EVOO's 11.6" EV-C-116-5 has more substantial problems than its low specs imply.
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We bought Walmart’s $140 laptop so you wouldn’t have to
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That was painful to read. Can't imagine what it must have been like to do.
Condolences.
Condolences.
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What a damn shame, I bet a lot of families could have used a stack of those for home schooling.
Editorial/style note:
Editorial/style note:
you used "at this point" two sentences in a row - that would drive me crazy if I spotted that in my own writing
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The only use I can see for it is maaaaybe as a cheap driver for some digital signage if you didn't have access to a real playback device or the knowledge to build something out of a Pi.
I could see myself leaving one of these sitting on a table at a trade show without worrying about someone stealing it.
I could see myself leaving one of these sitting on a table at a trade show without worrying about someone stealing it.
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I’d love to see how a distro like AntiX would run on this. It’s designed specifically for older computers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntiX
Also a cpu benchmark between the Pinebook and this system (under Linux) would be useful as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntiX
Also a cpu benchmark between the Pinebook and this system (under Linux) would be useful as well
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I thoroughly enjoyed this review. I would love to see a whole series of you reviewing ghastly systems like this.
"Hitting the page file hard enough to qualify as a hate crime". Made me spit my coffee out.
That being said, it is a shame that this didn't pan out as an option for folks even if it was a tad bit under powered. no_neckbeard makes a good point on the home schooling angle.
"Hitting the page file hard enough to qualify as a hate crime". Made me spit my coffee out.
That being said, it is a shame that this didn't pan out as an option for folks even if it was a tad bit under powered. no_neckbeard makes a good point on the home schooling angle.
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Sooooo. A really lightweight Linux system maybe? Like no DE, just something like ratpoison or TWM and the handful of bare utilities to get Wifi and whatever else needed? Maybe even no GUI? Just terminal time for distraction free working?
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Wow that sounds like an awful computer.
On an unrelated note, i really suggest using wiztree instead of windirstat (I’m not affiliated, i just love it). It looks the same, but is multitudes of faster, because of a different way to read the files on the disk: https://antibody-software.com/web/softw ... ard-drive/
On an unrelated note, i really suggest using wiztree instead of windirstat (I’m not affiliated, i just love it). It looks the same, but is multitudes of faster, because of a different way to read the files on the disk: https://antibody-software.com/web/softw ... ard-drive/
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Nah, I find experimenting with underpowered and old systems interesting. Sure, Windows may not run well on them, but take any one of the Linux distros designed for older systems and see how this system works. I'd bet an XFCE based distro or others (Antix, Lubuntu, TinyCore, Puppy, etc) might work quite well on this laptop.
This laptop would still probably run circles around a PC from 20 years ago (well..maybe...I'd love to do a performance benchmark on linux and see)
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I haven’t heard of this. Does it run/install when the disk is full already and there is not much ram around? Windirstat does.
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I got an HP Stream 11 with 4GB RAM, Celeron N4000, and 32GB SSD for use as a fanless Minecraft server. I kind of regret it, its SSD is too small to be good for Windows, and the CPU is more anemic than I would want for a Minecraft server, but it is fanless with 4GB RAM for $110 sale price. Even with its 32GB SSD and 768p display it is far better than this monstrosity. Even a CPU heat sink would make it better suited to my niche use case than my HP Stream, but it's Walmart, so they just make it suck at everything.
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I have been using a Nextbook Flexx 10 with WIndows 10 (upgraded myself from the Windows 8.1 originally installed) for about 4 years now. Of course I don't run any games or VMs on it, but it's very practical to toss on a backpack during vacations, runs Chrome and Office just fine, and in emergencies I even used VS Code on it with no problems.
Not sure they still sell it, I paid $90 for it at the time. The config is even crappier than the one reviewed (has an Atom Z3735F and the same 2GB of RAM). I'm glad I did not benchmark it, just tried to use it and it worked.
Not sure they still sell it, I paid $90 for it at the time. The config is even crappier than the one reviewed (has an Atom Z3735F and the same 2GB of RAM). I'm glad I did not benchmark it, just tried to use it and it worked.
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I think it’s a fucking crime Walmart is even putting these on the shelves. They’re basically duping buyers into spending their money for nothing (chicks for free), knowing damn well it’s a useless pile of horse shit. Not to mention these things are a huge e-waste disaster waiting to happen.
Rant over, time for breakfast and coffee; perhaps I should have done that first before reading this. But thanks Jim for taking one for the team.
Rant over, time for breakfast and coffee; perhaps I should have done that first before reading this. But thanks Jim for taking one for the team.
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Friends don't let friends buy old gen dual core AMD procs.... and then they doubled down by cutting the clock speed???? I honestly can't imagine how painful it was to use....
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Yeah... at this point you can buy a used T440 (or a T440s if you shop a bit) for the same price and get a real SSD, at least 4GB of RAM, and an i5. Don't know what informed buyer would ever go with one of these.
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Informed buyer is not the target market. Low income people who think new is always better than used are (one bad used car purchase can go a long way at instilling this mentality). And if Walmart is one of the only shops in town, it's even more likely they will get swindled by this.
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I think running a full Gnome Desktop was a bit unreasonable to ask from this machine.
You should have tested with Xfce and Mate. Those are much more lightweight and much-much more responsive when in a resource constrained hw environment like this.
When we talk about a 2 GB RAM limit and a processor like this, Gnome 3 is a CPU and memory hog plain and simple.
Even KDE Plasma 5 would perform much better. It is not a coincidence that the Pinebook Pro now ships with Manjaro KDE Plasma 5. KDE is still super-customizable but lightweight enough even for hw like this and the Pinebook Pro.
You should have tested with Xfce and Mate. Those are much more lightweight and much-much more responsive when in a resource constrained hw environment like this.
When we talk about a 2 GB RAM limit and a processor like this, Gnome 3 is a CPU and memory hog plain and simple.
Even KDE Plasma 5 would perform much better. It is not a coincidence that the Pinebook Pro now ships with Manjaro KDE Plasma 5. KDE is still super-customizable but lightweight enough even for hw like this and the Pinebook Pro.
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This. My wife is happily running this as her "runaround" laptop, and it runs Mint beautifully -- after it choked and died on Win10. The HP Stream (and many others, I'm sure) is a proper low-spec machine. The EVOO thing? Like Worminator said, it was painful enough to read this review, and I can only imagine what it must have been like for Jim to *do* the review.
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Yep. If anything, they should sell something like a Pinebook Pro with clear marking that it comes with Linux. That would keep expectations in check but would still provide the customers with a reasonable option.
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I still find it weird that 32 GB (~GiB) is not enough space. Any operating system should happily operate within that constraint. Somewhere we lost our sense of memory space. 32 GB is a lot!
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My 11 year old eMachines e525 has 4 gigs of ram, a Celeron T3100 with 1.90 GHz base clock, a 320 GB HD (not SSD though), and I'd be willing to sell it for $138. It cost about $1,000 new, adjusted for inflation!
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I find it amazing they can produce a laptop for that amount of money, junk or not.
Wouldn't it be more profitable to produce a cheap Linux laptop with an ARM processor? Or do buyers demand a Windows laptop, no matter what?
I mean, Linux Mint is perfectly suitable for most users that merely browse the web and send some email.
Wouldn't it be more profitable to produce a cheap Linux laptop with an ARM processor? Or do buyers demand a Windows laptop, no matter what?
I mean, Linux Mint is perfectly suitable for most users that merely browse the web and send some email.
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Windows might have worked good on a 32GB SSD if the suits at MS didn't pack bloatware. I'm not even saying all the Windows Phone vestigial apps are bad, some like the timer and calendar apps are great. But the MSN News app that pushes Fox News notifications, Skype, or 3D Viewer, or Paint 3D? Yeah, those are just pet projects to make Windows trendier, or make the consumer a product at the cost of Windows running on a 32GB SSD.
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Thanks, that was a fun read! XD
I swear the chassis color looks blue; maybe it's my monitor
I swear the chassis color looks blue; maybe it's my monitor
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That's not a thing anymore. Disabling swap/page files in Windows has no noticeable performance gains, but a lot of negative side effects. There is no good reason to disable it, or at least there hasn't been since before Vista.
Swap and pagefiles are used by all operating systems (including Linux) to optimize memory usage and caching. For most users it's pointless to mess with it, and it's equally bad advice to disable it for both Windows and Linux users.
(Edit to add: I see downvotes, but my statement is backed by numerous posts by reputable techsites. Feel free to share any posts or analysis which actually support the claim that disabling it has any significant gains and should be considered.)
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I have many "underpowered" systems, some of them being Raspberry Pi4 based.
And I feel them overpowered for the tasks that I give them, Retro Gaming, Media Player, HD Music player, integrated WiFi Access Point w/ LDAP+Firewalling+Dynamic traffic Analysis, ...
I began programming in the 70's, so maybe my view of what's "powerful" is biased.
The main problem of this Laptop is to find lightweight Linux Distro and Apps that serve a useful purpose.
Clearly, as sold with Windows 10 "S" this is of no value, and someone would better buy an used laptops instead, even an old Core™2 Duo w/8GB RAM and a 64GB SSD will run circle around it in real-world 2020 usage!
PS: I prefer change the swapiness to 1 usually to avoid hitting the wall hard while avoiding swapping.
And I feel them overpowered for the tasks that I give them, Retro Gaming, Media Player, HD Music player, integrated WiFi Access Point w/ LDAP+Firewalling+Dynamic traffic Analysis, ...
I began programming in the 70's, so maybe my view of what's "powerful" is biased.
The main problem of this Laptop is to find lightweight Linux Distro and Apps that serve a useful purpose.
Clearly, as sold with Windows 10 "S" this is of no value, and someone would better buy an used laptops instead, even an old Core™2 Duo w/8GB RAM and a 64GB SSD will run circle around it in real-world 2020 usage!
PS: I prefer change the swapiness to 1 usually to avoid hitting the wall hard while avoiding swapping.
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There's probably payware on it which offsets the manufacturing cost.
However, from many years of experience in consumer electronics, my advice is never ever buy the special Walmart configuration of anything.
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Re-install Windows, unlock and reclock the CPU, and take it to Jabba's palace to rescue Han.
Thanks for getting your hands dirty on this one.
Thanks for getting your hands dirty on this one.
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Doorstop. And there was no reason to think there would be anything else.
Person buys piece of crap electronics from Walmart and discovers .... its a piece of crap.
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I would wager that machine is a screamer when running DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1, and MSWord 1.0. Unfortunately there is no way to attach a 3.5" floppy to install those programs.
I used to run that combination on a machine with much less specifications and actually got work accomplished. Of course that was 30 years ago. My how times have changed.
I used to run that combination on a machine with much less specifications and actually got work accomplished. Of course that was 30 years ago. My how times have changed.
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This is *NOT* a problem, especially w/ 4GB or 8GB versions, but 2GB will do using the Raspberry Pi OS (aka Raspberian), in fact I connected my first Pi4 to a 4K monitor+keyboard+mouse and it was suprisingly effective!
It just happen that as an IT guy I have some personal computers, a work computer, and web browsing usage is totally covered, but I would consider a Pi4 4GB for a public browsing access point.
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This is where Microsoft falls on its face. By letting someone make an awful device like this it just plays to the Windows is awful camp and it even hurts the poor people who are the target audience. Just ewaste on its way to the dump.
I've got an ancient Acer with Celeron and 2 GB ram that runs Mint just fine but it's not weirdly throttled and has a 300gb HDD so probably a better machine than this thing. If you actually want poorly specced hardware buy used!
By the way, fanless isn't necessarily bad. I have a Teclast F7 plus that's plenty fast for office and browsing but stays cool and quiet which is why I like it. Of course the 8gb ram and 250gb SSD helps.
I've got an ancient Acer with Celeron and 2 GB ram that runs Mint just fine but it's not weirdly throttled and has a 300gb HDD so probably a better machine than this thing. If you actually want poorly specced hardware buy used!
By the way, fanless isn't necessarily bad. I have a Teclast F7 plus that's plenty fast for office and browsing but stays cool and quiet which is why I like it. Of course the 8gb ram and 250gb SSD helps.
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