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.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*

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*