Holy tightwads, Batman! A better PC than what you’re running costs less than a pair of designer jeans? What’s happened to the computer industry?
Were GQ magazine to design a computer, it would sport a Gucci leather jacket and stroll in slick Prada loafers. It would also cost eight, maybe nine thousand dollars. But when Fry’s Electronics designed the GQ system, it wasn’t thinking of luxury linens and leather. It wanted something cheap. The surprising thing is that the GQ (short for “Great Quality,” by the way, not Gentleman’s Quarterly) turns out to be a powerful PC. It’s low-cost, in other words, not high crap.
Why should you care about a cut-rate Californian computer? After all, you’ve probably got a PC or two at home already. But consider: This one is probably faster than yours. It contains an AMD Sempron 2400+ chip, which runs at 1.67 GHz; unless you’ve bought a computer in the past year or two, that’s a faster chip than yours. And if you’re up to your eyeballs in speed already, a fast, cheap box like this would make an excellent office system or home server. Plus we’re willing to guess Grandma doesn’t have half that power at her place.
We’re not kidding. But that said, can a PC that sells for $159 really be viable? We took the plunge and bought one, just to find out. We didn’t expect a colorful, jacked-up gaming rig for under $200…and we didn’t get one. Unpacking the GQ 3131 from its box revealed a compact minitower case. But it was black, at least, not beige. We popped the screws off the side panel and peeked inside.
The GQ’s purple motherboard (wouldn’t the fashion mag be proud?) is an ECS 741GX-M—a socket-462 board suitable for AMD’s Athlon and Sempron processors. It’s got four USB 2.0 ports, built-in six-channel audio, and 10/100 Ethernet. The board isn’t exactly bleeding-edge, although it does offer an empty AGP graphics slot in case you want to add a card. It also comes with a generic modem, for people who still dial in, and a single 128MB memory module in one of the two DIMM sockets.
As you might guess, this PC for tightwads doesn’t run any flavor of the Gatesian operating system. Instead, the computer ships with Linspire, the OS formerly known as “Lindows.” Even though the GQ runs a Linux variant, 128MB of RAM still seems a bit thin. But what do you want for $159?
Well, you’d want a keyboard and mouse. And the GQ3131 gives you one of each. You also get a pair of (terrible!) stereo speakers. The keyboard is surprisingly good, with decent tactile feedback. The mouse seems generic—not particularly responsive in an era of 2,000-dpi gaming mice. But who cares?
Rounding out the system are a fast 40GB hard drive and a 52X CD-ROM drive. No, you don’t get a burner for $159. Nor a monitor, though Fry’s offers a 17-inch companion CRT for $119. We eschewed that, and plugged it into a 19-inch LCD in the lab just to see what would happen. When we pressed the power button, our cynical sides expected sparks and smoke. Instead, we were welcomed by Linspire.
