Koobox/Linspire value PC: You get what you pay for
Linspire reached a deal earlier this year with Mirus Innovations to offer a line of OEM computers with Linux preinstalled, under the brand name Koobox. We're all in favor of the concept of desktop PCs with Linux preinstalled, but how does the Koobox measure up in practice? The end result is less than stellar.
Linspire is offering three configurations of the Koobox, ranging in price from $299 to $499. Linspire shipped me the middle-of-the-road Multimedia configuration, which is priced at $399.
I expected that the Koobox would use relatively cheap or no-name components, given its $399 price, but that turned out not to be the case. The system includes an ASUS K8V-MX motherboard with integrated video and sound. The motherboard accepts AMD socket 754 CPUs. The multimedia configuration ships with an AMD Sempron 3000+ CPU. The hard drive in the system is a 7200 RPM 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ATA drive.
It includes two slots for RAM, one of which is occupied by a Kingston 512MB DDR DIMM chip, leaving one slot open for expansion. (It'd be nice if motherboard manufacturers would give users three or four expansion slots, rather than just the one or two that seem to be the norm these days.) The system is capable of handling up to 2GB of RAM, according to the motherboard specs.
The mid-tower case is a nice-looking silver and black design. It includes front access to USB ports and a headphone and microphone jack. I'm not crazy about the design for the DVD+RW drive included with the system. It includes a face cover that slides down to obscure the eject button, so the user will either need to try to reach under the cover to hit the button, or press the tray until it retracts -- which probably isn't the best thing for the drive. (I always cringe when I see users do this, and I don't want to have to do it with my own computer.)
My main complaint with the hardware is the fact that the video chipset is using shared memory rather than dedicated video RAM.
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