Lindows.com introduces cheap business PCs

Lindows.com introduced an inexpensive computer for business customers Thursday that is designed to run limited applications on the company's Lindows OS operating system.

The BusinessStation can be used by corporations as a Web kiosk for corporate employees or visitors, or by retailers as an online order form station, a Lindows.com spokeswoman said. It starts at $169, and runs the company's LindowsCD operating system.

LindowsCD is simply a version of the Linux-based Lindows OS that boots from a CD inside each BusinessStation. The operating system also comes with OpenOffice, a office productivity suite developed by Sun Microsystems that produces documents compatible with Microsoft's Office suite of products.

For $10 a year per machine, Lindows.com will provide customers with services such as profile management tools to customize start-up pages at a particular BusinessStation kiosk, the spokeswoman said. Administrators can remotely configure and monitor the BusinessStation over a corporate network.

Users can't alter the data on the BusinessStation because everything is stored either on the CD or on a remote server, which makes the machines ideal for public use or in low-cost deployments such as call centers, the San Diego company said. The PCs don't have hard drives, but do come with floppy drives, Lindows.com said.

The BusinessStations are available in a variety of configurations from several distributors, including TigerDirect, Medialand Systems's idot.com Web site, and Sub300.com. Processors from Advanced Micro Devices and Via Technologies are used in the PCs, and most come with 256M bytes of SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM).