Last year HP announced its intention to start selling machines shipping with Ubuntu instead of always opting for Windows. That push started in China, but today HP shipped its first new consumer Ubuntu hardware for Europe.
It’s a Pavilion all-in-one carrying the forgettable name of the Pavilion 20-b101ea. It’s also not going to set any performance records as this is a low-end machine aimed at users who want to use the Internet, an office suite, watch HD video, and play a few web games. But what is compelling is the price. In the UK it is being sold for £349 including sales tax. A quick conversion puts the price pre-tax at just US$429.
So what do you get for such a reasonable price? Here’s the spec:
1.4GHz AMD E1-1200 APU
AMD Radeon HD 7310 GPU
4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB 7200rpm HDD
20-inch 16:9 display (1600 x 900 resolution)
6-in-1 memory card reader
4x USB 2.0 and 2x USB 3.0
802.11b/g/n wireless and Gigabit Ethernet
Slim DVD writer, webcam, headphone/microphone combo
That hardware is more than capable of running the included Ubuntu 12.10, plus it comes with a 2-year warranty and the ability to upgrade to 8GB RAM if you need it. Hopefully it’s also going to be easy to swap out that hard drive for an SSD. Unfortunately, it looks as though HP is shipping a wired keyboard and mouse with the all-in-one. Switch those out for wireless and you should just have a single power cable to hide.
It seems likely HP will bring a similar unit to the US if it’s determined to expand sales of hardware running Ubuntu worldwide. And it’s sure to form a tempting alternative to a cheap Windows machine if the prices are kept low.
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