Season of $199 PCs

After ASUS’ Eee and Everex’s Dektop PC, Shuttle and Mirus innovations are offering sub-$200 PCs.

Excerpt on Shuttle from News.com:

It’ll have an Intel Celeron processor, a 945 GC chipset, 512 MB of memory and either a 60 GB or 80 GB hard drive. What it won’t have: an optical drive or a PCI Express slot. Despite that, it’s a pretty good-looking box, and comes in red, blue, white, and black, each with a different icon stamped on the front.

The shuttle will also come in a $99 version that can be upgraded to core2duo processor and 1 GB memory.

Excerpt on Mirus PC from PC World:

“Our system builders have been forging new ground in the low-end Linux PC market for over 5 years now,” Larry Kettler, president and CEO of Linspire, said in a statement. “This latest system from Mirus Innovations is the most robust hardware and software configuration, and it offers the best value for under $200 to date.”

The Mirus PC runs Freespire Linux, has an Intel Celeron processor with 1 GB memory and 80 GB HDD, and costs $199 after a mail-in rebate.

It’s interesting to note that the $199 Linux PC price is cheaper than several Windows Vista licenses.

What do you think of the choices in this segment of the PC market?