Death of a Rebel

jwunderl writes: "Just a quick word to let you know that Rebel, who took over the NetWinder line from Corel has gone the way of the dodo. Claining a failed partnership with Fuji, the company informed it's creditors it could no longer continue. The full story is available at the Ottawa Citizen's page." Linux appliances don't seem to be the sure-sell that everyone thought they would be.

Comments

Rebel has always sucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Years before they paid $5million for the rebel name and the James Dean crap, Rebel were known as "Hardware Canada Computing" (http://www.hcc.ca). HCC had a nice big cushy contract with the Canadian Federal Government to supply unix workstations and such. It was one of those "Open" contracts where if someone in the government wanted something, they could call, HCC would send it to them, the government would get billed some exorbinant rate, and nobody would really care. That meant that overall they could sit on their butts and do nothing, but still rake in the cash.

The problem was for private companies like mine. Call for a quote? Never call you back. Call again for a quote? Send you a quote for the wrong items. Call for service? "Call the manufacturer, it's not our problem". I did manage to drop a few tens of thousands into them over the years because they did have good prices (over say... Sun Canada, which wasn't saying much). They were the quintessential canadian business: buy something from someone else, and sell it for a higher price, and offer nothing added.

Then they did this whole $5million for James Dean and scribbling "LINUX LINUX LINUX" over everything. I could never get a quote out of them again. I will not miss them.

Rebel.com's Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one of the original Corel NetWinder owners. I far as I can tell, there was three problems with Rebel.com

1- They paid a fortune for the 'James Dean' image and the Rebel.com domain.
I remember hearing $6 million at the time. I could be wrong (especially since I thought it was way too much money, even in the .com heyday) Flush with Corel money, they went on a 'branding' and 'mindshare' quest. woohoo.

2- The hardware remained essentially the same years after its introduction.
(Since Rebel.com is down, I can't verify though) Why would I pay a premium price for a 266Mhz StrongARM, when I can get a crazy PIII Celeron system for cheaper. At the time it was introduced, the NetWinder was a decent price point (as a dedicated web server), but not now.

3- Out of their league.
Hardware Computer Canada (HCC) was a small reseller before becoming Rebel.com, and trying to compete with the likes of VA Linux, Sun, and whoever else. They also lost sight of the fact that NetWinders appealed to geeks, and they tried to reposition it as an workgroup office server (an underpowered office server, that is)

Anyway, take what I say with a grain of salt, since they haven't been on my radar screen for a while, and since the site is down, I can't verify what I'm stating based upon today's information. And you can't trust AC's. *wink*

Linux appliances I _really_ want

[laertes]

I can't wait for linux to be ported to the following devices:

• Toilets
• Watches
• Sprinklers
• Lawn-mowers
• My wife's eighteen inch black dildo
• And my PS2 (cause that's be so useful)

Okay, dildos aside, how many of those actually are going to happen?

Why they fail

[Syberghost]

All these Linux-based appliances are failing for one reason:

They're Linux-based appliances first, appliances second.

Come in with a sound business plan and a device that fills a niche, and happen to use Linux on it, and you'll clean up.

Come in with Linux in your head and try to build a "cool" device, then try and graft on a half-ass business plan, and you'll fail.

Duh.

-

A little note from within Rebel.com

[mistered]

Yesterday Andrew E. Mileski, a senior software developer at Rebel.com, posted the following to the netwinder.announce newsgroup on netwinder.org:

Rebel.com pulled the plug on NetWinder.org's fileserver.
[And the Rebel.com mail server's fileserver.]
The following services have been disabled on NetWinder.org:
ftp
rsync
pop (internal)
Web access to member directories will also not work.
I don't know for certain what will happen with mail, but assume it will be spooled.
We, the people behind NetWinder.org, will try to rectify the situation ASAP.

It's not the Linux appliance concept...

[Vicegrip]

In this case, Rebel is was in my opinion having problems because they were unable to carry through their promise of "total network management". Their service was supposed to totally manage a network for a small company from ground 0 ... they would handle any problem and necessary network reconfigurations. In practice their techs have proven to be less than knowledgeable and incapable of trouble shooting problems. In the end, our marketing guy knew more about trouble shooting the network then they did. The problem was not the technology. It was 100% an execution problem.

Re:Well DUH!

[SquadBoy]

First of all Rebel was not selling the OS they where selling hardware.
1. The Tivo line which is just what Rebel was a box with Linux inside.
2. Cheapbytes.com keep in mind profitable does not mean huge.
3. My consulting side job. I make a tidy profit using and giving away Linux.
3. Sun with the whole qube thing.
4. IBM with all the hardware with Linux on it that they sell.
5. I would assume most of these people (http://www.linuxports.com/guide/consultants/)
6. I have not looked in a while but I think Loki is also.
You are right selling Linux is most likely not a good idea but selling hardware and servicing that hardware is a *very* good idea. The basic concept behind the Netwinder was not flawed. It would seem the implementation was though.

Too bad it wasn't a FRENCH Canadian company

[BluedemonX]

The government would have bailed them out with a couple of billion dollar grants *cough BOMBARDIER cough*

Re:Of course it failed!

[tb3]

There appears to be some misconceptions about what the Netwinder really was. It wasn't an end-user 'Internet Appliance', but rather a small, self-contained Linux box.

From the FAQ on www.netwinder.org:

The Corel Computer NetWinder Linux Computer is a high performance, compact RISC based machine equipped with a variety of networking, telephony, and multimedia peripherals.

Based on the Intel StrongARM processor, clocked at 275 MHZ, the NetWinder uses the performance, and stability of the Linux Operating System to deliver over 250 MIPS of power, while drawing only 10 watts of power.

There are two basic hardware choices, a plastic case and a rack mount. SCSI is available as an option on the rack mount. The OS (OfficeServer) and TC (Thin Client) models have depopulated boards, meaning certain hardware (such as video capture) is not normally included.

It wasn't a information appliance for newbies, it was a small form-factor Linux server or thin-client.