Microtel from walmart?

[Hall, Tony, JCW]

We bought one at work for "research" purposes. Lindows is based on Debian,
with a butchered KDE. "Click and Run" works off of Debian's apt-get utility
(at least it appears to). Instead of paying $99 for 2 years of click and
run, and tech support (which really isn't bad) I would just use apt-get and
install whatever packages you want. I've installed apache, done an update
and an upgrade, downloaded various utilities (it doesn't come packaged with
man, or a rpm utility). Wine is pre-configured, and runs the various M$
Office viewers, we opted for the click and run subscription and installed
Star Office. One plus is the OS installs in around 10 minutes. The downside
is you don't have any choices on packages to install, and have no input into
the install process at all. Buy the box, look into Lindows, then install
Mandrake or Red Hat. The 'puter itself seems fine for a generic box.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Pearson [mailto:thinkmike at kc.rr.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 7:19 PM
To: kclug at kclug.org
Subject: Microtel from walmart?

Has anyone purchased a Microtel SYSMAR710 box or similar from walmart for
$199.86?
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=1957333&cat=86796&type
=19&dept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3951%3A41937%3A86796

It comes with Lindows installed but I would be curious as to any thoughts on
how it runs on Lindows or any other flavor of linux.  At 800mhz and 128mb
ram upgradeable to 1gig with a 10gb hd (5400rpm unfortunately) the deal
looks decent.  I was thinking about turning one into a PVR.

Any/all comments suggested. thanks.

Mike