31 Aug
2010
31 Aug
'10
4:31 p.m.
On 27 August 2010 18:35, geoffrey oltmans <oltmansg at bellsouth.net> wrote:
Judging from their pricing on their website, I'd
say they're doomed to fail.
think of it this way: it's a laptop type packaging without a monitor, for about
the price of a laptop without any of the benefits.
Agreed.
I think it would be possible to do something interesting with x86
hardware inspired by 1980s hardware, but this isn't it. These are
underpowered overpriced generic machines with no USPs at all apart
from the name. And that's been tried multiple times
before.
The thing, for me, about some of the early-1980s home computers were
that they were stripped to the bone to make them cheap. You could do
that today. Make them entirely legacy-free, no optical or rotating
media, no cooling fans, with an external heatsink. Silent and simple.
A modest amount of RAM and a smallish SSD for storage, lightweight
free OS, devoid of all nonessentials - no serial, parallel, keyboard,
mouse, sound, Ethernet, etc. All these can be cheaply added by USB.
Very simple to hook up when there's only one kind of socket.
If you want to go really mad, give 'em a couple of Cardbus slots, or
Cardbus + ExpressCard, so you could add Firewire, eSATA and so on to
'em.
But don't cripple them with an Atom chip - those are for inexpensive
battery-powered devices. Give them a cool-running desktop chip,
ideally something dual-core with 64-bit.
Cheapo integrated graphics, which actually can do passable 3D these days.
Sell 'em for $100 or something. BYODKM, like the Mac Mini. (Bring your
own display, keyboard & mouse.)
Handy as a small silent server, as a home media box, as a learning
tool in the developing world etc.
--
Liam Proven ? Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508