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Wal-Mart Sells $300 Earth-Friendly PC

by Terrence O'Brien on July 19, 2007 at 01:06 PM

Wal-Mart's Green Minded $300 PC
Wal-Mart is prepping for the back-to-school season with the Everex IMPACT GC3502 PC, a $298 PC running Vista Home Basic. Now don't get too excited as this computer comes without a monitor and is woefully underpowered for all but the most basic computing tasks. If you just want to read a few web sites, send some email, and maybe do a little word processing, the Everex might not be a bad choice, especially if you just so happen to be a cash strapped college student.

The cheapest PC available through the mega retailer keeps costs down by eschewing the more popular Intel or AMD in favor of the energy efficiency focused VIA C7-D running at 1.5 Gigahertz. And just in case that doesn't mean anything to you, the C7-D is the world's first carbon-neutral processor. Emissions-reducing practices are used during production, and extreme power saving features keep power requirements low during actual usage. Any carbon emissions are offset by VIA's involvement in regional reforestation and alternative energy projects. Another cost saving replacement is the use of Open Office instead of Microsoft's productivity offering. Open Office certainly isn't a Microsoft Office killer, but for word processing and the occasional spread sheet it's hard to go wrong.

Otherwise, this is a fairly complete and standard package for a budget PC. A 80 Gigabyte hard drive, a DVD burner, 1 Gigabyte of RAM, on board audio and video. And of course keyboard, mouse, and speakers.

The low price is made even more impressive considering the absence of "crapware," "bloatware," or "craplets." Whatever you want to call them, these pieces of promotional and trial software are how many manufacturers keep PC costs down by selling "ad space" on your computer's desktop. Recently, however, users have been revolting against the practice. Dell has begun offering de-crapified PCs, and now Everex has proven that computers can still be cheap with out it.

From BetaNews

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Tags: bloatware, carbon free, CarbonFree, crapware, everex, via, wal-mart, walmart

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