Everex’s gPC is the suck
- December 27th, 2007
- 3 Comments
I was worried this would happen when I first saw the gPC a few months ago. I knew the idea wouldn’t fly and that the OS was half-baked, but now PC Magazine, that bastion of hard-core reviewing, has confirmed my suspicions. They found the entire system to be uninspiring and basically said:
Aside from being cheap and unaffected by Windows viruses, there’s not a lot to recommend in the Everex gPC.
It’s underpowered, the OS is flaky, and it touts itself as a green and Google PC yet is neither. Again, I love seeing Linux hit the shelves of major retailers, but these half-assed implementations make people think twice about installing Linux in the first place.
Review [PC Mag]
Richard Chapman (Who am I?)
8 months ago
I’m not surprised PC Magazine had only 2 nice things to say about the Everex TC2502 gPC. PC Magazine is a child of the proprietary software industry. I suspect they will die rather than change when the tide of Open Source rises above their heads. Not because of any arrogance, but because they will not see it coming. This is just the beginning. Other retailers are not going to let Wal-Mart eat their lunch. The industry will have to learn how to make and sell these “new” PCs. There will be some rough spots, but Everex and Wal-Mart have given us a very good start.
John Biggs (Who am I?)
8 months ago
I agree, Richard. I just thought this particular implementation was pretty weak. A good PC and Ubuntu can recreate this much more impressively for a few dollars more.
Super Mario (Who am I?)
8 months ago
When I first heard of the gPC, I thought it was nothing. Later on, with a lot more hype, I begin to notice. Finally, I fixed a problem with my laptop then, and I decided to install gOS to see what it’s like.
At first, I thought it was very nice, especially due to the Enlightened 17 theme, but after less than a day of playing around with it. I simply thought it was horrible. The support was virtually non-existent (what little there was existed in the form of a huge, buggy FAQ in which anyone can post questions in hopes of receiving an answer) and the OS itself was bad.
It’s amazing that this PC was hyped as ’something that just works’ (I’m beginning to hate that phrase) when, in fact, it doesn’t work. Doing the simplest of things in gOS was difficult beyond belief. I literally had trouble making a shortcut. MAKING A SHORTCUT. Eventually, I discovered the terminal (it was named ‘UXTerm’ for some damn reason), and things were beginning to look good.
Of course, it soon looked bad again when I attempted to use WiFi. It didn’t work and, afterwards, wired Internet didn’t work either. I lost it then and switched to Ubuntu Linux (which was at least 20x better than gOS).
The thing about gOS that still stuck the most in my head was what in the hell were the developers of this thing thinking when they decided to assign an application menu to the damn left click mouse then assign a favorite menu to the right click mouse! Jesus Christ!