Mirus' $199 Linux PC keeps the trend alive, lands at Sears
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 17th 2008 5:43PM
posted Jan 17th 2008 5:43PM
For those who haven't been paying attention, the market for sub-$200 (or value-priced, if you will) rigs seems to be on quite the rise. Hot on the heels of the Everex gPC and the recently announced Shuttle KPC comes a $199 Linux box from Mirus Innovations. Available now at Sears.com, this understandably lackluster machine houses a 
Honestly, you don't need that great of a processor for most of your applications.
While I do have a gaming desktop, I also use an old crappy laptop for most of my business use which is normally an internet browser and a word processor. Machines that are 5 years old can handle that fine.
I have ubuntu on a machine from 2000 with only 256 megs of ram and can run desktop effects that are much like vista without problems at all.
The Celeron 420 isn't exactly ancient. It's a Conroe-based chip, so the technology is current. The chip by itself on Newegg is $48 shipped.
Even if it was ancient, without a bloated OS overhead stealing machine resources, even relatively very low powered machines can run and perform perfectly well.
Indeed. This is far more powerful than the Via C7s and Geodes that are going into other sub $200 PCs.
This is awesome!
Yet another PC with Linux being pre-installed!
Hoora!
is it dualcore? like the new celeron?
I don't know what you're talking about, because none of the Celerons are dual-core (at least not yet - Intel is planning on launching a dual-core Celeron on the 20th). Even the Celeron D is a single core processor (the D doesn't stand for anything).
Celeron 420: The processor for stoners
Linux can run great on underpowered machines.
@ark_v2:
Linux can run on anything...including stoners.
I'm sorry but that Celeron is a relatively high powered CPU.
on a decent motherboard it will kick even an AMD x2s ass.
@Abuzar:
It will kick an X2s ass at what?
Gaming? I sure hope you're joking.
Sucking? It will kick an X2s ass in this category.
After reading your comment I saw your avatar and I chuckled, please forgive me.
Sorry I meant when it's overclocked. Since it's based off the conroe core it should overclock fairly well. Also I meant the Athlon 64, not the X2 dual core.
Sorry my bad.
Pentium Dual Cores(not D) will on the other hand easily overclock to 3.2 ghz and beat out most X2s.
@Abuzar:
Thank you for that clarification.
I think that you are correct. I'll still take the 64/64 X2 because of the front side bus and integrated memory controllers.
do you have to be so cocky when you wright about these things. Its not very professional
Keep in mind that this is a blog, not CNN
Right, this is a blog and not CNN--which is precisely why we can be professional.
Do you have to be so cocky when you WRITE incorrectly?
Hooray for mail-in rebates! Oh wait, never mind, I just remembered how much of a pain those things are.
Even if it is $200 after rebates, I wouldn't buy this. My laptop is over 4 years old, was a lower-midrange laptop, and either matches or exceeds the specs of this computer. I'd rather spend a few hundred dollars more and get a computer with 300% more RAM, 900% more processing power, and 1000% more disk space. That will come in handy when I rip 2 DVDs and convert 1 DVD image simultaneously like I was trying to do last night.
Well, perhaps you didn't really know, but a Celeron 420 (it has a Conroe-L core, which is all but ancient), is roughly equivalent to a 2.8GHz P4 Prescott in almost any performance scenario. I've built a ~$240 machine (the extra ~$40 came from me buying a stylish microATX case) for the living room and I used this CPU. With a cheap integrated graphics it runs most games on par if not better then a Geforce 4 MX.
This is perfect for "office" usage (browsing the net, word processing, spreadsheets, etc...) or maybe even light gaming, if you ask me.
Well, there's a difference between $200 and $1000. Naturally, this is geared towards home users who don't use the computer too much, or for anything more complex than Email, Internet, IM, and Office.
So this computer is on par or slightly better than my ancient laptop? That's exactly what I don't want.
I priced a custom Core 2 Quad computer with those improvements that I listed above for less than 4X the price of this computer.
Ok, maybe you're a troll. I'm not sure. But are you really arguing that spending 4x more money on a computer that exceeds the needs of 80% of computer users is actually a better value?
It might be a better value -for you-, but for the average person who would buy a $200 computer, this would be just fine.
My laptop exceeds my needs most of the time, but I want a computer that want buckle as soon as I put a load on it. You know that saying about how if you buy a computer it will be obsolete before the end of the month? This computer was obsolete last year.
Just to set it straight: Celeron 420 is single core but based on the Core 2 architecture.
It was introduced mid-2007 so is by no means ancient - with this architecture and enabled
enhanced HALT state it is in fact quite a respectable and energy-efficient processor.
My old TI Speak & Spell had more power than this clunker!
Who buys these things?
a celeron 420, 1gb of ram and 80gb hard drive is plenty of computer even for XP. I run an ubuntu 7.10 machine with more or less the same specs (celeron 420, 1gb ddr2-400 and a 40gb sata to be specific) and its very very fast even using intel gma 950.
not to mention this should mean the machine is upgradeable as motherboards that support celeron 420 can support all 800 bus Core 2 chips at the least. so you can probably get a celeron dual e1200, or a e4600 core 2 duo in that box later on as well.
$200 might be all a lot of people have to spend, and this system is far better than the walmart unit with the VIA c7 in it. probably twice as fast. I would consider picking this up, and the best part is you dont have to buy it from the evil walmart.
People who don't know any better.
i think the e1200 series are labeled under pentium
yuck..my p4 literally 1st gen p4 treated me well up until about a few months ago when it started turning off on me when something even brushed against the case..
:(
They tryied to revive the Pentium name back there.
Don't get it mixed up:
Pentium 4-Lame
Pentium D-Lame
Pentium Dual Core-Very good for it's price
These types of things are actually EXTREMELY good for your average home user who uses their computer to:
1) Surf the web
2) Send the occasional e-mail
3) Download pictures from their webcam and look at them on their computer
4) Talk on MSN
That's pretty much what around 50% of the population probably does on their computers and they're not all high powered computer users like the types of people that attend these blogs.
Exactly. I think a lot of the people who come to this site are a little more demanding in their computer WANTS (not even needs for most). The hardware specs are perfect for most computer users. Even most business users could get by on this, power wise, though they would need a different software loadout. At the worse case, adding another 1GB of RAM ($20) would take most other people over the top to good performance land.
"Even most business users could get by on this, power wise, though they would need a different software loadout."
Heck, that's far more computer then I've had in my last few jobs, and I do tech work where you'd expect us to have reasonably powerful machines.
This clearly isn't marketed that way, but I suspect that a number of companies will be investing in this sort of machine. Throw on OpenOffice, and it does pretty much everything the average office PC needs to do for about the cost of a Windows Vista license.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the specs on this one, actually. Certainly not impressive; but 1GB of RAM will go a long way towards making it a decent thing to use. The other numbers, not so impressive; but not wildly likely to affect nonserious users. It sure beats the hell out of the scam from a few years back, when Dell et al. were advertising machines with 2GHz processors and 128megs of RAM.
Just wanted to point out that the "Wal-Mart" computer also is available from newegg... so it's not necessarily supporting the Evil Empire to pick up the gPC...
y'know.. in case that made it more appealing to you.
Heck, I'll even go so far as to say that people that do need more power than this, have no clue what to do with it. Who burns DVD's anymore anyway? Unless you're super bored and want to watch your computer transcode for entertainment. I watch movies on my media pc attached to my tv.
some people will argue photoshop. but even printing at 11x17 the biggest an image has to be is 96x11 and 96x17(roughly 1100x1700).
The ONLY THING that requires more power is games, and games are for kids.
I know my MacBook Pro is more than I NEED, though I purposefully got the extra guts just in case. I don't do anything high-powered like 3D or even Aperture/Photoshop, but this would be the machine to do so if I needed to.
This machine looks like a pretty good deal, and Linux is pretty good for the average user anyhow. Free is good, I say.
The question we should all ask:
Is there any "better" computer for $200?
I think not. At least not yet.
a few months ago i bought one of those gx150s on ebay for $40 shipped. i added some ram lying around, hooked it up to my flatscreen and presto, internet machine. ubuntu was acting funny so i put w2k (for shame right?) and i can rock some youtube and firefox from the couch. i spent more money on the wireless keyboard than i did on the computer. if i replaced my mom's computer with the one i bought for $40 she would never notice; how much processing power does it take to run IE three times, Skype twice a month and Turbo Tax once a year?
All well and good, but has anyone found the rebate form yet? I'd rather see what the rebate requirements are BEFORE purchasing. I'd hate to buy it and find that one is required to sign up for 24 months AOL or some such nonsense.
With 1gb of ram even a jurasic pentium-3 can runs windows xp-iexplorer-firefox-messenger-office xp without a trouble and to keep happy no less that 98% of the current computer users.
There's nothing wrong with this PC for the average home user. Only problem is if they want to use Windows apps. My baby boomer-aged father is probably typical of most home users - surfs the web, sends e-mails, writes a few documents (in OpenOffice), and looks at his digital photos. His barebones Sempron 3100 XP Home box is plenty. My Eee is definitely less powerful than the Mirus PC discussed here, and I have no problems web surfing, typing documents, and managing photos. A lot of people could get by with Eee-type specs.
At this price,I think this is a decent machine for basic everyday tasks.Why waste time even talking about gaming.