Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, SecretSquirrel, notfred
just brew it! wrote:I've never seen one of these. A Linux-based web/e-mail/etc. appliance does make a certain amount of sense though.
Potential downsides I see are:
- The price; looks rather expensive for the functionality provided
- The inevitable "Why can't I install X on this?" questions
- Opening documents created in MS Office; I assume they are using OpenOffice/LibreOffice on this thing, so degree of support for MS Office documents will vary depending on the features used in the document and the version of MS Office they were created in
- Printer compatibility ("Most recent HP printers will work with your WOW! Computer"); from this I assume that other brands are not supported
- They claim "free software updates for life"; obviously this is only good as long as the company is still in business
- I sure hope their "Tech Buddy" feature ("A Tech Buddy is a friend or family member that wants to help you use your WOW! Computer. After you give them the User Name and Password you create for them, they can log into our Tech Buddy web site and access your WOW! Computer from their own computer") has some seriously robust security; also, since you need to go through their web site this feature is useless if they stop supporting it
Captain Ned wrote:Skype with the daughter in LA may take some doing yet the base distro has Skype if not under that name.
Captain Ned wrote:Complaining about the hardware is a lost cause. It's on the MiL's desk and I have to deal with it. If anyone's got tips about the underlying kernel & distro, I'm all ears.
NovusBogus wrote:A quick internet search tells me there's no native way to pull up a terminal (...and they're expecting 'Tech Buddy' to support this thing, lol wut?) so my first thought is to pull the hard drive and try chrooting from another linux system. Or, if you're at least able to do stuff in grub maybe you could get it to boot from a USB stick without removing the HD.
Captain Ned wrote:doG, I love this place. A box that, from my POV after a bit of hands-on, appears to be perfectly geezer-friendly and everyone wants to rip out the existing install. Bloody purists.
just brew it! wrote:Captain Ned wrote:Well, you did say you "would like to know a bit more for when she inevitably finds a way to bodge it". I think people were interpreting that as "How do I do low-level maintenance on the thing?"doG, I love this place. A box that, from my POV after a bit of hands-on, appears to be perfectly geezer-friendly and everyone wants to rip out the existing install. Bloody purists.
I don't see anyone actually recommended that you replace the existing OS image; booting from a USB stick (and/or pulling up the CLI) is just a way for *you* to look at the contents of the internal drive if she happens to brick it.
just brew it! wrote:Gonna use that laptop as your 14.04 testbed?
bthylafh wrote:For my money this computer should have come with Chrome OS and an itty bitty SSD, especially since they admit this thing's not too useful without broadband.
Captain Ned wrote:Never got the "F2" option to enter the BIOS or boot from something else and I booted the thing a good half-dozen times or so.
Captain Ned wrote:bthylafh wrote:For my money this computer should have come with Chrome OS and an itty bitty SSD, especially since they admit this thing's not too useful without broadband.
I did figure out that the browser is Chrome-based.
Chrispy_ wrote:I'd be interested in getting my hands on the Linux distro/software seperately; That's where the value is in this thing, if there is any.
As it is, they're charging something like $600 for the software additions because that PC has the same spec as a $500 laptop, and maybe I'm being generous.
bthylafh wrote:For my money this computer should have come with Chrome OS and an itty bitty SSD, especially since they admit this thing's not too useful without broadband.
I've heard of Tiny Core before; it's developed by some of the people who used to dev Damn Small Linux. It's meant to run on a Pentium II with 128MB of RAM but can run at least some add-on packages.