Everex's stock in trade is delivering decent technology at rock-bottom prices. Its $200 gPC, available immediately, offers a no-gimmicks machine for a song. To get there, it broke away from standard low-end practice and opted for Linux. This turns what might otherwise be a bog-standard Windows PC into open source's first major assault on the most massive PC mass-market of them all: Wal-Mart shoppers that even Everex identifies as "unsophisticated."
But is it any good? The technology stork just dropped this baby at the door, so let's take a look.
It is immediately apparent how oversized the gPC's solidly-constructed Midi tower is. Selected because Wal-Mart shoppers equate bigness with power, the enclosure is much larger than its contents. One can look through though an unoccupied fan grille on one side of the case right out another one opposite.
gOS, based on the most recent distribution of Ubuntu Linux, runs well on the gPC, which has a 1.5GHz Via C7 CPU, an 80GB hard drive and
512MB of RAM.
For a detailed look at the operating system, including screenshots, check out our hands-on report from yesterday.
It uses Enlightenment, a lightweight Window manager, to keep things running smoothly despite the limited power of its components.
The desktop resembles Apple's OS X more than it does Windows, with a large dock at the bottom packed with icons. By default, however, it's overloaded, and automatically scrolls this way and that, trying to anticipate your next click. Most of the icons are links to Google web apps, on which the gPC hangs much of its appeal.
When minimized, programs become icons to the right of the dock.
Included with gOS are The Gimp and OpenOffice, providing offline graphic and productivity apps.
Despite the foibles and irritations that'll hit everyone unfamiliar with alternative operating systems, it's easy to forget you're using
Linux. I've slapped together a few Linux boxes over the years, and dealt with nightmares ranging from getting a particular screen resolution to work to compiling drivers for video cards. None of that nonsense is present here: gOS is zero-conf and ready to rumble.
That Everex directs so much of the gPC's usage toward web-apps helps, because it's the one area where everything works much the same, regardless of platform.
Put under some standard daily stresses, the gPC clearly isn't a fast machine. That said, Enlightenment keeps the gPC unexpectedly snappy.
Even with Gimp, OpenOffice, a media player and a few Firefox tabs open, it remained responsive.
In a couple of hours of use, no stability problems presented themselves, and the Unix underbelly stayed more or less out of sight, save for the occasional information pop-up.
There's much to like about the gPC. Owners won't have to worry about viruses, their kids installing things they shouldn't, or distractions like fancy games. Obvious deployments for this machine include kids'
bedrooms — but also as home media servers or as an alternative to thin clients in the workplace.
Savvy users, however, will be constantly aware of the system's limitations: for them the gPC is like an Asus EeePC that won't fit in a laptop bag.
There are a few warnings for the Wal-Mart set, too: for example, the gPC
doesn't work with dial-up internet service. It's not clear if there is a driver problem with the on-board modem or if a GUI config panel simply isn't ready. Everex hopes to have this resolved soon.
Screen fonts don't look too great, either, with blurry smoothing and poor typeface selections. Changing themes helped: "Bling," included alongside the default Green gOS default, has a more conventional, less
Web 2.0 look.
But these are minor annoyances, and the gPC looks like a fantastic deal. My first impression is of a serviceable desktop PC with bulletproof security and a pleasant, simplified feel. For those wanting to do more with their computer than surf the web, check e-mail and basic productivity, however, it's obviously not of much interest —
unless, of course, you're going to do something clever with it.
UPDATE: Details on the motherboard, Via's Micro-ATX pc2500G, are here. Yes, slightly disappointed it wasn't Mini-ITX after all.
