Personal computing discussed

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obuttons
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Sat Jul 21, 2018 10:31 pm

An elderly friend has one of these computers. She wanted to get windows on it. By depressing "delete" repeatedly during boot up it will go to the bios screen. The bios is a version of MSI's click bios.
Unfortunately I did not make a note of the bios settings for the original install, and would like to have them. Does anyone have access to one of these machines and is willing to look at the bios settings?
I have tried contacting the company and will do so again, but it would be reassuring to my friend to see it boot up again in the WOW operating system.
 
xgsound
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Sun Jul 22, 2018 12:47 am

According to their specs on the bottom of page 2 of the FAQs the specs are:
Processor Intel Celeron Quad Core Processor
Memory 2 GB RAM
Hard Drive 32 GB SSD Flash Drive (Additional Cloud Storage Available)

For over $1,000 and all proprietary that's about 4 times too much. They have phones with better specs now, and for less money. I have 50 GB of pictures alone on my computer.
 
just brew it!
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Sun Jul 22, 2018 7:35 am

obuttons wrote:
An elderly friend has one of these computers. She wanted to get windows on it. By depressing "delete" repeatedly during boot up it will go to the bios screen. The bios is a version of MSI's click bios.
Unfortunately I did not make a note of the bios settings for the original install, and would like to have them. Does anyone have access to one of these machines and is willing to look at the bios settings?
I have tried contacting the company and will do so again, but it would be reassuring to my friend to see it boot up again in the WOW operating system.

Is there a "reset to defaults" option? That's probably your best bet as a starting point. If it still won't boot, try fiddling with any settings related to the boot device.

Was an attempt made to install Windows on it? If so, then the original OS install may no longer be usable.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
kvndoom
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Sun Jul 22, 2018 8:20 am

That looks so incredibly predatory, all I can say to myself is... (wait for it) "WOW what a ripoff!"
A most unfortunate, Freudian, double entendre is that hotel named "Budget Inn."
 
just brew it!
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Sun Jul 22, 2018 8:27 am

To the people responding with posts indicating that this system is a rip-off, please note that the OP is 4 years old. The thread just got resurrected by someone who is trying to help an elderly friend who already owns one.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
obuttons
Gerbil In Training
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Sun Jul 22, 2018 11:18 am

Thanks “just brew it”. NO INSTALL OF WINDOWS attempted.
 
kvndoom
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Sun Jul 22, 2018 12:30 pm

just brew it! wrote:
To the people responding with posts indicating that this system is a rip-off, please note that the OP is 4 years old. The thread just got resurrected by someone who is trying to help an elderly friend who already owns one.

Even if Ned was born on Leap Day, he wouldn't pass for 4. :lol:
A most unfortunate, Freudian, double entendre is that hotel named "Budget Inn."
 
obuttons
Gerbil In Training
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Tue Jul 24, 2018 2:29 pm

To summarize what I've learned so far about WOW computer:

You can reach bios settings by pressing delete repeatedly during boot up.
The bios is click bios and the motherboard is from MSI.

Be careful in changing bios settings (BE SURE TO WRITE DOWN ALL SETTINGS BEFORE YOU CHANGE ANY SETTINGS).

It is quite possible to lose control of the keyboard and mouse if you boot from a USB stick or a DVD.

It appears that it would be possible to install Windows and/or Linux distro on this machine.

Finally, a phone call to the company confirmed what I suspected, namely that they won't help you get BIOS settings right.

SO IF ANYONE HAS A WORKING WOW COMPUTER, I would be interested in knowing the original BIOS settings.

JohnOButtons
 
just brew it!
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Tue Jul 24, 2018 2:55 pm

Did you look for a "reset to defaults" option in the BIOS?
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
woodscrapswork
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Fri Sep 25, 2020 12:27 am

just inherited a WOW...
took pics of bios settings before messin with em
I'm just trying to be able to install software to run a Brother MFC printer... learning about linux as I dig in
 
just brew it!
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Fri Sep 25, 2020 7:45 am

Printer setup on Linux can be... interesting. Maybe someone who has a Brother device hooked up to a Linux system will chime in.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
cheesyking
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Re: WOW! Computer for Seniors

Thu Oct 01, 2020 7:22 am

Posts on the first page says that the OS on these things is based on Tiny Core. The newer brother MFC printers I had a quick look at on the brother site have "deb" installers for their drivers which might work once converted to Tiny's own format but I've no idea how you'd go about installing them on a machine like this as it's possible all sorts of standard stuff got stripped out because it's aimed at people with no technical knowledge.

If you're doing this to learn linux on a cheap PC you got for nothing then I'd suggest installing a proper modern linux and learn that.

If you're trying to get this working for non tech savvy elderly person to use... I'd probably still change the OS, I can't imagine they're still doing updates for these things 6 years on. If they're not savvy enough to manage a full desktop (linux or windows) then they're probably not going to manage printing and scanning either ;)

If you want to try for the sake of it, here's a forum page talking about converting "deb" files to "tcz":
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=10844.0
Fernando!
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