Re: [PLUG] Anybody ever buy one of those Walmart PCs?

[Erin Mulder <meara@alumni.princeton.edu>]

I don't have any experience with the ones you mention, but a few months 
ago I bought 3 of the el cheapo Dell servers for around $375/each and 
they're great.   Very quiet and dependable with a good warranty.

Looks like they still start at $274:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/pedge_400sc?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

I opted to spend the extra $100 each to get the P4 2.8Ghz, 800Mhz FSB, 
instead of the Celeron 2.0Ghz, 400MHz FSB.

(Just don't ever buy extra RAM from Dell.   Their prices are ridiculous!)

Cheers,
Erin

Mike Leone wrote:
> I've decided I'm sick and tired of fighting with this failing hardware for
> my little mail server. And then I remembered those dirt cheap, online-only
> PCs that Walmart sells. They have models available with SuSE, LindowsOS or
> no OS. And they start at $160.
>
> Now, they are Nortel brand (who?), and only have 1 or 2 free PCI slots, and
> usually only 128M RAM (at the lowest price - they have other models with more)
>
> Anybody ever buy one? Or know someone who has? I'd probably buy a no OS
> model, and install Debian. Or just GHOST (or whatever the Linux equivalent
> would be) my current drive. Anybody know if they work with Debian (Libranet,
> in particular) ?
>
> For $300, I could get an AMD Duron 1.6GHz, 256M RAM, 40G harddrive (only 1
> PCI slot, unfortunately). Which, for my home server, should suffice I think,
> since I had been using a P3-500. This would actually be an improvement. :-)
>
> Thoughts/comments/alternatives?
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