An $89 remanufactured Ubuntu workstation

http://symplepc.com/blogs/news/16853255-symple-introduces-the-89-planet-friendly-ubuntu-linux-web-workstation

by capgre • 11 years ago

311 141 11 years ago

kogepathic• 11 years ago

From the photo it looks like they're using BTX motherboards (unless as the fine print states, the final version is different).

Also I hope that they're aware of which Intel chipsets contain PowerVR graphics and steer clear of selling any systems with those. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_process...

dangerlibrary2• 11 years ago

For those of us who don't know: why would they need to steer clear of PowerVR graphics chips?

JosephRedfern• 11 years ago

    from disclaimers import IANAL

I'm not sure, but it could be something to do with: http://libv.livejournal.com/26972.html.

Basically, proprietary PowerVR graphics chip driver source was leaked. Anyone who has read the leaked code is considered "tainted" and is unable to contribute to the open-soruce, cleanroom implementation alternative PowerVR drivers.

It generally makes it difficult for ANYONE to develop open-source PowerVR drivers, as their lawyers could argue that they had seen the leaked source code and copied it (regardless of whether or not that fact is true).

pipeep• 11 years ago

Intel does a good job producing and supporting their open source graphics drivers. The PowerVR chips aren't designed by Intel, so they don't receive the same level of support.

Sanddancer3• 11 years ago

The PowerVR chips on Intel platforms came in binary blobs, and were only supported in a few fairly specific configurations. As such, they were obsolete almost as soon as they were released, with little to no support. Thankfully, though, they only put PowerVR chips in their Atom boards for a fairly short period of time, so you won't have to worry about them in these machines.

listic3• 11 years ago

I'm not sure whether it's actually possible to run Ubuntu on these?

smhenderson2• 11 years ago

All the specs say "or faster", "or more", etc. but I can't see a way to change the specs on purchase. Their common questions does have this question:

"Can I upgrade the hardware in it?"

with the answer being "Absolutely, hack away! We have had folks put solid state drives in, or take the drives out all together..."

So maybe they just mean it's capable of being upgraded but they don't do it for you at point of sale.

jonrx• 11 years ago

From what I understand, they guarantee a minimum spec -- but depending on the pieces at hand, they might give you something better.

Sanddancer3• 11 years ago

They're a remanufacturer, and probably work with a lot of off-lease computers and the like. The $89 price point suggests they're taking 7-8 year old dells and the like, testing them to make sure they work, and putting them in a snazzy new case. So, some machines may be loaded with new ram, some may have faster processors, etc. It's a bit of a lottery, but with a nicer warranty than the 90 days you get with most off-lease stuff.

smhenderson2• 11 years ago

Thanks, to you and jonrx both. I did not get that from my quick perusal of thier site.

jkot6• 11 years ago

And people pay $80 for this?

ARM device from China will be cheaper, smaller,more power efficient and will run Ubuntu just as fine.

2.8Ghz P4 or better CPU (pentium 4 is very very green)
80GB SATA HD (spin it yeah, Ubuntu comfortably fits to 5GB)
VGA port ???

jiggy20112• 11 years ago

x86 still has more software available and the option to run Windows.

mark-r2• 11 years ago

The Windows license will cost more than the PC. Unless you want to run a cracked version, it isn't worth it.

pmontra• 11 years ago

Plenty of TVs and monitors still have a VGA port, so that's not a surprise. Furthermore this is basically a PC from 10 years ago and not a top notch one (I'm looking to HD, CPU and network card - I had a laptop with 10/100/1000). It's interesting that you can still run a 2014 OS on that hardware. There is probably some value in using an Intel chip instead of an ARM one even if I bet that most Linux software runs on ARM too (all my Linux boxes are x86_64).

melling2• 11 years ago

People never stop making excuses. VGA is dead.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#videoVGA

zerohm2• 11 years ago

The point is to recycle parts, not to make another great micro PC.

blueatlas• 11 years ago

I don't see a WiFi option. My first thought was to use this for our stand-up desks which may or may not be near a wired port.

eam• 11 years ago

Based on the photo, it seems it has plenty of USB's, you can probably just purchase a WiFi adapter.

udev2• 11 years ago

Amazing price point.

Are the computer parts refurbished? Otherwise I wonder where do you get 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and other older components at good prices these days?

Usually, parts get cheaper as the become replaced by newer versions, but then become expensive again.

pjc502• 11 years ago

Yes, they're clearly reused parts from PCs that have been end-of-lifed by corporates.

Edit: If you're in the UK and happen to want a supply of EOL computers, I suggest Morgan Computers, e.g. http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/product_detail/14905/HP-Eli...

alex_hitchins• 11 years ago

Morgan Computers! I bought a few bits from them nearly 15 years ago. Good to see they are still in business, I'd have thought eBay would have finished them off.

proveanegative2• 11 years ago

Amazing price point.

Is it really? It seems in line with eBay/Craigslist prices for similar hardware, expect for the "remanufactured" part.

zerohm2• 11 years ago

Try getting all those old parts to a facility, test them, assemble a consistent product, and get it out the door. Their efficiency in doing that is their value proposition.

udev2• 11 years ago

It seems similar, but try to buy from ebay/craigslist anything in a reasonable volume, clean it, test it, ship it for less.

Sanddancer3• 11 years ago

Yes, they're refurbished/remanufactured, hence all the at leasts, etc in their specs.

vittore• 11 years ago

Funny we where doing something similar but giving it away for free to school kids in Trenton.

egd• 11 years ago

They're cheap enough that my first thought was to pick up a couple and figure out what I'd do with them later, but the disadvantage here is that they're older boxes, which means they're going to be energy hogs (for the performance point, at least).

That's what makes the eco pitch interesting - they're reducing e-waste, which is good, but energy efficiency on newer boxes (especially if you just need minimal performance) is worlds better than what these are offering. On the one hand, the recycling is great, but on the other hand, it's like putting a 1953 Chevy back on the road - sure, we didn't have to manufacture another one, but it still might not be the best thing for the environment.

dorfsmay• 11 years ago

I agree, I love the concept, but you also have to add the cost of a monitor + keyboard + mouse AND the fact that everybody wants (needs?) a laptop these days.

wernercd• 11 years ago

"you also have to add the cost of a monitor + keyboard + mouse AND the fact that everybody wants (needs?) a laptop these days."

Not really...

with RDP/SSH/Telnet/etc, you can access this without the need a dedicated keyboard/mouse/monitor.

Also, I can live without a laptop due to my "phablet". I already have a desktop. Something like this would be a good for hiding a server (or two) somewhere.

The question is... the energy saved by reusing this. The energy saved by not destroying this. The landfill space not taken up by this...

Is it enough to offset the energy savings on newer pc's that are more powerful but use less energy? What is the tipping point that makes a new machine better?

jiggy20112• 11 years ago

That depends on how much time it spends powered up. Someone in the market for a PC this cheap is probably not a heavy computer user.

martinald• 11 years ago

I agree, this is a dreadful idea. The CPUs are going to hog a whole load of energy (as are the motherboards). The HDDs are going to be seriously used and probably prone to complete breakdown.

An ARM SoC would do this same job much faster probably at much less cost, with FAR less energy consumption.

switchbak2• 11 years ago

That's very true - one of those mini Linux sticks would fit the bill nicely, for example: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Original-authentic-R...

And apparently Intel has the same thing with it's atom chip: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/intels-compute-stick-...

With high capacity flash getting fast-enough for real use, I don't see much of a need for spinning platters anymore.

It's seems like a shame to give up on all that old hardware, but technology marches on I suppose.

sitkack2• 11 years ago

I deleted a post about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox and how these machines were in fact not green.

I was wrong.

Given the right uses, like an elementary school computer lab for learning Scratch, Logo, etc; they would be fine.

The problem is they are right on the cusp of the next cycle of Moore's Law, Raspberry Pi is now quad core and 1GB, it puts it in the same class as this machine. The cost of "good enough" compute hardware is going to zero (shipping, financial trans cost will dominate).

dangerlibrary2• 11 years ago

Until Raspberry Pi can get their power supply problems under control, they really aren't good enough to use as any kind of workstation.

TD-Linux3• 11 years ago

The main power draws of these systems will probably be the monitor they are attached to, the older PSU inside, and the hard disk. Keep in mind that for a RPi based solution, you still need to provide all of these. The tiny PSU needed for a RPi will probably be quite efficient, so maybe count that one out.

Also, as great as the RPi 2 is, I still don't think it is the same class as these machines, which have a 3x clock cycle advantage, plus much wider CPUs. For web browsing, this is going to matter way more than 4 cores.

ChuckMcM3• 11 years ago

This has been one of the most amazingly non-intuitive things for me over the years. That operating a computer that is older can be so much more inefficient than operating one that is newer, that it isn't worth it. Literally the best thing you can do is crush the chips and mine the result for gold, silver, and the few rare earths that are left over. That at least puts a finite limit on the energy consumed over it, and the value returned from it.

DanBC• 11 years ago

Not sending it to places like the e-waste dump in Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana is a benefit. I'm not sure how to weight each thing - the increased CO2 emmissions are bad; not poisoning poor people who do things like burn the PVC insulation off cables to get the copper is a good thing.

switchbak2• 11 years ago

If we had halfway-usable power management back in the day, it would have a lot more sense (for occasional use) as it would be idle/sleeping most of the day.

But we most certainly didn't, especially in Linux - and most people ended up having to leave them on. Heck, even the super pimped-out Linux machine I made in 2012 still has occasional issues with suspend/resume (I could probably go on a week long patch fest to try to fix it, but no thanks - I bought a macbook instead :)

brudgers2• 11 years ago

Though it clearly isn't a server farm, there would appear to be reasonable use cases in the consumer and small business markets.

Lowest first cost is a significant form of capital efficiency [as opposed to energy]. There are tradeoffs either way, and for a single moderate use computer reaching the break-even point via reduced energy footprint could easily be several years. The raw cost of running the most power hungry P4 [115w] is $151 per 24/7 year @ full load @ $0.15/kwH.

In addition, having the machine pre-loaded with Linux also offers time efficiency versus re-provisioning a new Windows machine with Ubuntu or shopping for components, etc.

None of which to say it's a good deal per FLOP or MIP or anything else. But it's not necessarily bad either.

pervycreeper2• 11 years ago

That depends. If they happen to heat a small area around the user, then it will allow the ambient room to be at a lower temperature overall, leading to a net power savings because (counterintuitively) of lower efficiency.

Nzen• 11 years ago

There are a number of factors influencing that conclusion. Many people opined on this issue a little while ago, "heating people rather than spaces" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9034678

erose2• 11 years ago

I'm shipping a 1953 from Cuba via airplane to be green!

tbob223• 11 years ago

Core 2 Duos and Pentium Dual Cores under 3ghz are fairly energy efficient chips (~65w) and they use Speedstep, etc to keep power consumption low at idle.

Of course newer dual cores and more modern chipsets will use less power overall, although for less demanding uses (web, word processing) I'm not sure if there would be a huge difference.

P4's on the other hand...

CalRobert• 11 years ago

Heh, where they might make sense is in old apartments in northern Europe. My ancient building in Dublin uses resistive electric heat (about the worst kind of heating you can have unless you have abundant renewable energy). Really, I suppose I might as well be very slowly mining bitcoins or running servers instead of just getting no work at all for the heat I'm making.

sktrdie• 11 years ago

There are android mini pcs with Android OSs, much larger selection of apps/games, for less than half that price. They can easily be found for ~$35 http://www.laptopmag.com/android-sticks

bpicolo• 11 years ago

Saying Ubuntu has fewer "apps and games" than Android is both meaningless and false.

jkot6• 11 years ago

Some of those sticks run Ubuntu as well.

listic3• 11 years ago

I wonder how anyone makes use of Ubuntu for even just 'web work' with just 2GB RAM. The browsers are becoming ever more bloated; I know I had swap issues on my non-SSD laptop before I upgraded from 4 to 8. Right now it uses 3.3 with 9 Chrome tabs open, an IM client, gedit and terminal.

It's unfortunate, of course, because 4GB of older DDR1/DDR2 memory would be much more tough to find/expensive than 2.

hayksaakian• 11 years ago

Hey! I do this.

I'm still using a 10 inch netbook running Ubuntu for my typical web work (waiting for a retina macbook air).

You can't really watch videos or use flash without feeling the slowdown. As long as you stay under 10-20 tabs you're fine.

Running an IDE is out of the question, but sublime text does fine (probably more of a CPU limitation).

AMA I guess?

gtk402• 11 years ago

I regularly use a netbook with 1GB of RAM (Dell Mini 9). It's on #! (I know, I might need to look for an alternative), which uses Openbox, but I have no problems with web surfing as long as I max at about 5 tabs. I also don't use a lot of web apps. With HTML5 video, videos work well enough. I can even run Eclipse if nothing else is open without too many problems, although for development work on it I'm usually using RDP.

Edit: I'll add I use Firefox on it. I find on Windows and Linux that Chrome takes up quite a bit more RAM than the alternatives. I use IE11 on my Windows machine with 4GB which I am using now, because Chrome would eat away my memory with the same usage.

listic3• 11 years ago

Well, they don't use #!

maxsilver• 11 years ago

I often use the web on a 2GB Chromebook --https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromebook_...

I can have four or five tabs open without much struggle. Gmail, Google Drive, Spotify, Facebook, Wikipedia, all the typical stuff works. Thre's a built in SSH client that's nice. YouTube videos play at full speed, even via Flash, up to 720p.

Performance will pale in comparison to anyone's modern machine. But this still works fine for many common uses.

I expect these refurbished PC's would have similar performance, which isn't great -- but it's probably "good enough" to get the job done, even with a modern supposedly-bloated copy of Chrome or Firefox on it.

heywire2• 11 years ago

I use an Acer C720 Chromebook daily, running Arch Linux on only 2GB ram.

sliverstorm3• 11 years ago

The funny/sad part is web browsers alone (I believe) have experienced the most growth in RAM usage, compared to many other categories of software. Hell, even Outlook still uses only 50-100MB. So if you wanted to use the box for anything other than web browsing...

Edit: oh, I forgot about flash. Earlier today Firefox with one tab was hovering at 400MB and flash was at 200MB.

jkot6• 11 years ago

I am concerned with energy consumption of this device. Pentium 4 class computer consumes 40 watts while idle. ARM cpu would work just as fine (Ubuntu).

I think this devices should not be called green, unless they disclose power efficiency rating.

midnightclubbed• 11 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. The increased power usage (over something like an ARM based Chromebook) is probably easily offset by the power needed to manufacture new but from a cost perspective to the user it may be a false-economy (assuming the machines are in use 24/7).

You also have the power consumption of the VGA monitor to contend with.

Are they remanufacturing in the USA?

jkot6• 11 years ago

over something like an ARM based Chromebook) is probably easily offset by the power needed to manufacture

I doubt it. Manufactoring cost for ARM SOC is $10, this thing burns it in a month.

narrator2• 11 years ago

40 watts while idle = 28.8 kwh a month so 13.5 cents per kwh = $3.88 / month to run. Rasberry Pi B+ uses 1.21 watts while idle so about 11 cents /month. So a Rasberry Pi will pay for itself in about 10 months.

mark-r2• 11 years ago

Given that the Raspberry Pi costs half as much to start, even adding a case, you're ahead on day 1.

vacri2• 11 years ago

... assuming the target audience of schools, non-profits, and call-centers leave them on 24/7.

e12e3• 11 years ago

Well, ship them North (South) - somewhere with electric heating (regulated by a thermostat). Then the 40 watts become a non-issue. Anywhere you need air-conditioning, things are a bit different.

brudgers2• 11 years ago

There might as well be a book called "Fifty Shades of Green". The embodied energy of a product includes the amortization of the industrial infrastructure to produce it, to sustain the workers involved in its production, and that consumed by the logistics entailed in its acquisition.

In a model using solely exchange values, it is practical to cast fungible money directly into energy and thus treat the price of a physical good as roughly equivalent to its embodied energy. [it's a plausibly reasonable first approximation].

Again to a first approximation and absent detailed figures we're unlikely to obtain easily, we could say that the $300 ARM desktop carries $210 of additional embodied energy compared with the $90 recycled machine. That's about four years of a Pentium 4 idling 24/7. This assumes that an ARM consumes zero power at idle and that no energy is consumed in the disposal of a P4.

jkot6• 11 years ago

There are comparable ARM desktops for $100

tbob223• 11 years ago

I'm not sure why they even considered P4's, the pre-prescott P4's don't even have Speedstep. That means they run full voltage/speed all the time which is terribly inefficient.

Core 2 Duos are much more energy efficient, they are not in short supply by any means and cost about the same used ($2-3).

cubano• 11 years ago

While I like the direction they are taking, I am still kinda scratching my head at the use cases.

Seniors who need a basic websurfer with malware proctection?

[edit] I guess third-world users too, but like others have remarked, the power consumption is pretty brutal.

robotresearcher• 11 years ago

From the first paragraph of their blurb:

"Symple PC gives classroom labs, non-profits and call centers a..."

They are aiming it at cost-sensitive groups that need to buy a bunch of workstations.

gtirloni• 11 years ago

Those people have all the incentives of scale to want low-power computers instead.

nsnick• 11 years ago

So is this targeted at the third world?

3327• 11 years ago

The case is way too big for what it is...

sjs382• 11 years ago

At what point is it more planet-friendly to manufacture a new energy-efficient underpowered low-end PC, rather than repurpose an old power-hungry low-end PC?

TheCowboy• 11 years ago

It's a good but difficult question to answer if one wants to break into the details of it.

The process of manufacturing all of the components likely results externalities that are represented in the price. There is also the cost of how the disposed machine is processed.

You can also factor in the user behaviors. My grandmother probably is not going to leave her desktop powered on for longer than the 1 hour or so per day that she might use it. People here, myself included, are probably used to running their machines 24-7.

There's also the perspective that if this machine is going to a 10 year old kid, that it's a machine s/he can break and it won't be a big deal. This can be a significant advantage for a low income home.

polshaw4• 11 years ago

I think it really depends on what you mean by 'a low end PC'.. if you mean a full desktop with an extensible (PCIe etc) motherboard.. I believe the answer is... way after you'd ever want to use the old PC[1]. But if you're moving towards the something in the vein of the Raspberry Pi, much sooner.

1. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2...

notatoad2• 11 years ago

I don't know about more planet friendly, but just in terms of dollars, if you're paying for your own electricity getting a modern desktop for $200 is more economical after a couple months.

kolev3• 11 years ago

If had no fan, I'd buy one for my kids.

ashark2• 11 years ago

I recently bought a Raspberry Pi 2, a nicer case than I really needed, a 64GB sdhc card, and a good power supply for not more than one of these cost. Going with a smaller SD card and a less-nice case you'd easily save enough to cover a breakout breadboard for the GPIO and maybe a couple of sensors.

Judging from its performance I suspect the original Pi would have disappointed me and been nearly useless for anything I might wanted to do with it, but the Pi2's a nice little device. It's silent and it sips power. The support and software ecosystem around it is well worth a few extra bucks over similar devices (the first time it saves you even 30 minutes of hair-pulling frustration, which likely won't be long after you open the box, you'll be glad you went with a Pi)

kolev3• 11 years ago

That's what I did, too. I want to create a Pi 2 blade server and use it for local docker PaaS (for builds, running tests, etc.), but can't find a good case for that. The dog bone one takes too much space and is too generic.

q2• 11 years ago

Focus on environment friendliness is laudable and required. But it seems this is similar to other vendors such as Dell for example.

recycling: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/dell-environment-rec...

Packaging: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/dell-environment-pac...

>> Symple PC runs the open source Ubuntu Linux operating system and doesn't require you to give your data to a company you may or may not trust.

How is this possible? It has ethernet connection and so it is possible to connect to internet and thus same as any other interconnected device. How this machine will be more trustworthy than other PC's/phones?

>> cost of $89

Following dell[1] at 500 GB hard disk is at $229. It can work safely for at least 2 years and if we go by advanced replacement warranty of in this case, symple comes to around $170. So price-wise it is not much different but configuration of 80 GB HDD is just too small.

[1] http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3646-small-desktop/pd?oc=f...

zevyoura• 11 years ago

I believe the part about not sharing data is in comparison to Chrome OS.

kbart• 11 years ago

"Symple PC runs the open source Ubuntu Linux operating system and doesn't require you to give your data to a company you may or may not trust."

So did they disable Ubuntu's shopping lens[1] that's enabled by default and callbacks to a server every time you enter something in dash?

1. https://www.unixmen.com/disable-unity-online-search-feature-...

aruggirello• 11 years ago

Love the concept. BTW I'm about to start a new linux-friendly hardware shop here in Italy (more geared towards laptops and desktop workstations - any suggestions?) - it's refreshing to see Symple did this!

stcredzero3• 11 years ago

You can also pick up a Thinkpad T400 laptop on ebay for about that amount. (Has absolutely crap video hardware, but plenty good for web development and educational purposes.)

mediumdave• 11 years ago

I have a couple T61s from Ebay that I got for my kids. I've been using one of them for some development work, and I've been surprised at how well they work for that purpose --- as in, I could easily use one for my day to day work. Put an old SSD in one, install Linux, and you have a very nice machine.

stcredzero3• 11 years ago

I bought a Thinkpad x220 tablet off ebay as a "poor man's Cintiq" and put an old SSD in it. The thing is like a developer Swiss Army Knife. I can use the very nice keyboard for real programming work. I can use the Wacom stylus for pixel art and graphics. Makes me think that Apple is aiming at dominating the common-person's "workstation" form factor, while Lenovo is aiming more squarely at guys like us.

polshaw4• 11 years ago

For value in a used linux laptop nothing beats an Acer C710(~$60+)/C720(~$100); they'd beat the T400 or a 2.8ghz P4 (by a mile in total system performance), with an SSD and HDMI output, all while giving you >6hrs battery life and USB3 in the case of the 720. IIRC the iGPU's in the T400 era don't do webGL.

stcredzero3• 11 years ago

IIRC the iGPU's in the T400 era don't do webGL.

They are indeed close to the worst integrated GPUs ever made.

sliverstorm3• 11 years ago

On the subject of power-efficiency... if you do not need high performance, the power-per-performance improvements in modern chips are not important, and you are missing out only on power-per-time thanks to huge leaps in idle power.

So, what if you put a classroom full of students on dumb terminals all connected to one or two of these? In other words, isn't it true that the more maximally utilized these old boxes are, the less their idle power deficiencies matter?

dankohn1• 11 years ago

I have started switching our customer service staff to Chromeboxes (specifically, the Asus model below). However, we've found that 2 GB does not provide acceptable performance once you open more than half a dozen tabs. We've been upgrading all machines to 4 GB and have found that performance is significantly snappier than the low end Windows boxes we were using.

And, of course, we love not having to worry about upgrades, anti-virus, backups. etc. Even the Symple would require us to manually upgrade the Ubuntu OS eventually.

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M004U-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B...

Animats• 11 years ago

There's an outfit in Oakland which does this.[1] They're a computer recycling center which assembles working systems from the recycled ones. They currently offer minimum specs of at least 2GB of RAM, 80GB HDD, DVD-ROM and 17” monitor. They install Linux XUBUNTU 14.0.1. The machines are free to schools, non-profits, and low-income people.

There was a similar organization in Berkeley which installed Windows. They had a deal with Microsoft which allowed them to do this. But I think that ended with Windows XP.

[1] http://www.ewastecollective.org

jstanek• 11 years ago

There's an organization in Minneapolis which does a similar thing. It's called Free Geek Twin Cities, and they recycle old PCs and put Ubuntu on them. It's about $40 for a computer, or one can earn one by volunteering for 24 hours. I used to volunteer there when I was less busy.

heywire2• 11 years ago

Adding another similar organization: www.reglue.org

johnpowell• 11 years ago

When I first moved to Portland I volunteered at Free Geek. But it was mostly because I didn't know anyone and it seemed like a good way to make like-minded people.

It worked.

batrat• 11 years ago

10/100 Ethernet... why not GbE port? i would love to have something like this in my homelab, but the Ethernet port (for me) is rather limited.

notatoad2• 11 years ago

Because they aren't setting the spec sheet, they're selling refurb computers from it departments, and most of those were originally specced with 10/100

happycube• 11 years ago

IMO the cutoff needs to be Core 2 Duo tech (even Celeron versions) or any AMD64 chip.

Pentium 4 Prescotts, which their spec implies could be used, are awful and inefficient chips. (Heck, I told people not to buy them when they were new!)

polshaw4• 11 years ago

Agreed, the late P4's check the box when it comes to performance, but they are right at the worst point possible in terms of power consumption, the next gen (I would include CoreDuo, or P4 era A64) are vastly more appealing because of that.

I'm sure there are many of those CPUs involved in some of these PCs; why not offer a CD+ (or even 'no P4') guarantee for +$10 or so?

yuhong• 11 years ago

Or at least Cedar Mill/Presler, which is an easy drop-in replacement in most LGA775 motherboards. It is unfortunate that Conroe is not.

BorisMelnik• 11 years ago

very nice. would love to see an SSD option for slightly more, which would decrease the size, power & shipping weight and speed up the overall benchmark.

patcheudor2• 11 years ago

"Data control by large corporations and government agencies is a tangible concern. Our Symple PC represents another, environmentally intelligent and privacy-aware path. It is one of the most planet-friendly PCs in the world. The case is made from recycled ABS plastic, the parts are recycled..."

Hold on, hold on. They are directly marketing this solution to call centers, non-profits, etc., claiming it's "privacy-conscious" yet it utilizes recycled components which by their nature are from unknown sources. There is no chain of custody for recycled components. As such, do they have a lab which is verifying the firmware of any of those recycled components haven't been tampered with in a way which will result in a breach of privacy? If they do, that's cool but I'd think it would add significantly to the cost. This has been a major challenge in the re-use space for years as it's possible to tamper with firmware on motherboards, hard-drives, and network cards in a way which breaches privacy, independent of the operating system. I get the whole reuse thing, it's cool, but I'd be very cautious about making binding claims as to either the privacy or security of devices using recycled components which can be re-flashed.

Shank• 11 years ago

No offense, but tampering with firmware on motherboards, hard drives, and network cards to breach privacy sounds more like NSA/EquationGroup/TAO, not parts recycling centers. Unless you're implying that we should be checking every component for NSA tampering, I'd need some solid statistics to back up the idea that firmware backdoors are suddenly commonplace from refurbished/recycled computer parts.

patcheudor2• 11 years ago

NSA/EquationGroup is just in the news right now. There have been growing concerns about UEFI for years as well as a lack of reporting. Note this from Dick Wilkins UEFI report:

"Examples come from Intel, Microsoft, Mitre, NIST, Linux distros and others. Some are public and some are available only under NDA via direct communications with the involved companies."

Is it likely to be seen in the wild often? Likely not, but that's not the point. If it's seen more than once, then you have a problem if you build an entire business selling "trusted platforms" based on recycled equipment. At that point, expect your claims to be busted. What happens the first time someone actually finds a confirmed trojan in a firmware component of a product they sell? It doesn't matter if it is legitimate or a plant, it will reverberate through the news cycle like Lenovo-Superfish and the damage will be done.

This isn't to say this business model is a bust. Just be very cautious about claiming it supports privacy. There are plenty of educational scenarios where hardware which has been compromised would be of no issue.

http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/2014_UEFI_...

Eleutheria• 11 years ago

I bought a mac mini in 2011 and swore to god I would never buy a huge case ever again for no reason whatsoever.

Sorry guys, make it smaller and I may bite.

erose2• 11 years ago

Add the fact they they have to be shipped to the long, long, list of the reasons this is a bad idea. I'm surprised so many people were fooled by the marketing materials.

p1mrx• 11 years ago

Hopefully they're not selling the Athlon XP series. While they seem like perfectly-capable x86 CPUs at first glance, they're no longer compatible with software that requires SSE2, like Chrome and Flash.

An $89 remanufactured Ubuntu workstation

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