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Intel Plans Linux/Mozilla Web Appliance
Quite a number of people have been writing about the latest Web appliance. Intel is unveiling a Linux/Mozilla box at CES that will run a Celeron processor. Intel is planning pricing to be between $300 and $700, with some upgradability. More technical details will be forthcoming, but one of the interesting parts is that they plan to include a phone in the device, perhaps hoping to replace phones around the house.
Could this be the beginning of the end of the Microsoft-Intel Axis?
Following recent discussions on /. about the apparent perceived demise of the Mozilla project, this is a much needed 'shot in the arm' for the project team.
Why Linux? If this box is just a web browser why does it use Linux (and does it matter). For a one purpose box (ie to get pages from a web server etc) is Linux really the right OS?
I have nothing against Linux (in fact the oposite) but I do wonder if this is just a case of jumping on the bandwagon.
Who knows? They might get clever with the phone combination - perhaps being able to talk on the phone while still online at a lower speed? That would be handy for those of us with one phone line. Or perhaps they could integrate online games into the base unit. But I still feel that unless a company can offer a Web gizmo that's radically different from a PC or well below $200, PCs will continue to be the surfing platform of choice.
Image the possibilities of being able to adjust/add/complement the features of appliances around your home!
Don't like the phone ring tone? Want to disguise your voice? Want to sound like you have company in the background? Want the phone to perform stress analysis on the caller (lie detector)? Add and change the features on your phone to your hearts content in the future with Open Source Applicances!
I can't wait!
This seems a pretty weird combination of hardware specifications... DSL ready or ready for an upgrade, phone line ready... sounds ok but sort of double, a tv that can also receive radio while displaying a test image sort of thing.
And a flat panel screen included for $300 to $700? wow! they must be expecting to earn a lot from the monthly subscription then.
To me this device spells even more advertising in the homes of unsuspecting customers that buy it.
I'm not going to spend money on any of those webpad-web appliance-set top box-things that require me to look at thousands of banners per day of surfing.
I'll switch to a service like that when somebody provides me with a free T3 connection to the internet and a monthly bonus of say $100,- in exchange for looking at a small selection of exclusive "offers" once a week.
It's time all those marketing dollars ended up in a place where the customer actually has a use for them, in his own wallet.
This is presumably intels attempt at cementing their foothold in the current iMac/WebTV and other cheap internet access markets.
It sounds like a bit of a prospective investment, reactions will be gauged and to be honest I can't see it taking off that well, but it's interesting to see none the less.
Intel are in a threatened situation, more and more home users are turning to TV top boxes and cheaper alternatives to PCs for net access, maybe this is intels answer?
Just a thought.
This could be a really useful device, ground breaking even, the first true internet appliance. If Intel is good at marketing (and they are) they'll aim these squarely at the segment of the population who doesn't really need or want a computer but who may be convinced of the utility of browsing the web.
Consider that a couple years ago I bought my dad (73 years old now) a computer. It was a Macintosh and despite my worries its probably the most used gift he's ever received. He writes email, browses the web and plays a few games. He's even managed to use google to find stuff I've written and other things he finds interesting. I'm actually pretty impressed seeing as this was his first exposure to a computer.
My mom on the other hand has no real desire to use it. I've shown her a few things which interest her but she can't overcome the concept that she'd be "a computer user". I bet I could buy her one of these though and she'd use it a lot. It's got a regular phone so it is fine in the kitchen or whatever it is you call the area where we typically have dinner. If by default (or through a single click) it hooked up to the Searchable Online Archive of Recipes she'd use it a lot. Add in some more links for other interests (quilting or needle point or whatever) and she'd use it even more.
Eventually I'm sure she'd outgrow it and start using my dad's computer. That's fine. In a lot of cases despite this device being sold in a garage sale for 10 bucks within a year its still a win for Intel. They buy a new computer with... an Intel processor.
I don't see this as a big win for Linux. My mom (or my dad) isn't going to run and buy an Intel box to run Linux on. Sorry, Linux just isn't applicable here at this point in time. Linux just enabled Intel to sell these boxes at a really low price point.
This question may seems off-topic, but to me, if we are talking about Web-appliances, it is _on_ topic
Can the Net exist without telephones?
I ask this question because what to me, if the survival of the Net depends on telephone, then the telephone will not only be a BOTTLENECK for the Net, it would also become an LIFELINE for the Net, and that is VERY DANGEROUS.
Think about this for a while, if you may....
What if someone played havoc with the phone system? How will the Net going to survive?
And if the Net crashes, well... perhaps not the ENTIRE Net, but let us say in some regions of the world the telephone stops working
Do I hear wireless?
But I don't think the "wireless" thing is going to work, because there is only _that_ many frequencies available, and if everybody and their mother-in-laws start to use wireless-enabled web-appliances, there won't be enough frequency available for the REALLY IMPORTANT MATTERS, like the two-way communication between air-traffic-controllers to airplane pilots.
Is there anyone around who are more familiar with technology who can offer some insight, and perhaps even create a new way of extending the Net BEYOND the current shackle-hold of the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System)?
Thanks for reading, and I'm all ear for any suggestion that you may have.
Have a good day.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They make a lot of chips and boards and such, but compters? New one on me. I suppose it's for market share or some crap like that. This effort could flop because computer makers probally won't like it and they might start switching contracts to AMD or Cyrix or such, but if it backfires, Intel is out of several Mil at the least.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
There were articles about this on mozillaZine. Intel's working with Nokia. It started out as a "set-top" idea, and has become a "web appliance". October 12, 1999 http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=8 50 Nov. 11, 1999 http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=9 23
Intel has been pissed at microsoft for years now. MS have been VERY slow in implementing diferant intel technologies, and as a result intel started looking at alternative OS's for some time. The best example of Intels annoyance at microsoft is the slow adoption of task switching (386 and higher I think) the chips intruduced in 1985 which had task switching didn't get a MS operating system until 1995. Another good example is MS slow adoption of USB. Although win95 versions (from OSR2.5) did include USB support, MS didn't do nothing to addvertize that fact to end users. They tryed to change that in win98 (3 years after the standard was finalized..). Intel is interested in getting people to buy intel chips. Not helping Microsoft. Intel has realized that a lot of high performance intel chips are going into machines that act as servers running linux and BSD and thouse comunities react much faster to improvments and changes that intel adds to their proccessors.
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A very odd occurance is that AOL users use ie4 or 5 if they upgraded. Netscape is not built into aol at all. However there was some sort of Netscape and AOL merger. Still the only reason would use IE than netscape would be that it is preloaded on to Windows (for you newbies), and that it kinda has a sleek look to it,(AHEM!). People will still be using MSIE 4 for a long long time, say 4 years is my estimate. These would be the non-geeks.
"If a man watches 3 football games in a row he should be declared leagaly dead" - A
Mozilla is open source distributed from the USA without crypto.
Presumably these boxes would ship from the USA.
Are they then not going to ship with crypto?
Would it be legal under the MPL to link with a crippled closed-source crypto library?
It's of course great to see Linux making yet another advance into the mainstream and I applaud that, and expect it to benefit both the OS and humanity in general. I just don't see where this is a good business decision for Intel.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
If I remember correctly, the patents on RSA are set to expire soon. This removes one barrier: more crypto can then be legally Open-Sourced.
The next problem comes with crypto restrictions. My guess is, either Mozilla will have to get a permit or we'll have to wait for the crypto source export restrictions to be lifted. Alternatively, a module could be developed overseas which plugs into Mozilla (will Mozilla be able to work with plug-ins, by the way?).
I agree; crypto is absolutely vital for a Web appliance. If Mozilla (or some version thereof) doesn't end up with crypto of some kind, then there's no way I could recommend it for this type of machine.
If these are going to be used as phones, why not overclock the processor to 900MHz (or 2.4 GHz!) to match the frequency of cordless phones?
This would settle those occasional comments about CPU frequency interfering with radio frequency and vice versa, since they don't.
AnandTech, Sharky Extreme, Adrenaline Vault, and Ars Technica seem to have screenshots of a new overclocking record every week or two. I believe it currently stands at ~1300MHz -- is 2.4GHz unreasonable to think?
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E2 IN2 IE?
Sorry for being off-topic...
Since the new cryptolaw is delayed *AGAIN* it might be possible that this box wouldn't contain strong encryption. Which is quite a shame...
Most webusers feel unsafe about e-commerce and don't use the online services because they think their payments are intercepted. Since everywhere outside the US and Canada strong encryption algorithms made in the US are forbidden no one can use the online service safely from outside the US.
I think this is bad and the US government shoud reconsider entering the new Cryptolaw very soon or the online service should consider using different crypto algorithms from outside the US like IDEA.
- Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity -
Mozilla is not beta yet. It isn't even officially alpha yet. There are many bugs but there are also many solid features and many improvemnets to performance in the last couple months. Intel is not waiting...they are paying their software development staff to work on Mozilla full time. Intel is paying for the development of entire pieces of mozilla (disk cache is one piece I know of).
Asa
(posted with a Y2K build of Mozilla)
That's what it says in the article.
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not so odd. mozilla will eventually make it into AOL's product. AOl is counting on that I'm sure. but when AOL's new version was released mozilla was not ready yet and AOL has a contract with MS to keep it on teh windows desktop. It would be stupid to break that contract until AOL has a working replacement. I believe that they will soon have that replacement.
Asa
(posted with a Y2K build of Mozilla)
There was an article on /. recently.
1 218&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/22/211
Their prototypes were Linux based, but went wince when the MS marketting machine jumped all over them.
Sounds like Intel are coming up with a very similar box.
Too expensive though, people will only pay £50 for a phone.
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The assumption you're making is that solutions you buy don't also have a cost in time. This has not been my experience.
Another thing to consider: cost of duplication is small. Once the thing is working, it's fairly easy to run off a couple of million copies of the software. If you're expecting to sell a couple of million boxes, even a $10/box license suddenly pays for a lot of up-front engineering.
I can see it over at Intel HQ now -- "Those bastards at Microsoft have moved another $2 billion of our product. Damn them!!!"
They companies are joined at the backward-compatbile hip, and they both know it.
However, Intel is pissed at MS because of how badly they've handled the 16 to 32-bit transition. MS shipped it's first 32-bit OS eight years after the i386 shipped, and still to this day, 15 years later, most desktops run an OS that's largely 16-bit.
Microsoft, on the other hand, just wants to keep Intel honest (and out of the software business). They also desperately want to get into the 'glass house' midrange market, and they think that Intel is the only company that can get them there.
Advantage: Intel. (Notice how Intel supports more and more platforms through investments in Be and RedHat, while Microsoft has gone from supporting four platforms to one. If MS bungles IA64 like they bungled IA32, Intel will just go elsewhere.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This AC is right on. Maybe some of you like providing technical support for computer illiterate friends and relatives, or when you hear about their Windows 98 woes, it makes you happy because you can advocate Linux, but as far as I'm concerned my advice = money and time, so I try to keep my mouth as shut as possible. (If you know any lawyers, they have the same problem of people trying to get free, accurate advice out of them.)
Now, I know it pleases some of you to drop a Linux box on your mom that you can telnet into to do all of the admin, but when my mom wanted something to surf the web, I sent her an admin-free solution. Unfortuantely, Microsoft is the only one with a product on the market right now, so it was a WebTV. (If she needed word processing, it would have been an iMac.)
The hardware cost differential between a WebTV and a real computer isn't all that great. But the services cost difference is enormous. Don't forget -- every time you telnet into Gramma's Linux terminal, you are essentially providing a $100/hour subsidy to her computer use. (If you are providing Win98 support, knock the price down to $50/hour + travel.) As any business will tell you, hardware/software costs are nothing compared to the support.
And, while I'm on this kick, I can't wait until someone provides an Internet Terminal box for corporate executives. These guys by-in-large are very busy (too busy to learn how to use Windows often), and if they use a computer, it's only for e-mail, WWW, and viewing Powerpoint presentations and other summary reports. Yet, the IT department insists on giving them $7000 ThinkPads that they never take out of the $1500 docking station. A glorified portable web box that always works and requires no support is really all they need.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Hmm. I like Linux as much as the next FreeBSD geek, but, frankly, no, you're wrong. (What follows uses the acronym CE in two different senses. CE means Consumer Electronics, in the EU sense; it also means Windows CE. I'll try to use CE device(s) for the former and Windows CE for the latter.)
(1) Linux is not small by the standards of CE devices. It's important to distinguish between kernel size (the Linux kernel is fairly small) and operating size (running Linux w/ X and Mozilla...that's not small, even by desktop standards, to say nothing of device standards.)
(2) The Windows CE-based systems you mention carry a vast amount of baggage. If you're comparing a Palm Pilot to a (say) Compaq Aero, you're comparing aples to oranges. The Aero not only contains Windows CE itself, it also contains GWES.EXE (CE's equivalent of X), SHELL.EXE (CE's equivalent of the WM), a handwriting recognizer, a soft input panel, and a lot of other software. There are Windows CE-based embedded systems that carry a lot less baggage; believe it or not, they're quite slim, trim, and stable.
A better comparison is to linuxce plus microwindows/NanoGUI. The linuxce guys are having a lot of trouble getting things to fit in the Windows CE palm-sized device format. They're having a good deal less trouble getting things to fit in the VR form factor. Frankly, that isn't surprising; X windows was really designed for a device with a keyboard and a lot of power. It isn't terribly well suited to a keyboardless, low-power device. If they're having trouble with microwindows, then true X will be even worse...and unstable to boot! Not a good user experience.
(3) And, finally, Linux still doesn't have a number of features that really are important for CE devices: things like quick on/off, recovery from unplugging, etc. I don't expect that those will be available in any context for quite a while.
Frankly, this sounds like marketing hype to me. M$ is releasing a new generation of their Palm-pilot class devices today at CES (or so cnet whould have us believe.) Intel is trying to snub them. The Wall-street journal reports that Intel is not even demoing devices, for heaven's sake, just talking about the plans?
Naah, this is vaporware and FUD, no more.
At $300 to $700, it will certainly not replace the household phone. You can get boxes for $200 or so and less if you sign up for some special internet service.
And why such a fast processor? It would probably work fine with an early pentium. Or am I wrong?
David
All animals are equal, but some animals are
more equal than others.
--George Orwell, "Animal Farm"
Here's a chance to start telling the non-technical public about alternatives to M$. This promises Intel marketing as the host, without the usual M$ parasite inside.
(I apologize in advance for referring to a suit buzzword that I had hoped would disappear with the 90's. In the 70's, it was "the bottom line". In the 80's, it was "world class". In the 90's, it was "branding").
How does the Linux movement "brand" a product? If Intel is eager for M$ alternatives, it would probably be willing to apply something besides the 'Windows' sticker next to its "Intel Inside" logo.
The Linux distributions have their brands, but what about generic Linux? We need to make some dynamite graphics available to help turn anti-M$ sentiment specifically in the Linux direction.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein