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Now, let us dream a little. Say your old faithful computer
has crashed, and you only have a couple hundred dollars to spend on coming up
with a new system that's as close as you can get to the state-of-the art. (This
isn't part of the dream; this is the reality that makes the dream
attractive). You spend a few days at the
local Internet Café, picking and choosing all of the components that you can
afford. You then buy the parts and put the box together.
Let's say that you wound up with an Intel Quad Core 64-bit
with about 8 MEG of memory. (Actually, I wound up with a dual core with only 3
MEG, but, hey, this is a dream! Besides,
I don't know if you can still buy a dual core these days.) You put off the
fancy graphics and sound cards due to budget constraints, and your old monitor
is still working. It's now time to test,
but first you have to load the operating system and all of the rest of the
software you need to actually DO something with the computer. So, you insert
your Live DVD and hit the power button. There are flashing lights, a little whirring
noise, etc., and now you have a desktop on your computer.
But wait – we're not finished yet!
There is an icon on the desktop labeled "Install Now!"
(It's just below the "Getting Started" icon; we'll read the
instructions later). Answer a few questions, and within 15 minutes you're
surfing the Web (wireless connection, of course), composing a textbook in LaTeX
and writing a letter to your mother-in-law with your word processor, all while
grabbing some old data in your spreadsheet program from your thumb drive (which
is probably infested with viruses from your latest visit to the Internet Cafe,
but not to worry). It's then that you plan to run through some signal analysis
software as soon as the load lightens. Meanwhile, you have a finite element analysis
(FEA) study running in the background (a pretty fine mesh with maybe 16 hours
of run-time).
Do You Feel Lucky?
Let's push our luck a bit. Let's plug in the legacy
scanner/printer. (We can no longer get updated drivers from the manufacturer
because the machine is, what, 3 years old?). It works and may even have
features you didn't know about. Next, let's play a little music. (Remember, we
didn't have enough money for an exotic sound card, but we are using cheap
speakers anyway). The music sounds about as good as can be expected, and we did
not have to chase down the drivers. Essentially, we can do virtually anything
we want to do except for serious gaming (but, then, a serious gamer isn't going
to build a box for a couple hundred dollars).
Sure, there are a few games available: Freecell, Solitaire, Mines, and a
few others for which I have little interest. This isn't serious gaming stuff,
but it's sufficient to occupy the mind while waiting for that phone call.
And, we did not once have to drop down in to the command
line mode to get any of this functioning.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a dream. Unfortunately, you cannot buy this package at
your local software dealer, or Amazon.com, or your university book store. No, the only way to get it is to download it
from http://www.caelinux.com/CMS/. For free.
Disclaimers and
Dollars
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no financial interest or
commercial relationship with the developers of this package. Well, OK, I generate a little revenue for
myself by using this stuff (fortunately, it is distributed under the GPL
license, which allows me to use it for my own commercial pursuits).
You would be talking $15,000 or more (USD) had you
gone the "commercial" route to access the capabilities you've
garnered for the price of the hardware (and the blank DVD you had to burn,
unless you really splurged and bought a ready-to-use one from the originator).
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Re: Building a Fully Functional Box for a Few Hundred Bucks
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