Comments on: $250 Desktop Runs Ubuntu, Windows 7 and OS X?

By: David Smith

David Smith — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:20:10 +0000

That’s great that you were able to recycle old gear. However another legitimate recycling venue is the refurb market. I picked up an hp dx5150 desktop with 512MB of DDR, 40G hdd, dvd drive, onboard Radeon X300, and Athlon 64 2G cpu, for Can.$70, bunged in 2 more Gs of memory for about the same. I’ve seen similar P4 boxes as low as $50. So I got a complete, working pc (no assembly required) for what you spent on a new motherboard and cpu.

This is a reasonably powerful machine for web surfing, office and even some older 3D games (my wife runs bejeweled on it). I currently have it dual-booting Windows 2000 and Ubunutu 8.04. It is very quiet.

By: mowgli

mowgli — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:52:41 +0000

fantastic!!! exactly what i was looking for. and just a few weeks prior too? luv that linux life.

By: joej

joej — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:23:57 +0000

Thanks for the informative, well-written article.

The loud chipset fan, lack of DVI and eSATA are bummers, but maybe expected at this point.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:05:05 +0000

Roland,
The board does include an Intel graphics card and it works great. Everything works out of the box, including Compiz 3D stuff.
The case is really quite, but the fan for the chipset is kinda loud (there is no fan on the processor). I couldn’t tell you how much power it draws exactly, but the power supply is only 150 Watts, and I haven’t had any power issues.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:03:04 +0000

$ dmesg|grep -i bogomips
[ 0.004016] Calibrating delay loop (skipped), value calculated using timer frequency.. 3191.99 BogoMIPS (lpj=6383980)
[ 0.004000] Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 3192.18 BogoMIPS (lpj=6384370)
[ 0.004000] Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 3192.14 BogoMIPS (lpj=6384283)
[ 0.004000] Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 2996.23 BogoMIPS (lpj=5992468)
[ 0.820068] Total of 4 processors activated (12572.55 BogoMIPS).

By: Roland

Roland — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:47:40 +0000

How about some basic performance info? (dmesg|grep -i bogomips)
I’d like to compare it to my single-core Via C7 (3K bogo). I’d guess an Intel motherboard has an Intel graphics chip-ugh!! They have gotten some bad reviews. Does that chip actually do 3d/Compiz? Does this box need a fan? How quiet is your case?
Finally, how much power does it draw?

By: VS Dude

VS Dude — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:27:19 +0000

Out of curiosity, what software *would* you use on a more powerful Ubuntu system for “high-end video processing?”

By: ron

ron — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:43:19 +0000

I have a netbook with the atom in it its running Slackware 13, it is the most powerfull computer in the house it runs KDE4 fine. the rest of my machines are from the Trash Heap. I frequently rebuild and give away Pen 111’s. They work fine and get lots of use. No need for Supper Computers of today, However I would like one someday.