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Linspire Five.0 CNR Edition | 
 enlarge | From: Linspire, Inc.
Category: Software
List Price: $99.99
Buy New: $14.00
You Save: $85.99 (86%)
New (2) from $14.00
Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 2588
Format: Cd-rom
Platform: Linux
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Linux
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.8
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 8.1 x 2.1
MPN: csxxxbldn5cnr
Model: CSXXXRESXOOOFF
UPC: 892222000513
EAN: 0892222000513
ASIN: B0007XYRUY
Release Date: February 15, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: New factory sealed in box, shipped within 1 business day, emailed confirmation
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| Features:
| • | Advanced and secure Linspire Internet Suite, with tabbed Web browsing, Hot Word searching, in-line spellchecking and pop-up blockers | | • | Touch up the family photos with Lphoto, enjoy your favorite music with Lsongs | | • | The OpenOffice.org suite features powerful word processing, speadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs | | • | Work with Nvu, a full Web authoring solution | | • | Make free Web-based phone calls worlwide with the PhoneGaim utility |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Linspire CNR Edition is a full-featured computer operating system. It provides a stable, virus-free computing experience, that's incredibly easy-to-use. Use Linspire to do things on the Web, create and share documents, work with graphics, play music, organize digital photos, view rich multimedia files and easily connect to networks and peripherals. The CNR Edition includes a one-year subscription which provides access to the Linspire CNR Warehouse. Includes 1-year subscription to the CNR Service - an online library of over 2,000 programs Plug & Play ready - Plug in all your USB or Firewire devices, they'll be recognized in seconds - from scanners to digital cameras Add a printer more easily than ever with the Printer Wizard, while Easy Networking lets you read, write, share, and browse your network with ease System Requirements - 800MHz PC, 128MB RAM, 4GB free HDD space, SVGA or higher monitor, CD/DVD drive, Internet/LAN connectivity
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 It's called Freespire Now! April 25, 2008
Recently I had the opportunity to try Freespire. Just to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything, I went ahead and installed it to the hard drive of a Lenovo Y410 where the Windows OS had gone south.
As to the good points:
Installation was a breeze. Put the disk in and tell it to install. Took about 20 minutes total, give or take.
Slick interface. Really nice main page with bright colors and a minimum of fussiness. Very close to a Windows interface. Fact is, it's the Ubuntu Linux desktop with some enhancements. Ubuntu is a great OS if you haven't used it before.
Prefer the KDE desktop over the Gnome? Tough. You get what they load which is great for the uninitiated but not so great if you prefer a choice. This is both good and bad. If you have no experience with Linux then you go for the Windows-like Gnome interface; however, most newbies don't know this.
It detected my USB printer and camera and downloaded drivers for both. Windows never did this right.
It quickly found wireless hotspots, and it even detected my Ethernet connection without hesitating.
Instead of a gaggle of included apps, it offers something called CNR (Click And Run) which is an online website via Freespire where you can check out apps before downloading them. No only do you get in-depth descriptions of the apps but you also get customer reviews.
It's quicker than Windows once booted but is no quicker than Windows to boot. This is common among Linux systems. All operating systems do a system check upon booting so get used to it.
Mainly all of the apps, like OpenOffice are merely free clones of equivalent Windows based programs. This is good because one interfaces with the other without too many problems. You even get a free clone of Adobe Acrobat which costs close to $400 for Windows.
Virus problems? What virus problems? Very few are written for Linux so that worry is not something you have to fret over.
Freespire is based upon the Ubuntu release which means you get a steady OS and periodic free updates.
Now for the bad:
I got my distro from a Linux magazine that includes disks, but if you want to buy a disk it will set you back some bucks. Fact is, you can contact Ubuntu and they'll send you a disk for free or you can go to the Freespire website and they'll allow you to download the distro for free but you'll have to burn an ISO disk to run it. Amazon's price is not bad at all.
The Firefox browser included is dreadfully slow because the DNS check has been enabled (supposed to offer greater security against phishing and bad websites, but it's awfully poky). I had to do a quick Net check to find out how to disable the DNS (enter about:config in the URL area and scroll down and disable DNS). This is common to all new Linux distros that use Firefox and is not indicative of a Freespire problem.
Typical of Linux, there is still no standard for sound cards. The Linux Standard Architecture would not recognize my Soundblaster card and I had a devil of time getting it to work. I finally installed a USB sound device which it recognized right off the mark, but this required I use headphones. My onboard speaker system never worked. I had the same problems with Mandriva and Suse.
Unless you download a special app, you can forget playing DVDs. Due to copyright constraints it ain't happening anytime soon. Secondary apps do exist to play DVDs but there is no guarantee that they will work with Suse completely. Once I did get the DVD to work the playback was horribly choppy and erratic.
Although the CNR system is slick and rather nice, it does have its drawbacks. The parent company is on shaky financial ground and some of the apps on the CNR website are woefully out of date or, worse yet, placed in the wrong categories. I found an educational app in the games section where it most definitely didn't belong. In addition, the version of OpenOffice at the CNR is an older version than the one you get on the disk. Ditto for the Linux Instant Messenger called Pidgin. It was originally called GAIM but the name was changed because of AIM complaints. If you download GAIM it won't work but if you download Pidgin it will. They are the same program, though.
While it may seem the bad points outweigh the good, it's a matter of perspective. Linux always has had some bug issues but so does Windows or Apple OS. Linux suffers because it's an free OS (most can be downloaded for free but they do charge to mail you disks) and the Big Boys don't like the Free Guy knocking on their doors.
Fact is, Freespire is a slick OS that merits mention and is third behind my choices of Mandriva and Suse (one and two, respectively).
linspire desktop January 14, 2007
It was easy to install,had a few problems with drivers,but were sorted easily,this is a excelent program,and the CNR was the best,no endless patches and updates to load , like other systems
 Linspire January 5, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The is a great software it has the look of windows and security of linux but lilk any linux you can use this as a server i took one of my old pc's that needed new hard drives well i found out it had EIDE drived so i got a new MOBO and 4 750 drives giveing me 3T Then put linspire on snd i have new server on my home network one nice thing about cnr witch stands for click and run is it gives me acces to all sorts of software the best feature of linux to me is that both a windows or mac cac access it since i have them both but that is somthing that can be done with all linux OS.
Best Distro Hands Down October 31, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
A lot of people have complained about various features that Linspire offers. The most common being the use of the CNR client. What these people seem to not understand or in their bias against Linspire just plain omit is that there are two versions of the CNR membership.
CNR Basic and CNR Gold.
The second review on here "Why are you paying for free software??" fails to mention the reason this is a pay service. Yes you could use apt-get to install debian packages but CNR goes through the trouble of making sure each package has no dependency issues. While most current users of Linux don't mind a little trouble shooting must users of computers want something that just works.
At the time his review was written Basic was $20a year. It is now free, it is better than apt get in the sense that it is graphical, as in no command line a scary land similar to dos prompt for all the newbies and converts.
CNR offers an aisle system so all the programs you want can be organized and set to install with a single click instead of manually doing each one.
Best of all that so called horrible cost of $50 for CNR Gold well it isn't that bad at all. For one thing you get an unlimitted number of aisles. Two you get discounts on every click and buy program, because like it or not even in debian not every program is free. Believe me, I know. In just the last 4 months my CNR Gold membership has given me over a $80 savings subtract that 50 and I still saved 30. Think of your membership like one for Costco or Sams Club.
It just drives me crazy when people bash this service, it is a time saver and a headache saver. And I am not just some newbie. I have been using Linux for over 5 years now. I started with Redhat 8, I own a copy of Suse 10 and I have been with Linspire ever since they launched Linspire 4.5.
 Linspire? Use Ubuntu instead. January 25, 2006
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
Linspire takes a free (as in beer and as in speech) Linux distribution known as Debian, and then charges for the "service" of downloading software from a repository that is about 1/7th the size of the Debian repositories. If you wish ease of use, and adhere to the Debian ideal, get yourself a free-of-charge copy of Ubuntu courtesy of http://shipit.ubuntu.com, and then access the Ubuntu and Debian archives WITHOUT having to subscribe to anything.
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