Let’s lighten things up with a gadget post. You may have seen that Everex launched a $200 computer that runs Linux. It looks like Wal-Mart sold out of them, but not to worry: more are on the way.

Why should you be interested? Well, instead of Windows, it comes installed with gOS, which is a version of Ubuntu that is customized to work well with web-based tools from Google, Flickr Facebook, and Skype. When I heard that, I had to order one of these PCs to check it out for myself. 🙂

In this post, I’m just covering the unboxing. I’ll use the PC for a while and let you know what I think in a later post.

First, the box. The “gPC” stands for Green PC, not Google PC as some people have thought:

When you open the box, you’ll find a pretty flyer on top of the PC:

Here’s what the flyer looks like in more detail. For people that have never seen Linux, the flyer is a great little introduction:

For $199.00, I was expecting a barebones machine, but it comes with a PS/2 keyboard, mouse, and even USB-powered speakers:

The front of the machine looks like a standard computer. You can see the DVD-ROM drive, speaker and microphone jacks, and two USB ports. There are also two silver buttons for power and reset:

The back of the PC is pretty standard:

Directly connected to the motherboard, you see four USB connectors and an ethernet port. The expansion card is a modem, but I believe the machine only supports broadband connections, not dial-up.

The machine itself is light but sturdy. I jostled it quite a bit and didn’t hear anything loose or rattling around in the machine. Okay, that’s it for tonight. Tune in later to see what I think of it. 🙂