Dave, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > Jon, > Christian Einfeldt (of the "Digital Tipping Point" film) turned me on to this > thread.
> You were spot on. It's a RAM thing - we've tried to tell the system builder > that supplies Fry's over and over again that shipping a machine with 128mb > RAM but also relying on that same RAM for driving the onboard video is just a > terrible experience for customers. They are kowtowing to the Fry's buyers, > who only really want to use the machine as a loss leader so their sales > people can upsell to more expensive gear. >Cheers, >Kevin La Rue >VP Marketing, Linspire I had forgotten that the machine shared its RAM with its video card. This is one reason why "Linux needed so much memory". Normally it would run slow, but not intolerable, in 128 Mbytes of memory. However, I will predict that windows will also work slower than molasses on this machine (IF IT WORKS AT ALL) until you add more RAM. The last time I knew MS Windows XP needed 256 Mbytes to run well on a reasonably (non-shared video RAM) machine. It is not the software, or even a bad machine design for the market. It is just a bad system builder, and an ugly loss-leader business model used by Frye's. md -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.