As far as PCs go, I managed to pick up a Shuttle SV24 barebones system +
1.1GHz Celeron at Fry's electronics for $250 a few months ago. (I think
it is now obsolete & discontinued)
I had some extra RAM, an old HD, and a CD-ROM laying around. Adding
those things brings the price up another couple hundred bucks.
It is a very nice small box-- I need it for microcontroller
development. At work I'm buried up to my ears in iBooks (I work at
Apple) and Keyspan serial adapters (we use them for kernel debugging)
On the Macintosh front:
If you are interested in a NEW nice small laptop that runs Linux/Mac OS
X well, the most recent iBooks are now being sold for about $999 at
ComputerWare/Elite Computers here in the valley.
Older CRT iMacs are available for about $599 in some places as well.
You need to add a Keyspan PDA Adapter for about $39 to get a 9-pin COM
port.
Also it is important to note that you really need to be running OS X for
Java to work decently well on a Mac— the version on Mac OS 9 really
sucks.
-Dave Falkenburg
