Wal-Mart To Sell 300$ PC With OpenOffice

Wal-Mart Inc. opened its campaign for the back-to-school PC sales season on Wednesday by introducing a 298$ desktop from Everex which combines three top characteristics, an open-source software, a power-efficient processor, and a lack of bloatware. The Monitor-Less Everex Impact GC3502 runs on a energy saving 1.5GHz C7-D processor from Via Technologies and Includes Microsoft Windows Vista along with OpenOffice.org 2.2 version of word processing and spreadsheet tools.

With this bundle Everex hopes to attract buyers by avoiding the free "trial software" that annoys many users, according to Eugene Chang, a product manager at Everex, of Fremont, California. Dell did a similar thing back in July when it withheld bloatware from its new Vostro line of PCs.
"It's not surprising that Wal-Mart, of all retailers, will sell the $298 Everex desktop; it's a good marriage with their biggest audience-- budget buyers but it has a couple of problems, one is that it uses a Via processor, which is almost unknown to U.S. consumers. And it runs at just 1.5 GHz, so it's unknown how it will handle Microsoft Vista ,and also running OpenOffice is kind of a unique tactic. It's anti-Microsoft, since Microsoft obviously owns the market for productivity software. So users may have some concerns about compatibility." said Toni DuBoise, a senior analyst with Current Analysis West.