Wal-Mart: 2008 not year of Linux desktop - sub-notebook maybe

Stan Beer
Thursday, 13 March 2008 03:54

Opinion and Analysis

It held such promise, an honest to goodness plug and play Linux desktop box selling for just US$199 at Wal-Mart stores across the US. Now, just four months after it was announced, the gPC from Everex has been canned by Wal-Mart because of poor sales. Perhaps Linux advocates are barking up the wrong tree pursuing desktops instead of sub-notebooks.

Our story Ubuntu Google $199 PC challenges Microsoft and computer vendors blasted out across cyberspace last November extolling the virtues of a fully configured low-end desktop box with a decent amount of memory (512M RAM), hard drive (80GB), optical drive and six USB ports.

The whole thing was packaged together with a pre-configured version of Ubuntu, called gOS, which included a host of installed clickable applications such as Mozilla Firefox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Wikipedia, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xing Movie Player, RhythmBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3. The idea was that you got a plug and play desktop PC that any consumer could use without having to pay Apple Mac prices.

Unfortunately, as far as in-store sales at Wal-Mart are concerned, the Everex gPC has turned out to be a monumental flop and pundits, Linux advocates and conspiracy theorists alike are looking for reasons why.

One of the inevitable conspiracy theories is that Wal-Mart never really took the gPC seriously and only put up a poor half hearted sales effort. It's hard to see why this would be the case - a major retailer doesn't devote valuable shelf and floor space to a product unless it seriously believes it can move it.

Another theory is that both Everex and Wal-Mart made a mistake in offering the gPC without a monitor in the package. There could be something to this, although it would be hard to imagine the gPC being on display in any store without a monitor attached showing off its features. In the US, like many other countries, PCs are often if not usually sold without monitors. 
Consumers generally understand that a monitor costs extra.

A third theory is that many of the pre-packaged applications on gPC, like Skype, require a fast Internet connection, which budget conscious consumers could not afford. But isn't that case with any PC these days? If you want to surf the net, download video clips, chat online via a messaging program and so on, you need a reasonable Internet connection. This is a full-blown desktop PC we're talking about and it is 2008 not 1998.

So after all the above arguments are dismissed, what are we left with?