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Walmart will sell two laptops and a desktop PC designed in collaboration with Esports Arena:
Companies like Alienware might dominate the pre-built gaming desktop and laptop PCs, but Walmart is throwing down the gauntlet today. The company has launched its own line of powerful gaming rigs, as spotted by PC Gamer.
These machines come in three different flavors: two laptops, and a single gaming desktop. The specifications are pretty outstanding, but they come at a cost, which we'll get into later. All of the machines fall under Walmart's new "Overpowered" (OP) product line, and they're the result of the retail giant's recent collaboration with Esports Arena.
Who's next? Tesco?
Also at CNET.
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Walmart Launches its Own "Overpowered" Line of Gaming PCs
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(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:59PM (4 children)
These are expensive prebuilt gaming machines. Intel and Windows are the combination that will reach the most potential buyers.
A lot of games, especially older games, are engineered to run mostly in a single-threaded way. The Intel single-threaded performance advantage remains significant. Thus, no AMD.
Most people that understand the modern tech industry well enough to run Linux (or a *BSD) also understand it well enough to assemble their own devices from parts. I'm continually astonished ZaReason, System76, and ThinkPenguin stay in business. I want to support them, but why would I pay $1500 for a desktop from them when patience and an hour or two of searching on Ebay will get me something every bit as good for $1100?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:05PM (3 children)
As a System76 owner -- the answer is laptops. Notice that their website has one desktop listed which is "coming soon" -- as far as I can tell, you can't actually buy ANY desktop from them at the moment. But there's six different models of laptops available. That ought to give you a pretty big hint about their primary market.
Although I *am* very excited about this new desktop they're launching today, even though I almost certainly won't be buying one. The difference now -- once this thing launches -- is that they claim they'll be offering a 100% open hardware design. So you don't have to build the entire thing yourself, but you get everything you need to modify it in the future however you'd like. If they do it well, that could be pretty big. Right now it's better to build your own because then all the components meet defined standards -- OEM boxes often use custom motherboards that aren't quite ATX for example. So you lose customization and upgrade options if you buy OEM. But if the entire case is open hardware, then you can get *more* customization options instead of less. I can't go on Newegg and buy an open hardware case. I can't redesign just one component of that case if I have some need to do that. But if I buy from System76, I can. It's gonna be a niche market, but it's going to be huge for anyone who does need that.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday November 02 2018, @11:08AM (2 children)
I guess. I still don't see the appeal, I would just get a used laptop and put Linux on it myself. System76 Serval starts at $2000. Core i7 8700, GTX 1060, 15.6" 1920x1080 screen, 256 GB SSD. Go to Ebay, get a used laptop with an i7-6700HQ, GTX 970M, 15.6" 1920x1080 screen, 128GB SSD, $700. Sure, the Serval is newer and faster and there is a risk - not a huge risk, but a risk - I won't be able to put Linux on the used laptop. But I save $1300. And in four years I can take some of the $1300 I didn't spend on the Serval and buy a used laptop from 2019 that's faster than the Serval.
I wish the Linux computing OEMs all success in the world. I would love to see Linux conquer more of the home desktop and laptop market. I just think too much of what could be their core customer demographic doesn't buy off-the-shelf builds, period.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday November 02 2018, @01:59PM (1 child)
And yet, that seems to be exactly what you're suggesting they do, for rather obvious reasons. There's no alternative to "off-the-shelf builds" for laptops; if you need a laptop then the question is only whose build you want to pick.
I really don't think it's fair to compare a US-based retail business against whatever random Chinese scam products you can find used on e-bay. Ebay is evil, ebay themselves (the company, not a seller) has attempted on multiple occasions to stick my family with hundreds of dollars in fraudulent charges, so as far as I'm concerned buying anything off of ebay is pretty much the riskiest thing you can attempt in e-commerce. No support, no warranty, no guarantee you'll get what you purchased or even anything at all, and no guarantee that the money you're using to pay for it won't be randomly seized with no recourse.
As for System76....Build quality is a big thing. Don't compare these to a Dell or an HP. In fact, I don't know anyone who builds systems this good -- Macs get the reputation, but it's not deserved, the internals are garbage. Lenovo is supposed to be good, maybe they were back before I started using them (my first was a T400 from work) but nothing I've used by them is anywhere close. I've had HP laptops where parts would fall off every time you picked it up, and it was only two years old. I've seen Dell laptops literally burst into flames or where the hinges totally seize up after three. My System76 is four years old, and people still think it's brand new. Not a scratch or a crack or so much as a worn bit of plastic anywhere on the thing. And I've still never seen the thing lag or slow for even a second. I expect I could easily get another four years out of this thing, although I'll probably retire it to my server rack before then. But it'll be the first laptop in there that's still in one piece...
You've also got the driver certainty; their great support; stuff like disabling the Intel ME; and supporting the Linux community in general. They're also far easier to take apart, far easier to repair, and far easier to upgrade...so even if something fails you might save money or downtime during the repair as well. They use real screws instead of those craptastic plastic tabs that break off as soon as you try to open the thing once.
If every penny counts, then yeah, go buy a cheap piece of crap Dell or whatever. But if you reach a point where you're willing to spend a couple bucks extra to get a laptop that actually freakin' works, that doesn't look and feel like shit, where you aren't constantly fighting the hardware to get it to do what you want and not kill itself in the process...then you buy System76 :)
Sure, I *could* wrangle some generic laptop to do what I want, but why should I give money to a company that's producing a crap product, and that's going to make me spend the first couple days/weeks with the device trying to find and fix their mistakes? I don't have the time to be screwing with those pieces of junk anymore...
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday November 03 2018, @10:02PM
My returns with Ebay are more frequent than with Amazon or a brick and mortar retailer, but otherwise I haven't had any problems. I'm sorry you have. For electronics I tend to go towards Ebay sellers with thousands of positive reviews - I'm sure the system can still be gamed, but I think it's less likely.
For laptops, I've had good luck with all of the vendors. Dell, HP, Lenovo, even Acer. That said, me and my family lean towards the thick and expandable devices that are a headache to lug around. Maybe the thin and compact laptops are more prone to problems.