Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

I believe that Richard Stallman (rms) uses one of these, because it is more free than other machines (i.e. it comes with a free BIOS). I'm interested in this stuff, and I hope they do really well. It's difficult to break into the market since Intel and x86 seem to have a stranglehold for PC's and laptops these days.

It seems like there is currently a gap in the market for inexpensive computers that are not only environmentally friendly, but also reliable. Many users don't need to have the highest performance, but they would at least want something that will be durable and last for a long time without hardware and software failure.

In that case, forget about anything that comes out of China.

Sorry, just the facts, ma'am.

Practically everything comes out of China, it's just a matter of the engineering and quality standards. Most businesses in other countries use China for its cheap labor, so they are willing to cut corners already (e.g. Walmart, Dell, etc.). However, things manufactured in China for the Chinese market can vary anywhere from very low quality to very high quality. I'm not sure about these machines in particular, but the cases look tougher than those of typical home market PC's. It also seems to be the project of a university, and to have different purposes than just undercutting the competition. For example, rather than advertising speed and flashy features, they are emphasizing low power consumption, security, and reliability. Basically, they are marketing these more as appliances than typical PC's.

This could be very good for many Chinese who don't know much about computers, but deal with viruses a lot, and otherwise don't need the latest technology. If they are reliable as well, then that would be suitable for people who are close to the elements (i.e. rural farmers and villagers), or who simply can't afford PC repairs for random problems they have.

Name one.

Ming vase. Not contemporary, but shows that "Chinese copy" doesn't always have to be the case if companies demand quality and stick to their guns.

A counterexample would be what those wonderful American craftsmen gave us in the 1970s Fords. Proof that no matter where you go you need to demand quality and stick to your guns or else.

Most "carrier grade" and high end servers these days, including those for the big names, are likely manufactured in China. As another example, when IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo, the quality basically stayed the same, as did the traditional designs for their business PC's and workstations. Lenovo is a Chinese company, yet they manufacture IBM products in a manner very similar to the way that IBM did. I would consider these high quality products, to the extent that they are built to be reliable and rugged (e.g. they have to go through military grade endurance testing). By contrast, companies like eMachines and Dell are using Chinese manufacturing as well, but they aren't willing to pay more for high quality standards, and the designs are meant to lure customers with the latest whiz-bang, while being housed in overheated flimsy plastic cases.

As for high quality products for the Chinese market, clothes come to mind easily. I lived in China for a little while, and I saw that the price you pay for clothes is closely related to their quality. For example, a $15 pair of pants in China will often have noticeably better and more durable materials and stitching than a $30 pair of pants in the U.S. However, the $4 pair of pants is of low quality and will not last, just like low quality clothes tend to not last in other countries. On the Chinese market, there is a wide range of quality, and you often get what you pay for.

As another example, tea in China as sold to the Chinese, ranges from very low quality to very high quality. The very low quality tea is often still better than what can be found in supermarkets in the West, and the premium tea is of incomparably good quality, and is simply not exported en masse to any other countries, but rather kept for the Chinese market where people will pay big money for premium tea. http://teaguardian.com/all_about/whycheaptea.html

And they are junk, built to last a couple years. Whether that is an intelligent decision or not, I can't say .. but they are crap. Generic crap. The only reason they are even as good as they are is fairly strict quality control by outside forces.


As another example, when IBM sold their peecee products to Legend the quality immediately went down , in spite of all the controls IBM put in place to ensure this wouldn't happen. Ask SAQ. Thinkpads, for example, were always wonderful. Now they are slightly better than average (and probably on a downward spiral.) In the US, bad drives out good. I hope Europe is less subject to this syndrome. If not, please don't say anything. I'd like to retain this fantasy.


One may hate IBM (or that emotion may have dissipated) but they are a superior company. They did realize that letting some Chinese company have their product line was going to hurt their reputation so they actually did something about it. They put a lot of safeguards in place to ensure that the decline in quality would not be laid at their doorstep. Give Legend another five years and the entire "IBM" line will be junk. They've already started down that path. Luckily (or contractually, if IBM is smart - and they seem to be) the IBM name has left the building. And Legend is one of the better companies.

Chinese companies just can't help themselves. They have to "improve" whatever they touch with a bunch of useless hare-brained garbage that probably makes sense to some aliens on the Planet Xircon but for use by humans, it's crap. And the other thing they have to do is cheapify the product. By the time companies here are done, nothing made in China will last for more than six months. That's assuming it even works correctly in the first place. (Which is in itself fairly rare.)


Sure they do. And they are shit. Pure shit, no matter how much you pay. There is a reason that every time I come to the US I have to spend 80% of my time buying clothes. The made-in-China clothes that you get in the US are not only better quality but they are cheaper than they are here.


I'm happy for you.


Bullshit.


Ha. Ha. Ha. This is why I have to buy jeans once a year overseas ? In Marshall's ? Or why the pants I had made to measure in Dongguan fit like a dress ? Because of face, you smile and thank the drooling idiot and walk away with crap.

Chinese people make crap. Sorry. It is in theory possible to get decent product here but in Real Life (tm) it just doesn't happen.


Bull. Fucking. Shit.

It's all crap. If you want to find something made in China that's acceptable, go to Nordstrom's. Nothing sold domestically is worth ten cents. And I do mean nothing.


Oh, a wine-sipper. Thanks for regurgitating the propaganda the financiers spew. I'll stand by the statement that you are not going to find any Chinese products that are worth the powder to blow them to hell.

Now, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't need to be high quality. China does that fine. There's no reason to spend big bucks for a 6" crescent wrench for the bottom of the tackle box. And the country as a whole has a lot more common sense and a lot more freedom than the US. There are many good things about China.

The overall direction in the US is to sell shittier and shittier products for more and more money, to the point that there aren't many American products that I can feel comfortable holding up for comments. The trend is definitely downward - which is why a Fuel or Tezro can't compare to an Octane. Or even an O2 ... It's all about "how much proooofit can the "investors" [e.g. how much can Kirk Kerkorian and Carl Icahn squeeze out of the plebs ?] "earn" ?

But that doesn't change the fact that China is not a culture that's ever going to manufacture good product. There are a lot of good things about China but manufacturing isn't one of them. Simple fact.

dude your swearing don't make your arguments more clear, quite the contrary
it simply is not a simple fact

hehe all i can say is most chinese i know really loves money more than anything.. they dedicate their lives to save and get rich and if they need to cheat just to benefit, they will i just hope they will learn soon or someday

so about the topic, any news up there ham? i even heard they give free tshirts for those who buy

It's called an ipad.

Hamei, endlessly shouting out your own opinions is more appropriate for a Fox News opinion show than for a forum about computers. If you actually want to talk the issues, then I'd be happy to do so, but only after you've wiped the foam away from your mouth and calmed down.


iPads are not really built to be rugged or reliable, and are not general purpose computers. After a few years, will no doubt be ineligible for software updates. I have a netbook which is more general purpose than an iPad, but I've gotten the impression that the hardware on that is a little iffy as well, and they are also just meant for home users -- not business class reliability or a long lifespan. Eventually all these devices will end up in a landfill after the hardware flakes out.

Back on topic, the boxes coming out of Lemote are good boxes and good values. I don't know how long they will last but I do know the engineering is holding up. I've kept mine going for a week straight building OpenBSD from source. It doesn't take a week, but I did the builds multiple times to see what the box was made of and afaiac it passed with flying colors. It didn't catch on fire or heat up my office and it doesn't give me a headache because it's nearly silent, and it doesn't break the bank because it uses almost no electricity. The little thing just goes and works. My experience with Chinese products has not been very good, especially not their hardware (as in screws, bolts, tools, etc.) but I am very happy with the quality and performance and price point of this Lemote box. I don't like laptops so I didn't buy one, but you could get opinions from people who did and see what they think also. Rather than generalizations even though they might be mostly correct (after all, they're generalizations! ) there are always exceptions. Anything that gives me a viable choice over WinTel is A Good Thing . I have mostly old Sun/SPARC hardware because of that and it is very nice to see something new being made that isn't Intel, isn't expected to run Windows, and is well built and priced fairly. I'm hoping to see more Lemote export hardware and more companies getting a variety of useful green hardware out there. This is an excellent start.

This was posted yesterday on the reg http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/26 ... c_preview/

Lemote is not sitting still. Lots of MIPS goodness ahead.

Very interesting! They are planning on using these chips for servers and supercomputers too, then. The article also mentions 16-core chips coming out in the future, but apparently little information is available on these so far.

Some pics of an older model are at: http://www.cyrius.com/debian/loongson/fulong/gallery.html

It looks like this came with a customized Debian install using a GNOME 2 desktop.

There are already servers and supercomputers built on their previous chips. These guys are serious and they're invested in this big-time.



They have their own Debian-based distro and have been committing many patches to the Linux kernel. OpenBSD runs on it (of course!) and some people have said NetBSD and FreeBSD will run on it also.
The box pictured in your link is the previous version, the newer ones have the switches and jacks rearranged and a micro serial port on the front and they did away with the garish http://www.lemote.com lettering.

What is good in that last picture is it shows you the size of the box compared to a keyboard. That is a LOT of 800MHz MIPS III (64 bit) goodness in a tiny package. 512M of RAM, 160GB sata HD. Amazing little box. Later models also have a much smaller fan and don't use the copper plate. From what I read they decreased the power dissipation too and they now run about 12W.