Open-PC: From the community, for the community

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 10:07:16AM -0500, Colin McGregor wrote:
> On 1/20/10, Michael Lauzon <mlauzon-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > Anyone know about this, it's a PC that only uses free software, and
> > Linux is at the heart of it:
> >
> > http://open-pc.com/
> 
> I saw the Slashdot story about the above:
> 
> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/01/20/0020246/100-Free-Software-Compatible-PC-Launches
> 
> I am unimpressed with the machine, because:
> 
> - a 160 GB hard disk in an era when 1 TB drives are under $100 and 1.5
> TB drives are under $130...
> - I love expansion slots, so for anything other than MythTV client
> boxes I have avoided microATX motherboards (which this box has).
> - At $529 (Cdn.) (359 Euros at current exchange rate) you can build a
> FAR better box (how ever you want to measure things) from the clone
> shops at College / Spadina than what these folks are offering.
> 
> Bottom line, interesting idea, but part of what turned me from
> Microsoft software was getting more bang for the the buck, not less.
> This box is too small, limited and expensive to be of interest.

Well for a tiny formfactor, the price isn't too crazy, and when using 2.5"
drives, 1TB drives are not at option.

On the other hand, I fail to see how this thing is particularly special.
They appear to have aimed for open source driver supported hardware.
Well that's not hard and applies to lots of machines.  Where is the
Coreboot bios with source code?  They didn't mention anything about that
in the specs.  Without that, I don't consider it fully open hardware.
In fact I consider it a joke.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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