Cool Tech Reviews

Yes, you can still buy a new PC with Windows XP installed on it. Windows XP ceased to be available at retail on June 30, 2008 but there are a number of exceptions. The relevant exception for a consumer or a small business owner is that "OEMs can downgrade Vista Business or Vista Ultimate licenses to Windows XP Professional or Tablet PC versions for customers indefinitely," where OEMs are the large PC manufacturers.

However, there’s a difference between "can" and "will" or "will with no hassle" so Christopher Null at PC World tried to purchase a PC with XP from Dell, HP, Gateway, Toshiba, Acer, Fujitsu, Lenovo, and Asus and reports on the very mixed results. Hit the article for the full details on each, but the best bets for an machine with XP preinstalled are:

Consumer PC: Toshiba, Fujitsu, Lenovo

Business PC: HP, Fujitsu, Lenovo

If you are willing to pay extra or install XP from a CD, the choices are even more numerous. Also Asus has its line of Eee ultra low-cost PCs (ULPC) which come with XP under a different exemption in the rules.

Adam Pash at Lifehacker makes some interesting suggestions on how to Get Vista’s Best Features in XP. The sad part is that there is so little there beyond eye candy of dubious utility or applications for very specialized niches. In the latter category, I liked:

Take Quick and Easy Screenshots: PrtScrn has been around forever, but it’s never been the most user-friendly way to get a screenshot. In Vista, Microsoft threw in a screenshot utility called the Snipping Tool. Fact is, if better screenshots are important to you, there are gobs of excellent free screenshot apps available for XP like Screenshot Captor (original post), Clip2Net (original post), and Jing (original post), among many others.

Choose Clip2Net or Jing if you want to share your captures on the Web or Jing if you want to grab a screencast, but for my usual chore of taking screenshots and saving them on my PC, Screenshot Captor does the job and more. Screenshot Captor is for Windows only and is donationware.

Linux is never going to make it as a consumer PC operating system until the average user can comfortably use it. The Content Consumer checks it out in the The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment:

I’ve toyed with Linux since 2002, when I first installed Mandrake. With the latest release of Ubuntu, I was interested to see how far Linux had come since then in terms of being used easily by the mainstream. So, I tricked my grudging girlfriend Erin into sitting down at a brand new Ubuntu 8.04 installation and performing some basic tasks. It’s surprising how many seemingly simple things become complicated and even out of reach for someone without a knowledge of Linux. There are a lot of little things that could be done to make the experience a lot more friendly for non-computer-literate people – some of them easy to implement, others not at all.

Click through to read the full test (it’s not tedious at all) and I think you will agree that 1) Erin is unusually savvy for a philosophy major, 2) things aren’t as bad as the introduction would lead you to believe.  Still, after reading it, I’m not sure Linux would do very well in a Great Ubuntu-Grandma Experiment.

Tim Conneally at BetaNews alerts us to the latest entry in the lowest priced PC competition - Sears.com offers the cheapest desktop PC at $185:

Another low-end PC hit the market today, this time it is a machine by Mirus equipped with Freespire 2.0, available at Sears’ online shop for $185.

The Mirus desktop system is equipped with an Intel Celeron D 420-1.6Ghz, 1GB of RAM, 80GB HDD, CDRW optical drive, and Freespire 2.0.
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This system retails for $284.99, but comes with a promotional Mail-in $100 rebate, making it less expensive than the cheapest Wal-Mart PC, the $199, gOS-equipped Everex TC2502.

No monitor included, but the Mirus system comes with speakers, keyboard, mouse, 56K modem, ethernet, and a 15-in-1 memory card reader. It also comes with a beta of the CNR.com Client, a free Linux software delivery service for one click software updates.

The Mirus system has 512MB more RAM than the Everex so it is likely a better deal until the rebate program ends.  For the technically inclined they are both bargains, but I doubt that either will be big hits with the average consumer because of the Linux fear factor.

Lenovo which bought IBM’s personal computer business, announced today that they would be offering Novell’s SUSE Linux distribution on selected models including the T Series (directed at business users) of the famous ThinkPad laptop product line starting in 4Q2007. Does this finally herald the arrival of the Linux PC for everyday users?

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As had been promised, Dell today announced three computers with the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux distribution preloaded. There was a bigger surprise, however, in the other announcement that Dell would start selling exclusive models of their PCs at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club retail stores in the USA and Canada. 

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