JANUARY 2006 MA XIMUMPC 57
Craploads of drivers, background services,
and a bloated OS can bring even a top-tier rig
to its knees—our $300 PC reminded us how
zippy a stripped-down, lean-running rig can
be. Just think of how fast your PC was the
last time you had a brand-new installation of
Windows—that’s how this PC runs. Despite
its lowly 512MB of DDR memory, it’s actually
quite spry, at least for the day-to-day tasks
it’s being used for. These tasks include basic
offi ce-productivity hijinks with OpenOffi ce,
chatting while we should be working with
the open-source IM client Gaim, checking
our email in Evolution, and surfi ng the web
with Firefox. In fact, this PC is capable of
performing every single task we perform on
a daily basis at our offi ce desks (where we
work like trained monkeys pounding out copy
all day). It’s perfect as a secondary PC in the
spare bedroom, the kitchen, or for little Susie
to plaster with stickers of her favorite Goth
bands. Heck, the Ubuntu Linux distro is so
easy to use, we could even toss this PC Mom’s
way and tell her to have at it. Then we’d be
able to tell our friends that we’re so hardcore
even our moms use Linux!
Of course, this little rig has its draw-
backs. Gaming is pretty much out of the
question, thanks to the slow processor,
watered-down video, and the paltry selection
of Linux binaries for games these days. (The
onboard video provided by the ATI Radeon
xPress 200 chipset is a Radeon 8500, but
a driver bug prevented us from running any
3D accelerated games. Fortunately, our MSI
mobo has a PCI Express slot, so our PC does
have an easy upgrade path to a better-sup-
ported nVidia or ATI chipset.)
Obviously with the modest CPU cache,
small hard drive, and sparse memory, this isn’t
a video-editing machine. Nor is it a practical
media server. But those are very specialized
tasks, and the bottom line is that this $300 PC
can perform 98 percent of the functions most
non-gamers use their computers for.THE REST:
STORAGE AND CASE
Our storage demands were simple:
We wanted a 16x DVD-R/RW drive
and a Serial ATA hard drive with at
least 60GB. Both of our prayers
were answered. Though the Lite-
On 16x DVD-R drive is totally
generic, it gets the job done and
is nearly as fast as drives cost-
ing twice as much. It even burns
double-layer at 4x.
Though the Seagate 80GB
SATA drive is a 7200.7 model—two
generations behind the current
drives—it rides the SATA 150 inter-
face and has 8MB of cache.
We’re not thrilled with the case,
which we found in the back of a
local PC store, looking as sad as
Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree,
but all we needed was a steel
cube with a power supply, and this
enclosure fi t the bill, under budget!OPERATING
SYSTEM:
UBUNTU LINUX
There’s just no way we could afford
a pricey Microsoft OS and stick to
our $300 budget. So we ditched
Windows and installed Ubuntu, a
Debian-based Linux distro suited
to everyone from grandmas to
power users. Ubuntu will let you
do everything you need on your
PC—browse the web, check email,
edit photos, and edit offi ce fi les.
(See our How To on page 59 for full
instructions on installing Ubuntu.)
There’s a small incompatibility
with onboard video and Ubuntu,
but luckily the fi x is easy: Just edit
a single fi le before you start the
GUI. The fi rst time you boot after
the install completes, press Esc
during the boot process and go
into the Ubuntu recovery console.
From there, type: nano /etc/
X11/xorg.conf and scroll down
to the line that says Device “ATI.”
Replace “ATI” with “vesa”, press
Ctrl+o, then Ctrl+x, and restart your
computer. After that you should be
good to go!THE GOOD,
THE BAD, AND THESTRUGGLING
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