My $366 Vista PC

This morning, I read about a $159 computer from a review on the PC Magazine site:

I called my local Fry's, and while they were no longer have the $159 sale (apparently "quantities are limited"), they would be willing to sell me one for $171. While I was there, I got a 1GB memory upgrade and a 256MB ATI graphics card. Here's the equipment I went home with:

• Fry's Genuine Quality 3131 PC: $170.99
• 1.67GHz CPU
• 128MB of RAM
• 40GB HD
• 10/100 integrated Ethernet
• 56KB modem card
• 52X CD-ROM
• Stereo speakers
• Keyboard + Mouse (including roller ball)
• ATI Radeon 9550, AGP 8x/4x, 256MB DDR RAM: $94.99
• 1GB RAM SIMM(for a total of 1.1GB of RAM): $99.99

I then added an LCD panel and a DVD drive I had laying around. Total cost $365.97.

When I got the PC, it came pre-installed with Lindows, the Linux distro meant to look and act like Windows. And I gotta say, it wasn't too bad. Then, because they ship a free CD that runs directly w/o an install, I plugged in Ubuntu, another popular client-side Linux distro which was also surprisingly easy to use. Neither was as familiar as Windows XP, of course, but they were both a lot easier to use then the last time I ran Linux.

At 12:04am, I started the Vista Feb '06 CTP installation. At 12:44am, I was running Vista, it having recognized all of hardware (except the sound device) from my $366 PC, including enabling those cool "glass" effects and the nifty animations, integrated search and all the neat things you've read about in the Vista reviews.

I know I work for "the man," but even so, I'm seriously impressed. The install was fast and seamless. The performance is way better than I thought it would be. And the little UI tricks are fabulous. I can't do any media stuff 'cuz my audio device wasn't recognized, but it was cool when I tried to play video and a DVD, that the Vista Media Center UI came up (my complete home entertainment needs are served with a coupla TVs, a Media Center PC and an XBox).

I know, I know, I got the OS for free, but come on! It's still beta and it runs great on my cheapo PC! I don't know what Vista's going to go for, but I bet the whole she-bang (including LCD panel and DVD drive) could be had for ~$500 when Vista ships. Plus, I've only been playing with it for about an hour, but I already don't want to go back to my XP boxes...

P.S. This post was composed and posted from "visto," my new Vista PC.

Wow, I have an Athlon64 X2 4400+ with 4GB of RAM, and I found the feb CTP to be a bit sluggish (when compared to XP)... your performance expectations must be really really low man... Also, my Vista install runs with 800MB of RAM idle... besides moving the windows around and browsing, I wonder what you can actually do with your cheapo PC and Vista. You work for the man and all, but let's stay realistic shall we :)

Basically, running Vista on a cheap config like this will only be for show purposes, there's nothing serious you can do (unless the final Vista cuts on the resource usage side of course).

What's funny is that your $366 PC without windows will cost $732 with Vista. It's ridiculous how much MS charges for OS licenses, it is literally now half the cost of a PC. Ridiculous.

John, feel free to come and use my computer for yourself. It runs just fine.

That's not to say that everything is perfect. Vista does seem to take up 750MB of RAM at the baseline, so when I go past 1.1GB, things slow down. Likewise, video playback doesn't always work, nor do DVDs. On the other hand, VS05 works nicely as does IE7, Guild Wars and lots of other stuff.

Well, what I said is probably a bit harsh for pre-release software :) I also experience crashes and hangs when playing videos a lot (especially when the videos come from the web, like channel9), but I totally understand these (we're still far from release-quality code). What I meant to say is that a low-cost machine like this is probably not suited for Vista, and will end up giving the wrong impression about the OS. It would be fanstastic if the released Vista was smooth like this : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-199899523054020719&q=linux (especially the part with Quake 3 and the several movies playing at once:)

Try installing the February on USB HDD, for testing on how well it installs on a laptop. This laptop even has good gfx chip but for reasons unexplained WinFX needs a drivers few months newer than what is available and attempts to install the new generic ATI Mobility driver on a big OEM laptop are blocked.
Anyone want to buy a laptop?

John, that XGL video is amazing. What's more amazing is that what while it took 10,000 highly paid MS developers over 5 years to create the nomimal upgrade that is Vista, it only took a few Novell developers 5 months to add the same desktop composition functionality into a Linux distribution. It is is running flawlessly with no requirement of new drivers. Simply brilliant. Shows what can be done when you have a solid codebase to work from and not patched together spaghetti that MS has to deal with.

Carlos, your statements are out of reality.
First, XGL was started in 2004 - not a 5 months ago.
Second, there are no 10,000 highly paid MS developers to create DWM - i don't know the exact number but it must be under 50 and not all of them are highly paid. The others (of the "10.000") was working on the new kernel, Network stack, Audio stack, IE7, Office, XBOX, etc, etc, etc.
The solid codebase is the same "spaghetti" because every OS is so huge.
I think the "Windows is a patched monster" sentence is a myth.

The Xgl stuff is quite amazing yes, but it is simply a new implementation of X, whereas Vista is much more than a new implementation of GDI+. Xgl does not introduce any new API if you will (as Vista does with WPF), it simply provides a better implementation for an existing one. That said, I would really love it if Vista could achieve that degree of "smoothness" at release, even if on high end machines only. So, Chris, talk to the man if you can :). To come back to the original thread, as Vista is right now, I don't think it would do good on the cheapo machine described here (I may be wrong, I'm extrapolating from what I see on my own higher end rig). But it is a very good goal to set to MS developers: make Vista usable on the machine described here.

So why didn't you post screenshots of this?

Carlos,

Your numbers are so out of touch it's not even funny. Vista will probably cost around $30-50 for OEM's, and around $80-100 if you build your own machine for the over-the-shelf (i.e. no volume discount and the shop adds a margin) version. Furthermore, comparing software cost to hardware is ludicrous. Good software has always been more expensive than the hardware it runs on (think high end products like 3D Studio MAX). Software costs significantly more to develop than hardware, even though the manufacturing of software is relatively cheap. Software is the reason you have any sort of hardware in the first place.

I will have to agree with you on one point though, I do agree that Vista leaves a lot to be desired considering the time in which it was released. It would be a much more interesting OS had it been released in early 2000-2001. However, from a developer perspective, MS is still way ahead with WCF, WPF, WWF, etc.

It's official. I built this machine on a Friday and by Sunday night it had taken up permanent residence in my boys' room (they gave up an XP laptop to get it).

I assume, since you still, know what your boys look like :) that you have some control over internet access to that box...

Brian

Its a little bit more expensive, but a Dell D410 with a gig of ram out of the box will run Vista just fine so pc makers are starting to use hardware good enough for Vista then when it comes out as final most new pcs should run it out of the box. Come on it takes more memory but doesent it look cool. LOL.
Dont forget no matter how bad it is, at least is not a MAC.

SIMM?
:-P

FYI, My daughter runs Vista on her 1Ghz Duron laptop with 512MB of ram. (She's 4). Sure it's slow to boot up but runs Dora the Explorer quite nicely, and being a little kid, that's what's important.

fantastic, I did a similiar experiment with my business laptop and vista rocked on that laptop too, around 150+ audience got stumbled on it's performance in a local windows vista event.

Sudhakar
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