. We eschewed that, and plugged it into a 19-inch LCD in the lab just to see what would happen. When we pressed the power button, our cynical sides expected sparks and smoke. Instead, we were welcomed by Linspire.
Let's Hear It for $159!
After a fairly lengthy boot-up, we were greeted by the Linspire start-up screens, which walked us through a typical first-start process. It was painless and straightforward. Since we'd connected to a network prior to starting the PC, Linspire pulled an IP address from our router and we were surfing the Internet in short order.
Linspire runs and operates, for the most part, a lot like Microsoft Windows. In fact, Linspire's relative familiarity and ease of use are two of its biggest selling points. So you'll find a system of ordinary-looking windows and icons, a menu bar at the base of the screen, and a desktop where you can store shortcuts to common applications. Conveniently enough, Linspire includes OpenOffice 1.1.3—the Microsoft Office–compatible open-source suite originally designed by Sun Microsystems. Like Linspire itself, OpenOffice is familiar and easy to use.
We didn't bother to run any performance tests on this cheap PC—comparing it to a $1,200 or $1,400 system seemed like cruel and unusual punishment—and besides, some glaring performance limitations were apparent right out of the box. For example, the system was fairly unresponsive. It took several seconds to paint windows (the desktop objects, not the OS), and applications took as much as a minute to load.
The problem lies neither in the CPU nor in the integrated graphics, but in the sparse 128MB of RAM. We replaced the single stick with a pair of 256MB modules (a simple, cheap upgrade), and the system became quite snappy—relatively speaking. You won't mistake it for an Athlon 64 or Intel P4, but we created documents and browsed the Web without noticing any slowdowns.
Considering that you can buy 512MB of RAM for less than $40, we'd strongly recommend adding memory. Once that's done, you'll have a surprisingly capable little office system. It may not play F.E.A.R., but it should handle light Web browsing and office apps just fine. We're also very impressed with how easy it was to set up. The Linspire OS was easy to configure and a snap to use. Windows users should find it quite comfortable.
Does this system presage the $129 PC? And someday, if we cross our fingers and pray, the $99 PC? Doubtful. As Attila the Hun once said, the gouging has to end somewhere. But discounts this deep will become less eyebrow-raising as time goes on. We suggest buying one now...before everyone else becomes as much of a cheapskate as you.
What $159 Buys You...
COMPUTER In addition to the 1.67-GHz AMD Sempron chip, you'll get four USB ports, Ethernet, and an AGP slot.
MEMORY Only 128MB of RAM, which is barely adequate, really. Replace it with 512MB for around $40.
SPEAKERS They're included, but they sound awful. Really, these speakers are just terrible.
KEYBOARD AND MOUSE A surprisingly responsive keyboard and generic ball mouse round it all out.
What It Doesn't...
NEW TECH You've heard of PCI Express, SATA, and dual-core, but you won't get them here.
LCD MONITOR Nope. Not a chance. In fact, there's no screen included, period.
DVD BURNER There's no DVD recorder, not even a CD burner. But there is a fast CD-ROM drive.
SOFTWARE Nothing from Microsoft here, but to be fair, the Linspire OS is pretty decent.
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