Sony Axes eVilla, Offers Refund

Matey-O writes: "C-Net is reporting Sony's dropping of the BeOS powered eVilla internet appliance. Saying it wasn't performing as planned. Am I the only person who LIKES having a small internet terminal in the kitchen/family room?" Apparently, yes. I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.

Comments

sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it for beos.

Another business avenue cleared for Microsoft.

[JeremyYoung]

I suspect MS will be working towards similar appliances soon.

Re:Another business avenue cleared for Microsoft.

[Wrexs0ul]

Yep, it's the XBox through and through :)

Re:Another business avenue cleared for Microsoft.

[davey23sol]

M$ considers the X-Box an internet appliance. They sent someone to a SIGGRAPH panel on the future of internet appliance. I talk about it below in another post...

It's also important to note that the X-Box appliance strategy is the same as everything else: get everyone to pay for service every month.

This isn't going to work with X-Box or anything else IMHO... not unless they take over EVERYTHING.

Re:Another business avenue cleared for Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have been for years. MS was one of the first people to push the modern "den appliance" concept.

Re:Another business avenue cleared for Microsoft.

[powerlord]

It's also important to note that the X-Box appliance strategy is the same as everything else: get everyone to pay for service every month.

This isn't going to work with X-Box or anything else IMHO... not unless they take over EVERYTHING.

Um... this is Microsoft we're talking about... Taking over everything is probably part of their official buisness plan.

....From the press release

[Unknown Bovine Group]

"Oh and we've fired the marketing MORON who didn't realize that eVilla starts with EVIL."

Re:....From the press release

[seldolivaw]

It makes me think of Cruella Devil. You don't really want your product producing mental associations with killing lots of puppies; that tends to hurt sales.

Re:....From the press release

[davey23sol]

Dr. Clayton Forester bought 10 of the devices just because of the name.

"I'm EVIL!" says Clay. "I would love to live in an EVILla some day!"

Re:....From the press release

[Anonymous Coward]

I kept picturing the thing as white with black spots.

Unsurprising

[icqqm]

Am I the only one who thinks web appliances are too expensive, too cumbersome and too useless to do anything, even at this point in time? Maybe one day they might be useful, if they're cheap enough and have some actual use to them, but I don't see why I should spend $500 to connect my toaster to the WWW.

Re:Unsurprising

[Anonymous Coward]

If they come out with an appliance with a flat 14" LCD screen that doesn't take too much power and just has a built in web browser for about $50-$99 I might get one.. IF they can keep them in stock. Unfortunately the technology is just too expensive.

Re:Unsurprising

[TandyMasterControl]

Well, most of the so-called web appliances are too expensive, under-featured and so forth.

However, the ThinkNIC is knocking on the door of perfection. It's small enough, flexible enough, powerful enough, and last but not least, cheap enough at $199 to fit in almost anyone's plans.

I put one in my parents' kitchen. With it my mother can view web pages, view and hear realmedia clips, streamed mp3s, chat online through irc ,and java chat, use AIM instant messaging and exchange email with kids, grandkids and friends*. It prints remotely to her main system's HP printer, surfs through a shared DSL link to her usual ISP instead of dialup connection thanks its onboard 100/10 bast-t nic.And that since the ThinkNIC is based on X11 any application on her main pc --even win32 apps accessed through win4lin-- can be easily accessed now from the NIC. Exactly like owning another powerful PC and having the same applications on it, only without the cost and maintenance headache. This makes the Nic one half of the only ASP/ web-services provider I'll ever be interested in: mine!

It presents virtually no maintenance worries since there is no writeable fs on a harddrive and minimal security worries, as there is no means to login to it remotely and no space for cracking tools to be stored in case someone was able to break in through some other means. Short of physically replacing the cdrom it runs from, there is no possibility of changing the root passwd or adding rootkit accounts.

I'm buying another for myself since its also an instant netbooting Xerminal box with a tiny shelf footprint.(I have used PCs converted to Xterminals but they are as large as the server they boot from -not what I want in my den) The Nic cdrom includes an appropriate NFS-root kernel image and modules to install on a linux terminal server, making this conversion almost a no-brainer.

Most of the web appliances have insisted that you pay for their own branded ISP. NIC does not and makes integrating the ThinkNIC into your existing LAN as easy as signing up for their ISP.

Most web appliances have required extensive hacking in order to use in any way other than the manufacturer planned. NIC does not require hardware modifications to be retasked. Just change the software on the Cdrom. The Nic software is good old Linux, pared down but still completely transparent to the enduser, and still modular and fully customizable. Adding a harddrive to convert the Nic from NC to PC in case you just have to for some reason, is easy enough too --there are several sites out there describing this-- but of course that voids the manufacturer's warranty.

Most of the better web appliance products have used somewhat unusual parts like giant flash devices. This can make for a nice, physically small system, but it's also directly responsible for the insanely high pricetags those products carry. It also leads the makers to insist on the customer subscribing to their ISP service/partners. The NIC has some flash ram for storing settings and configs and such, but the design sticks to using commodity bin parts and so its cost is kept down to the area where it compares to the price of a used PC. It is not as small as it could be if it was based on StrongARM or PPC cpu and the storeage was all flash instead of mainly cdrom based, but it 's definitely small enough to fit on a kitchen counter. It's noticeably smaller than a "BookPC" system for example and all "desktops" are massive compared to it. In fact my mother has a few cookbooks on the same counter top that are larger than her "computer". No one actually sees the ThinkNIC as it hides behind a 13" tft screen.
(*) I easily burned a replacement cdrom for my parent's NIC that substituted Netscape Communicator for the standalone Navigator the ThinkNIC comes with, so certain email options would be possible for us.

Some people are in the habit of saying that internet appliances are a useless solution in search of a nonexistent problem that the PC has already solved. This is a deeply ignorant and unimaginative view. Many internet appliances are fatally flawed products. The ThinkNIC, however, shows that the appliance idea is not just desireable but technically and econmically workable in brilliant fashion.

Re:Unsurprising

[Anonymous Coward]

No Kidding! I can believe that the whole row
was over Sony having to put up with Gusse
as an "advisor"! Geeslousie, this guy dosen't
know when his head is cut off. I don't blame
Sony one bit.

FU

wireless laptops in the living room

[frknfrk]

this not only affects these internet appliances, but computer desk and chair manufacturers as well. I have this nice desk and ergonomic chair in my office, but I -never- sit there because I can sit on the La-Z-Boy with my wireless laptop. When my wife started law school, I made sure she had a nice desk of her own to sit at with her laptop and books. Of course she has a wireless card now also and there is competition at the La-Z-Boy.

Re:wireless laptops in the living room

[Anonymous Coward]

this not only affects these internet appliances, but <snip> chair manufacturers as well

Not to mention that all the dot-coms are selling aeron chairs on ebay for half their cost.

Re:wireless laptops in the living room

[Rick the Red]

I have this nice desk and ergonomic chair in my office, but I -never- sit there because I can sit on the La-Z-Boy with my wireless laptop.

Why is this moderated "Offtopic"? Michael said "I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill." frknfrk responded directly to that statement, and some bozo calls it "Offtopic." Sheesh! I was going to say much the same thing, that my wife and I are using 266MHz PIII IBM laptops that we got for about $500 each on eBay to do anything we could do with an eVilla, but I guess I'd better not or I might get flamed! <asbestos suit> OK, flame away!

hm...

[jchapman2004]

well now....

Yes...

[cavemanf16]

I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.

My friend's parents have a laptop w/ dialup in the kitchen, my roommate has one in his room/or wherever he is in the apt, and I would have one too if I wasn't so broke. Heck, you can probably pick up an old 486 or Pentium laptop for the same amount as a bulky monitor/keyboard/mouse 'internet appliance' would cost these days.

Re:Yes...

[rjamestaylor]

. Heck, you can probably pick up an old 486 or Pentium laptop for the same amount as a bulky monitor/keyboard/mouse 'internet appliance' would cost these days.

Much, much cheaper.

Internet and Appliance Integration

[idonotexist]

The failure of the iOpener (NetAppliance) demonstrated the apparent coming of this failure. I think a strategy, arguable, more plausible and not yet tried is the integration of Internet communication with appliances. For instance, my refrig should 'read' the goods I place into the refrig and allow me to instantly generate a grocery list or track the age of foods, produce and beer (beer must be fresh). The same integration could be pursued with electricity usage, TV, cat litter boxes, aquariums and closets so we may more efficiently and better go about our lives :).

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Bonker]

The same integration could be pursued with electricity usage, TV, cat litter boxes, aquariums and closets so we may more efficiently and better go about our lives

Uh... We've got litter boxes covered:

http://www.members.accessus.net/~dejay/archive.htm

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[stevew]

Well - that an the fact that alot of us got the IOpener for $100 and put Linux on it. My only problem has been the lack of a wireless enet connection on such things. Well - now with the availability of a Linksys 802.11b bridge I can deploy wired enet up-stairs I'll be able to deploy the IOpener in my bedroom as planned and run my son's computer system in his bedroom off of our high-speed internet connection down-stairs.

80211b might be the thing that makes these things more useful.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[don_carnage]

Yes! And after the fridge makes that shopping list, I should be able to point my Palm (or Visor) at it, download the list, take it to the grocery store and when I walk in the door, download a map of the store with all of the products that I need highlighted. Integration would be freakin sweet!

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Speare]

And after the fridge makes that shopping list, I should be able to point my Palm (or Visor) at it, download the list, take it to the grocery store and when I walk in the door, download a map of the store with all of the products that I need highlighted.

I agree that making devices work together is useful, but what's the fascination with automatic refrigerator/store interaction?

Who is automating what, in your scenario? The refrigerator is telling you what's its missing, the store is telling you where to go, the coupons are telling you what to buy. Am I the robot that serves the needs of the marketers, the store and the refrigerator?

The more you automate, the more complicated the rest of your life will be. Remove the easy tasks, and all you're left with are the hard ones. More stress, not less.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[FortKnox]

For instance, my refrig should 'read' the goods I place into the refrig and allow me to instantly generate a grocery list or track the age of foods, produce and beer (beer must be fresh).

Try to write a program to do this.
My fridge is dynamic. I never eat the same thing everyday (or ever every week). So the only thing my fridge could track would be "Milk". Seeing that I'm observant, I know when I'm running low, and get some on the way home from work.
The only way for this idea to really work is maybe if I program "reciepies to cook in the future", it knows what I need for those reciepies, then writes the list. But why does my fridge even need to know when I can write that program on my puter?

Next question. Why does it need an internet connection? Only thing I can think of is that it automatically orders the milk to be delievered when I run low. I see two problems. This makes the milk more expensive, and does the ISP cost counteract the leisure of "always having a good supply of milk"??

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[dylantech]

wait a minute. the refridgerator should just email walmart and tell them to send over more beer...uhm food.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[davey23sol]

This post is *not* insightful... he just as read Nick Negroponte's books or heard him speak. This is his ideas almost word for word....

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[asland]

Beware of litter box security problems: http://security-archive.merton.ox.ac.uk/bugtraq-19 9803/0072.html

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[don_carnage]

It's a convenience. Not everyone will be forced into using these systems -- you can make the same argument for any technical innovation. Here's the way I look at it: when I'm out shopping and see a product I like, I usually whip out my Palm, jot down the details and take it home to get the cost/value analysis by looking it up on the web. Wouldn't it be great to go out and get all that info just by pointing the Palm device at a UPC code?

Oh...and we woulnd't be robots...we're the ones consuming the food. We decide what we eat and when still. But when I go for that jar of pickles and realize that I forgot to write that down on my shopping list, I tend to get a wee bit irritated.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[dylantech]

and no more impulse shopping. if its not on the list, the refridgerator doesnt buy it. :)

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[don_carnage]

Heh! I already get in enough trouble with my wife for bringing home items not on the list. "But honey, we were all out of beer and chips."

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Sylvanus]

Agreed that its a failure but the intelligent fridge idea will never happen. There are limits to what we can automate / should want to automate. The fridge and kitchen table are / should be at the heart of human culture. Food and meals are deeply bound up with human emotion, culture and ritual. Despite what Walmart might want you to believe our eating cannot and should not be automated.

Surely BSE and all the other horrifying food scares we've had in the last few years begin to demonstrate the limits?

Many of the greatest failures of the last few years have come from the "wouldn't it be great" school of brainless human systematisation. The problem with WAP / PDAs / Channel Broadcasts is that humans don't / don't yet want them. This is a good thing and should teach us geeks that our smart ideas don't scale like algebra does and that REAL PEOPLE MATTER!

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[spudnic]

but what's the fascination with automatic refrigerator/store interaction?

Because it's about the only slightly interesting idea for turning an appliance into an "Appliance" that anybody has come up with.

Seriously, this might be good for staples, but what other good could come of it? Other than things like eggs, milk, cheese, butter, and beer, the things in my refrigerator where either purchased for a particular recipe, or are leftovers.

I know when I need beer.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Darth_Burrito]

my refrig should 'read' the goods I place into the refrig and allow me to instantly generate a grocery list or track the age of foods

Now I'm not going to say this is impossible. But how would a refrigerator know what was in the fridge? Scanning bar codes would be a pain in the ass and it would be difficult to distinguish between two items of the same product. How would it know the expiration date? How do you determine things like low on milk or almost out of cheese. The only accurate solutions I can think of involve a lot more effort than required normally.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[enjo]

Wow, slow down guy.. It's amazing how people like you see some big corporate conspiracy in every little detail.

The magic of this automation occurs in two ways, both very exciting.

First: It guarantees that you will always have the staples that you want. Never again will I run out of milk because I was to stupid to go buy more. That's very important to me.

Second: It provides a sane place to order food... I really like fresh foods, but I don't have time to shop. This sort of integration should allow me to order the ingredients I need for dinner.. on the same day I'm going to cook it. It's not automated, but it sure as hell is convienent.

I can't remember the name of the appliance company (it's an offshoot of sunbeam), but they've been demonstrating the possibilities of smart appliances.. and it's vERY cool.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

beer must be fresh

No, I must be fresh, beer must be drunk. Or is it I must be drunk, you must be fresh? Wait....

Anonymous cowards think it's hilarious that Slashdot readers alone among web users are unable to determine the destination of a hyperlink without editorial assistance.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Uart]

Or, the grocery stores could get into the mix themselves. Once your shopping list is compiled, you could send it over the internet right to the store, and when you get there, its waiting for you, no bother looking for the stuff you need, just pay, and leave with your twinkies, ho-hos, coffee and whatever else you may have bought... (Of course the store could deliver too, but that might be somewhat problematic if you live too far away)

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

Magnetic tags, like the magnetic tag in the key to my office. Why in Gehenna anyone would want to, on the other hand, I cannot fathom.

I'd love to have something a little more than halfway in size between my iBook (12 in.) and my Visor (3 in.), say between 5 and 7 in., flat, no keyboard or clamshell, with 802.11b, a color screen, and real voice recognition, for $500. Don't expect to see one for a while yet.

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[sootman]

Am I the robot that serves the needs of the marketers, the store and the refrigerator?

Well, you are the one that needs food, after all...

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was what Webvan was hoping for. Unfortunately, they are a few years ahead of the pack. Ordering food will happen at the refrig someday -- just not now (or tomorrow).

Re:Internet and Appliance Integration

[MrDolby]

I don't know, I would like it if my fridge had a inventory of everything inside on the door. It could probably save some power too because I wouldn't be constantly opening the door to see what I have.

Web appliances aren't dead...

[seldolivaw]

Apparently, yes. I suspect that laptops with
wireless cards are filling the role that web
appliances were supposed to fill.

Really? I don't. People who buy web appliances are people who don't like complicated computers, not people who want access in their kitchen. Web appliances are a good idea, but they are hindered by the way websites all assume you use a computer: and once you've loaded your web appliance with a full keyboard and all the other bits and bobs you need to effectively utilise a PC-optimised site, you may as well be using a computer anyway.

I'm not sure what the solution is, though -- you could simplify the device, but that would limit its functionality. Or you could redesign web pages, but thats impractical.

Re:Web appliances aren't dead...

[scenic]

Really? I don't. People who buy web appliances are people who don't like complicated computers, not people who want access in their kitchen. Web appliances are a good idea, but they are hindered by the way websites all assume you use a computer: and once you've loaded your web appliance with a full keyboard and all the other bits and bobs you need to effectively utilise a PC-optimised site, you may as well be using a computer anyway.

I disagree with part of what you're saying. The issue isn't the current state of web design, it's the cost and infrastructure. The eVilla failed in part because it required an ISP account with some Sony-affiliated ISP... I looked into buying one to hook into my home network and was turned off by that single requirement.

Companies that want to play in this space need to start from the assumption that everyone has broadband, and realize that they're playing in the market of those with broadband. This is because folks with broadband are the ones who start really using the computer as an integrated part of their lives, simply because their connection is always on.

Look at the offerings by Linksys, 3Com, and Orinoco/Lucent. They all have a variety of hub/firewall/residential gateway products out and available. Which means that for an appliance to be successful, it needs to exist with that infrastructure. The eVilla did NOT coexist with that infrastructure at all, which meant it was aimed at a different market.

If you follow the tack I'm taking above, the larger problem is one of cost. eVilla seemed to me to be aimed at those folks without a PC. The points mentioned by others make the problem with this market choice pretty clear: who's going to pay retail for an "appliance" when they can have a "full-fledged computer" (the actual real similarities and differences matter less than perception...). However, I wanted one for my living room that I could flip on like my palm (instant on, check email, shut off) or dreamcast that integrated into my home network. eVilla, IIRC, doesn't have an ethernet jack, and (though I'm not certain about this) doesn't have any expansion that could take a 802.11b card/adapter, either.

Since the eVilla and Audrey all retail for close to the price of a low end computer, it just doesn't make much sense to buy them. If they can drop the retail price to that of a DVD player or VCR, they'll do really well. $100 for an appliance and I might be there.

To go back to your point, it's not about the web content... though it's important, you can check your Hotmail/Netscape Webmail/whatever with most any browser, and read almost all the major sites with any browser out there (with a good experience)... I should know... I use Opera, Mozilla, and Netscape 4.76 on my various Linux boxen, and there are very few sites that things don't work well (and those have been pretty easily corrected with a polite email to the webmaster).

Sujal

Re:Web appliances aren't dead...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Web appliances are a good idea, but they are >hindered by the way websites all assume you use >a computer: and once you've loaded your web >appliance with a full keyboard and all the other >bits and bobs you need to effectively utilise a >PC-optimised site, you may as well be using a >computer anyway.

I disagree. I would love a rugged, splatterproof, inexpensive touch-sensitive LCD display hanging off the wall in my kitchen with a link to the rec.food.cooking recipe archive. Stephanie da Silva has done a wonderful job there.

What I have now is a book of recipes. If I spill something on it, it has a stain forever. I have to leaf through the pages with my dough-infested hands while cooking. It can't control the volume of the stereo (or the TV). Moreover, I probably need four or five books to make a full meal with all the trimmings. What a hassle. What a mess. To top it off, it drains my pockets to boot.

Shame bluetooth never took off.

still available?

[trix_e]

So my question is, are these still going to be available for purchase, and hopefully at a discount? I tried to go to the site, and the "Buy Now" link is dead.

If these go on sale at anything like a reasonable price (I wasn't willing to pay $499), I'd be all over buying a few of these to sprinkle around the house.

While I could probably go just as cheap with a refurb. PC and Linux, the compact nature of these devices is *so* appealing for having in the kitchen, bedroom, guestroom, etc. for quick email, surfing, reference...

Anyone know where I can snag one (or three) of these cheap??

Re:still available?

[ryanwright]

Just get a 3COM Audrey. $89 and for another $30 you can add a USB ethernet adapter.

no kidding!

[CrudPuppy]

$500 seems like quite a ripoff when I can meander
over to egghead.com or any other auction house
and get a nice HP refurb with great features for UNDER
$500...

I mean, I know HP's are not the greatest machine
in the world, but they are still 1000 times more
attractive and expandable to J. Random Buyer
than an appliance.

Strange

[daviddennis]

Has anyone actually used this thing? I saw it at Fry's and it looked pretty slick. Seems to me that with modem-only internet access it simply wasn't flexible enough. I would have loved to try one just to check out BeIA, but that didn't seem worth blowing the money on.

I'm glad Palm bought Be before this happened. No doubt this explains the low price, since I'm sure Be knew what was going on.

Has anyone here actually used it? I'd be curious to hear more about it from an actual user.

D

Re:Strange

[SmallTooth]

Having one in the kitchen would be useless in my opinion. We've been testing them for our office (don't ask, we just did :) ) and web surfing is all. No word processing, calculator, just web. The email is only through online (hotmail, yahoo, etc.) Personally, if I wanted something to look pretty, I'd buy a Mac. They're smaller and probably weigh less. Drop the price on the eVilla to less than $150, then I may be interested.

Re:Strange

[mimbleton]

We have a test unit here in the office.
It sucks. It is quite slow, some web pages do not display properly ( complete mess) etc ...
I wouldn't buy one ...

Re:Strange

[daviddennis]

Does it use NetPositive (Be's original web browser) or Opera?

I really loved NetPositive because it was so fast and opening new browser windows was very smooth, even when other sites were loading. Only OmniWeb for MacOS X matches that kind of performance (but of course OW has much more functionality).

Unfortunately, NetPositive supported a fairly ungenerous subset of HTML+JavaScript - it did fine on most HTML-only pages, but had pretty much no JS support worth mentioning.

I think they were going to go to Opera for eVilla, and I'd be curious to hear whether they did and what happened.

D

Re:Strange

[mimbleton]

I think it is NetPositive precisely because it has a problem with many pages ( Opera is much better in this regard.)
I am not sure though, since this things is wrapped in its own custom GUI ...
The main problem is slowness of GUI, it feels like KDE running on Pentium 100 with a Virge card.

Re:Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the buying of Be by Palm may be one of the reasons that led to Sony discontinuing it. There is no longer a company around to update the OS for it...

Re:Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

ignore the dork above. It uses Opera. And relies on javascript quite a bit for the included applications. One neat thing it does is for MSWord attachments, to view them, it converts them into HTML and displays them in Opera. I'm not sure if this feature was in the next update (RIP) or if existing ones have this capability.

Re:Strange

[mimbleton]

Whatever it does , I wish it would do it at least as fast as Windows did stuff in 1996.

BEIA not BEOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was, BEIA not BEOS, same company just 7meg version of the os not the full bore nt strenth edition.

Also from what I hear it was due to a dial-up connection instead of the network connection on the back of the machine. One of the us hotel chains was selling it for other hotels with high speed and it seemed that its speed was no problem.

iCEBOX may be your answer

[dmccarty]

Am I the only person who LIKES having a small internet terminal in the kitchen/family room?

If you really mean that, and you're not opposed to spending a lot of money for one, check out the iCEBOX. There are two versions, the CounterTop and the FlipScreen.

USA Today wrote a review of the unit here.

Re:iCEBOX may be your answer

[Locke_CJ]

The FlipScreen version looks almost perfect. Too bad there's no prices/purchase options.
There's also no mention of what hardware/software it runs.
The weight listed(40lbs.) seems a bit worrysome as well.
Definitely something worth watching, though.

Re:iCEBOX may be your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch. It redefines the meaning of the word 'hideous'

Re:iCEBOX may be your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The best looking feature is that washable keyboard! Wish my work computer had one of those. There's all kinds of crumbs in my keyboard (from previous users).

Laptops??

[FortKnox]

If I wanted a terminal in my living room, I'd mount a moniter, keyboard, & mouse to an old 300MHz processor to a small little linux box with KDE & Konqueror on it.

You can hide it all in a cabinet, run RJ45 under the carpet to it, making it a nice little kiosk, and all that would still be less than a laptop with a wireless connection....

Maybe even put in a touchscreen monitor instead of the keyboard & mouse.... hmmmmm....

Re:Laptops??

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, but you're still stuck with a fixed location. I've had a wireless laptop for only a week now and I've used it in the living room (from two different chairs), the office, the bedroom, and out on the deck. Plus I can travel with it. Before getting the laptop, I had a 2nd computer at the end of the couch in the living room. That was nice, but there is simply no comparison.

this sucks...

[davey23sol]

eVilla was featured in the Internet appliance panel at SIGGRAPH. It was considered one of the products of the future... doesn't look like that now. It's cost was amazing high and never had a chance to get to a level where a normal guy could get one.

Of course, it looked like a big old Mac classic. If you want a quick terminal in your kitchen, but a Mac Classic from your local University surplus auction, put Open Transport and NSCA Telnet on it, and you can get your e-mail. There are other small computers you can get to do the same thing without the HUGE cost.

Anyway... just a highlight of some of the problems here: the Microsoft guy on this SIGGRAPH panel said something that caused me to have to walk outside and laugh: "The PC has spoiled consumers... we must get them used to paying on a subscription basis and paying more." That's just great. This guy was on the XBox team... same M$ strategy on every device!!

Also.. this panel didn't mention Linux once... interesting since it's such a major player. Maybe they'll choose a linux appliance over something that they have to subscribe to every month...

Re:this sucks...

[_Neurotic]

...a Mac Classic from your local University surplus auction, put Open Transport and NSCA Telnet on it, and you can get your e-mail...

Uhm, how is this in any way close to filling the need the eVilla was supposed to fill?

"No Grandma, it doesn't work with Hotmail, but you can use Pine instead! Isn't that just the coolest?!?!"

"Shut up boy! I wish I had a real Grandson!"

Re:this sucks...

[Emil Brink]

It's cost was amazing high
One word: Sony. What did you expect?

Re:this sucks...

[davey23sol]

I didn't write the message to your Grandma.. I wrote it for other Slashdot readers.

As far as my needs, as well as others on slashdot, a cheap Mac would probably fit them just fine. As a matter of fact, a telnet (or SSH) client would be a primary factor in whether or not to buy the thing. I haven't looked at a lot of devices for just this reason. Most of them don't even have any Java, so you can't even use that for telent.

For a person with a personal Linux box at the center of the house computing, Telnet/SSH would be a most important need...

Re:this sucks...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is not for your Grandma, an old Mac can be pretty sweet for a geek. I have an SE/30 (16Mz 68030, 32 MB RAM, 1G HD) running OpenBSD, and it is great. It is tiny, I can SSH into it and from it, it is a handy little terminal for other systems (it usually is SSHed into another box), and I have it running Apache. I will admit it can be slow when I run WebMin on it.

Re:this sucks...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could be wrong, but I don't think Open Transport ran on old 68000 machines.

Also, ethernet cards for those guys are a little obscure.

If you really want to go that route, get a SE/30, which is very nice machine that supports free unix OSes, as well as System 7.6 and quickdraw32 (allows you to run Netscape or IE). Color Classic could be an option too.

Re:this sucks...

[_Neurotic]

Granted, your info is neat enough to warrant mention but like I said, it's not a suitable replacement for one of these new-fangled Internet Applicances. At least not for the market to which they are supposedly targeted.

Plan:

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Phase 1) Get one, cheap.

Phase 2) Scratch the "la" off of the name.

Phase 3) BOMBER PHATZ.

Internet appliances vs. webpads

[RedX]

Hopefully the continuing bad news for these types of Internet appliances doesn't kill any plans for wireless webpads. There is quite a difference between the two, although I'm afraid that the webpad folks will be hesitant to gamble on their products after seeing the failure of the iOpener and eVilla. I'd much prefer a touchscreen webpad to an appliance of even to a laptop for casual Internet activities from the living room if the price was right. But considering that some of the prices I've seen for these webpads are equal to and in many cases higher than the price of a decent webpad, I'll continue to use my low-end, wireless laptop in my living room to connect to my Citrix server in the basement.

Internet Ready Sybian On Market?

[bahtama]

What I would like to see is the Sybian become an Internet ready device. This way I can sit at my computer fragging some lamerz or reading /. while controlling the sybian which is in the bedroom with the lady friend!! It would be the best of both worlds! No more, "Honey! Quit Half Life and get in here and satisfy me!"

Or maybe the Venus 2000 could be hooked up to the computer and be set to "activate" when you frag someone or get modded up, that would add a whole new dimension to gaming and reading the latest news for nerds. Then it really would be 'News for Nerds, Stuff That Splatters"

You would think since more innovations have come(pun intended) about because people want faster and better quality pr0n that they would have this already. I propose someone write some quality open-source software for the Sybian, maybe even provide email and instant messaging ability in case the lady wants to chat while "relaxing."

Re:Internet Ready Sybian On Market?

[Tackhead]

> What I would like to see is the Sybian [sybian.com] become an Internet ready device.

ROFLMAO!

(And when implemented, my SO would be ROFLHCO? ;)

Actually, what you suggest would be a majorly cool hack. Sounds like all you'd have to do is hook up a PIC to the input device on the Syb, and then use the parallel port (trivial to build, just 8 TTL latches on the PP's data lines - this hardware could be built in an afternoon on a RatShack breadboard for about $5.00) or a USB port (harder/more expensive), then control with software.

Hook that up to the obligatory webcam and some sort of plug-in for an IM client, and voila, no more worries about sex over long-distance relationships.

The real problem is that gadgets like the Sybian are large, bulky, and people are prudish about ordering such things.

> No more, "Honey! Quit Half Life and get in here and satisfy me!"

It's gotta be said. "Sybz with gibz!"

Screw Webpliances...

[kitmarlowe]

I want my freaking webpad!!! I too want to look like Jean-Luc Picard with my trusty cyber-clipboard. I want to surf while walking down the street, bumping into mundane non-technoweenies. Give me webpad or give me death!

Seriously though, when the heck are the webpads/tablet PC's coming out. I've only been seeing prototypes for the last 3 or 4 years. Anyone have one?

Re:Screw Webpliances...

[JoeGee]

ViewSonic is releasing the ViewPad 100. Personally, this one makes me kinda moist, although I really want more than a PDA ...

Re:Screw Webpliances...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, do men get moist? I thought only women got moist?

Re:Screw Webpliances...

[VasLor]

Fujitsu has been making them for years. You can see them in all their glory on www.fujitsu.com. These puppies are near star trek like in their geekness, but alas, they are expensive because they are a full powered PC.

Re:Screw Webpliances...

[JoeGee]

Hell I get all sortsa things when I see something I want. :P

Lemme get this straight

[tb3]

Be stopped development of BeOS and concentrated on BeIA. The only hardware BeIA runs on is the eVilla, which is history, and Palm has stopped development of BeIA. Exactly what did Palm pay $10 million for?

Re:Lemme get this straight

[jackDuhRipper]

They got a good deal of technology -

Just because they (may) have stopped further development of the platform, does that negate the value of what'd already been developed?

For ~$10 million in STOCK, they got a trove of IP and first-shot at some incredible engineers. Not bad at all. Steve

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

It is considered very likely by people who might have some clue (e.g. fired Be engineers) that Palm wanted just one or two components of the BeIA/BeOS software. Not necessarily components in a released product either, since Palm will have to re-engineer everything for their platform anyway.

They don't need BeOS or BeIA to ever run again, except for long enough to disentangle the bits wanted for a future PalmOS.

The engineers are part of the deal because, well, have you tried to make sense of someone else's software after they just walked away one afternoon with it half-finished?

I don't believe any rumours about BeOS on ARM, or Palm going onto x86, the "BeOS can be ported in six months" story is just a story, hyped up by a fast (but not THAT fast) port from PPC.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Rude Turnip]

They got Be's multimedia handling technology. If I were more specific I'd be bullshitting with you. However, here's a rumor from www.beosjournal.com regarding some of the tech Palm *may* have purchased from Be:

*****
Palm rumored to have acquired 'PicassoGL' Technology from Be
by Ryan C. Christiansen
29 August 2001

Imagine booting up your computer and when your desktop appears, you find tall grass softly swaying from side-to-side and fog rolling across the screen. Your trash can icon in its full 3-D splendor sits upright until a sudden blast of wind blows it over, partially spilling its contents on to the ground. All of this made possible by PicassoGL, an OpenGL-powered app_server which brings 3-D imaging to ALL of your desktop computing graphics, including the application windows, icons, and everything else. An unnamed source reported Be was working on just such a monster when Palm bought Be's intellectual property. What hath Palm bought?
*****

Re:Lemme get this straight

[ethereal]

...Your trash can icon in its full 3-D splendor sits upright until a sudden blast of wind blows it over, partially spilling its contents on to the ground.

So, I have to ask: does this mean that you just got r00ted, or is your disk full?

Re:Lemme get this straight

[FrankNputer]

Actually, BeIA runs on pretty much any x86 hardware, including the Crusoe & Geode processors. Given that BeOS also ran on PPC, one could surmise that, unless they gutted PPC support for BeIA, it'll run on that too.

Sony wasn't the only one that was running BeIA - they were the most prominent.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

a fair question....

they got

• J.L. Gassee - ok he's just baggage.
  
• 50-60 employees being transferred in
  
• a responsive, portable (Hobbit, PPC, x86) robust, multi-threaded microkernel(ish) OS capable of handling audio and video without legacy crap holding it back.
  

Fact is, WinCE is taking a big bite out of Palm's market. Maybe Palm doesn't want to be the next Netscape.

Not quite

[uradu]

I've had the laptop in the LR with both wireless and wired NICs for many years now. It works, but it's not exactly ideal. You always have at least the power cord to drag around. Since wireless doesn't work for me (clashes with my 2.4 GHz DECT phone which there's no way I'm getting rid of), I also have to drag the damn CAT5 cable around. Plus the L-form factor of the laptop, which isn't exactly ergonomic.

What I'd like is a letter-size webpad with a touchscreen, a whopping battery (maybe the whole back a 1/2 inch Zinc-air battery) and 802.11a networking. The screen could be color, but I'd put up with a reflective monochrome job if it seriously extended battery life and was readable enough. The form factor and weight should be such that I can use it heads-up while lying on the couch. I'd really like the whole thing to work like my Pilot: pick it up, turn it on, and it's on instantly where you last left off. Oh, and please leave out any frills (multimedia and crap like that), make it $200 to $300, so I can have several.

Re:Not quite

[juuri]

I use many 2.4Ghz devices at the same time. Have you actually tried to use WLAN stuff and it didn't work or are you going on the idea that they will conflict? Any of the current WAPs will let you set and lock a channel in the 2.4Ghz range to talk on.

Getting rid of cables all over the place is one of the best things to happen in a long time to computers.

Re:Not quite

[uradu]

> Have you actually tried to use WLAN stuff and it didn't work [...] ?

Yes, though it's been pre-802.11b stuff. As soon as I turn the phone base station on (don't even have to be talking on the phone), my packet loss on the WLAN shoots up. I've also read about bad experiences from others with 802.11, so I've held off. My phone is a Siemens Gigaset. If you have experiences to the contrary, let me know.

Re:Not quite

[juuri]

I use 802.11 in one of the worst environments possible and it works well throughout my entire apartment.

I have concrete walls with a metal mesh in them. There are also metal meshes between the floors and the ceiling. I also live in downtown SF which has much interference. In addition I have a Panasonic 2.4ghz phone. Everything plays well together and I have WLAN connectivity throughout my apartment and up 40 feet outside of it. The only tricky part was placement of the WAP and making sure the Gigahertz phone and the WLAN were set to channels far apart.

WAP placement is extremely important. Make sure to get it high and take into account the walls throughout.

Re:Not quite

[uradu]

Isn't the Panasonic analog though? The Gigaset is FHSS, though with probably fewer (and wider) channels. I haven't really read up on DECT that much, but I think it's pretty similar to 802.11 technology, so the two would be expected to interfere with each other like hell.

Thanks for your input, though. I might just get some 802.11 cards anyway and simply return them if they don't work out.

Re:What's your favorite?

[esper_child]

what about: AtheOS Enlightenment Gnome KDE Motif Lightstep Afterstep Windows 3.x (or older) Windows NT Windows 9x MacOS Amiga BeOS none of the above hell if you are going to give a list to choose from none of the above should always be there

The future is more like Agendas

[twitter]

I like old 486's. No fan and quit power supply makes a nice quit box. With a sound board, it's a stereo. With a SCSI, it's whatever. With a nicer machine serving in another room, a 486 can be a practical satilite apliance.

The future, however, belongs to devices like the agenda. Why bother with a big old box?

The French killed the Internet appliance market

[kalifa]

Indeed, Internet appliances dont' stand a chance against the almighty Minitel.

Wrong kind of appliance

[Carnage4Life]

Maybe one day they might be useful, if they're cheap enough and have some actual use to them, but I don't see why I should spend $500 to connect my toaster to the WWW

Those aren't the kind of Internet Appliances being discussed in this article. The article references Sony's eVilla which is similar to 3COM's Audrey and Netpliance's I-Opener. Most people thought that cheap devices that offered only web browsing would be a hit with consumers who wouldn't then have to buy expensive and powerful machines just to use them as little more than dumb terminals.

Unfortunately these devices were neither cheap enough nor did they offer enough functionality to entice consumers.

Re:Wrong kind of appliance

[Tackhead]

> Unfortunately these devices [eVilla, Audrey, I-Opener] were neither cheap enough nor did they offer enough functionality to entice consumers.

And that's the answer.

If it takes two years for a business plan to get off the ground, you can - as the guy you're replying to said - just buy a refurbed laptop for the same price. I love my I-Openers. But only because I spent enough time and money h4x0ring them into laptops. They're "mine" in the sense that I take pride-of-ownership and pride-of-craftsmanship in what I've managed to accomplish with them, but on a dollars-and-cents level, a used laptop would have performed as well, cost roughly the same amount in dollar terms, taken zero time to "build", been more compact (laptops have integrated keyboards, I-Openers don't), and would probably have had an active matrix screen.

The other thing that changed with respect to the embedded/appliance sector is, of course, CPU pricing.

When an embedded MIPS chip or a WinChip-C6 was $30 and the "real CPU" (say, P200 or faster) required for a comparable non-embedded solution was $200-300, the embedded solution made a lot of sense.

But anyone starting today will be competing against 1G CPUs for $50 by the time their device hits the market. The "expensive and powerful machines" are far more powerful, but no more expensive, than the embedded solutions.

Old-sk00l:
Appliance: $200 in design/PCB-fabbing + $50 in parts. $250 + 6mos design.
PC: $0 in design, $100 in parts, $500 in CPU/RAM. Ouch, $600. Go embedded.

New-sk00l:
Appliance: $200 in design/PCB-fabbing + $50 in parts. Still $250 +6mos to design.
PC: $0 in design, $100 in parts, $100 in CPU/RAM. Wow! $200! Cheaper, and available now.

PC Magazine says eVilla = POS

[Schnapple]

What a coincidence, I just read in PC Magazine how this was a POS. True, it had USB and such but it ran Opera (shudder), it used BeIA, had a mere 56K Modem, wouldn't save MP3's, can't run anything Shockwave or Windows Media, etc. They gave it one star. No woner Sony killed it.

Schnapple

Palm ownership influence?

[maddogsparky]

I wonder if the fact that Palm is buying BeOS has anything to do with the fact that Sony is dropping BeOS?

Re:Palm ownership influence?

[Ratbert42]

I doubt it, since Sony also sells boxes that run PalmOS.

Re:Palm ownership influence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony NEVER USED BeOS You nimrod. BEIA BEIA BEIA BEIA BEIA FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME

Re:Palm ownership influence?

[NickFusion]

When all else fails, read the article:

"Dolak said the cancellation had nothing to do with the fact that earlier this month Palm purchased the assets of Be, the company that made the operating system for the eVilla. Palm representatives said at the time that the company had no plans to continue development of the BeIA operating system."

What were you expecting?

Another one bites the dust...

[gwizah]

Lets see....


Netpliance I-opener

MSN companion

Gateway Connected Touchpad

E-Pods I

3com Audrey

Sony E-villa


Id say that pretty much sums up the success record of Internet appliances. Score one more for the The I-Appliance BBS

Re:Another one bites the dust...

[gwizah]

sorry Bad Link, Crappy formatting...was up till 4:00 am last night
I appliance BBS

Re:Another one bites the dust...

[Skynet]

The Gateway Connected Touchpad did NOT bit the dust. You can still get them by calling Gateway at 1-800-Gateway. Gateway is just not offering them on it's website anymore.

You can also get them by going to keyword "Anywhere" on the AOL service.

Re:Another one bites the dust...

[halik]

Nevermind gateway, you can get them on ebay for sub 100. I got mine running winme for under 150 :)

Re:Another one bites the dust...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, NIC is still carrying on under the radar...
http://www.thinknic.com

Why do we assume only geeks want appliances?

[elmegil]

I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.

Which is fine for me, but it doesn't work for my mother-in-law. I'd really like to get her email, but the appliances available either 1) go out of business in nothing flat, 2) charge too much for internet access, or 3) don't have access in her area (fairly rural downstate IL).

I am still waiting for one that's stable long enough to be comfortable with....

I'm already doing remote Windoze administration for my dad (don't even suggest Linux, that's like suggesting I get him an indy car to drive to the store in), and I don't want to be doing it for my in-laws too....

Its still too early for internet appliances.

[Shivetya]

They need to be built around "casual" and "passing" usuage. What I mean is, I don't need some computer looking thing in my living room or kitchen (hell, I got a microwave for that).

What I would like to see is something that is wall mounted ala flat panel that I can talk and touch. That technology isn't here yet, or that of which is is too expensive to do.

Regardless, it needs to be unobtrusive (and being able to wall mount it helps, but flat table/desk mounting would be good, and have speech recognition and be instantly ready.

Right now they keep trying to use that damn computer layout everyone already has. Let alone the costs are silly

Re:Its still too early for internet appliances.

[gnugnugnu]

> They need to be built around "casual" and "passing" usuage. What I mean is, I don't need some computer looking thing in my living room or kitchen (hell, I got a microwave for that).

I agree, most of the so called internet appliances are really just lame substandard PCs and overpriced for what they actually do.

A web kiosk (internet appliance) is useful if im in the airport or somewhere i want a way of checking my web mail, but a web appliance is not much use when i have a PC in the house.

Appliances need to be focused and have a limited scope: do one thing well. I could make toast using the grill but a toaster is far more convenient, i could boil water in a pan but a kettle is more convenient ... et cetera ... et cetera

Most people prefer to listen to CDs on a CD Player rather than a computer, an appliance should give obvious advantages such as ease of use and convience or better quality.
I think the TiVo would be a good example of a internet Appliance except they are too scared of the content providers to provide the functionality.

Re:Its still too early for internet appliances.

[geekoid]

so you need a Microwave with a touch screen on the door. hhmmmm

Re:Its still too early for internet appliances.

[joshwa]

AOL/Gateway/Transmeta have already built such a device:

See links:

AOL's page

CNet Article.

In all the pictures they show it as a countertop item, but in the original press-release video they showed it wall-mounted.

Again, the pricing (at $599) and the ISP restrictions (AOL only) kill any chance of success for this device...

Re:Its still too early for internet appliances.

[halik]

actually, you can get them on ebay for under 100 bucks. It cost me under 150 total to have one of thsoe with 3.1 gb drive and winme. All the drviers for windows are available btw.

Guano Heralded as Prozac Substitute

[Anonymous Coward]

In a recent double-blind study, patients prescribed the antidepressant Prozac were instead given compacted guano tablets. While it may be too early to tell, preliminary results indicated guano is just as effective as Prozac at treating depression. The study, headed by Bats Against Depression (B.A.D.), aims to prove that Prozac is no more effective than bat excrement. So far, results look promising.

Dr. Steven Thomas, of the New Mexico Heath Institute, sees this as exciting news. "Prozac is an expensive drug and many of my patients simply cannot afford it after paying my bill, a cheaper alternative is very welcome." Others are not convinced.

"This could be a the start of a dangerous trend.", says Dr. George Zott. "Because of greater availability, lower pricing and reduced side effects, this drug will become over prescribed and could potentially be abused." A spokesperson from B.A.D. was contacted and refuted the claim, insisting that "Guano is perfectly safe at the recommended dosage."

Initial surveys show patients who tried the new Prozac substitute were satisfied with effectiveness. "I feel so much better now that I've switched to this bat shit stuff. Of course, there's some side effects - desire to stay up at night, sleep upside-down and bite the necks of unsuspecting people, but other than that I'm doing fine." Said M. Edwards, a salesman from Miami. Most others experienced less pronounced side effects

B.A.D. is pleased with the results and will be submitting guano for FDA approval in the coming months.

Idea For Internet Appliance

[LowellPorter]

I think Palm should continue the BEIA. Find a way to port it to a Color Palm. They should add a keyboard and mouse and sell it as an internent appliance for about $200. I would buy that.

Re:Idea For Internet Appliance

[topham]

Don't expect to see BeIA running on a Color Palm as you know them, They do not have the processing power.

I hope they use it on their StrongARM based Palms after making appropriate changes to use it on a hand-held device.

It will be interesting to see.

Lack of Portability ...

[JoeGee]

One of the biggest reasons many of these things bombed is that you had to subscribe to a proprietary service to use them. You can't bring your own ISP, you have to use MSN, AOL, etc. Subscribing to an additional service is no big deal if you live in an area with local dialup for that service, but in rural communities like mine even AOL and WebTV are long distance so at best you have to pay ISP charges, then an additional amount to use the service packaged with the device. At worst, you pay long distance for the privilege of getting email on the thing.

The people who would actually consider buying something like this probably want a bit more versatility. I desperately want a web appliance I can take around my apartment with me, but I want it to be configurable for my own internet service.

As I said in another comment, so far ViewSonic seems to have the closest thing to what I am looking for: http://www.viewsonic.com/products/viewpad100.cfm.

People who buy web appliances...

[Ars-Fartsica]

People who buy web appliances are people who don't like complicated computers,

I don't see how you can quantify anything about people who buy web appliances - Audrey and eVilla hardly sold at all.

More likely they were just gadget freaks who wanted to play with a new toy. I highly doubt these products ever penetrated to the level of mainstream consumers.

People don't WANT this crap..

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone wants to check their email from the kitchen. Not everyone wants to check their email 10 times a day. This crap is based on assumptions about peoples comings and goings and daily activity and obviously these assumptions are wrong.

The idea of doing anything from one of these terminals is dumb. Why the hell would anyone click around on an expensive, clunky system with a small screen when you can walk your lazy ass down the hall to your computer and sit down in front of a large comfotable screen.

These things just don't make any sense yet.

Its price, that's my point.

[FortKnox]

But if you want a nice computer kiosk (hell, multiple computer kiosks), its still cheaper. Its all about cost. I live in an apartment with my wife. We want save to buy a house. I can't go spending cash on a laptop, or anything wireless, except maybe a phone. I kill my hardward-buying-urges with old computers and linux. For the income-challenged, its a very nice alternative.

Duh

[fobbman]

"Am I the only person who LIKES having a small internet terminal in the kitchen/family room?"

I'm sorry, but why would you need an Internet terminal in the kitchen when you shelled out $100 for a refridgerator next to your main workstation?

Hell, when my daughter was in the hospital awhile back I noticed that they had a toilet in the room itself that retracted into a cupboard! That took care of my last reason for leaving my computer!

Aqua

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's a *real* desktop.

Re:Aqua

[unconfused1]

I enjoy the Aqua desktop. There will be quite a few improvements with 10.1 though.

KDE 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

By far, the best available.

Works for me...

[FirstNoel]

I picked up a IBM Thinkpad 380D off ebay for around $200. It does everything I need for light duty; internet, word processing, programming...Civ2. For what I paid I think I got the better of the deal.

All I need now is a cable modem and wireless hub...

Sean D.

Price might be a factor, too

[Rude Turnip]

It's too bad the eVilla didn't perform as Sony wanted it too. I think all of the HTML/javascript stuff that was used as its display manager did it in for speed and stability. Keep in mind that the actual BeOS (evilla is based on BeIA, a pared-down BeoS) is incredibly fast and responsive unlike anything I've ever used. Anyway...

Imo, one of the failings of internet appliances is the price. $500 is way to much to pay for a device that does much less than a similarly priced eMachines or BestBuy special sale deal. Even someone who is computer illiterate will still have enough common sense to look at price/performance issues. Even though he/she might not utilize all of the power of a full system, it's still a better deal than a similarly priced appliance with less features.

That's not to say that internet appliances aren't useful...it's just that given their limited functionality, consumers probably expect to pay significantly less for them. However, what is the magic price point? $200 - $300 is a traditional price point in consumer electronics for things like video game consoles, DVD players, etc. So does $200 - $300 sound like a good price for an internet appliance? Probably not. Here's why:

You can also get an incredibly cheap computer with rebates and an ISP contract for about $200 - $300, too. Read the BestBuy and CompUSA circulars, you'll see lots of deals like that. The ISP contract may seem onerous to those knowledgeable in computers, but for somebody who doesn't know a whole lot about computers, it's a convenience to not have to shop around. And, realistically, you're going to pay ISP fees sooner or later. So, what incentive is there to buy a $200 - $300 appliance if you can get a full computer for the same amount of money? None at all. How does one gauge the price point for appliance then? Go to a place where consumer demand truly drives prices.

The best source of market research for pricing out internet appliances is, imo, Ebay. Brand new, *unopened* internet appliances that once sold for $500 are selling at discounts of 80% or greater from MSRP.

Specifically, I'm referring to the 3com Audrey, which includes a 10" LCD touch screen, stylus, keyboard and 56k modem. From the reviews I've read, the web browswer is "nice to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there," implying limited, but generally good enough performance. The device also sports email, a planner and can sync with two Palm Pilots. The completed auction section of Ebay says that most brand new, unopened Audreys are selling for $80 - $90. The USB Ethernet adapter for Audrey is $20 - $30. So, for $100 to $120, you can have a cute little broadband-enabled device to stick in the kitchen or an end table in the living room. I'm planning to get one to control my BeOS-based web-interface network juke box. I don't expect it to do anything complex at all. I have real computers for more intensive web browsing.

These are my conclusions:

1. Consumers, although largely computer illiterate, are knowledgeable enough to look at price/performance issues. It goes against common sense to purchase a limited device when a similarly priced full computer is available. Even though our "techie common sense" tells us that many consumers only need to do simple web browsing and email and could get away with just using an internet appliance, "consumer common sense" tells consumers to get the most bang for the buck, even though they might not need all of that bang.

2. Given the price/performance ratios of internet appliances and cheap "BestBuy special sale" computers, a more reasonable price point for internet appliances (that are nonetheless usefull for certain tasks) would be in the sub $100 range.

Web applicances

[mcelli]

As I understand it, the primary issue with Web appliances is the target consumer. I equate this piece of equipment to a small kitchen radio, or to make a bigger stretch, the dartboard in your games room.

The kitchen radio is simple because it is a broadcast medium. Sure, I wouldn't mind reading Slashdot while frying eggs, but there's no way I'm going to post. The radio, on the other hand, is fully functional when totally ignored.

Essentially, the computer is an active medium wheras the radio and television are passive mediums. It's hard to interact with something while you're frying eggs.

The second issue is cost, but that's a whole new can of worms. I never even understood why BeOS? Many other operating systems can do the same thing and need not be purchased. In fact, why not just put a computer in the kitchen. Anyone with the desire to be on the net while frying eggs probably has the expertise to set up a computer to do it.

Note to self...

[wiredog]

Gotta buy milk on the way home from work.

Re:Not quite--- Epod!

[Bastard Operator Fro]

you're talking about the ePod.
http://www.geocities.com/epodsfiles/

Shaun

uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

the eVilla was powered by BeIA and not BeOS.

No, that's it for web appliances

[fmaxwell]

Web appliances are wrong on so many counts.

1. They have been a marketing scheme. Rather than sell the devices at fair prices, the vendors have tried to sell the devices at or below cost in the hopes of making a bundle on overpriced, proprietary ISP contracts. Netpliance is the worst example in this arena.

1a. You can't sell them at a profit because they cost $400 or so to manufacture. What little-old-computer-phobic-lady is going to plunk down $600 or more for something that she doesn't really understand or know if she needs?

2. The vendors try to peddle them to people that are put-off by computers. So how do they do this? By selling them in the computer sections of Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. Yeah, that's where I expect to find computer-phobic older people shopping.

3. The computer-illiterate audience to which Internet appliances appeal means that a vendor is looking at tremendously high support costs. Sure, they dumbed down the OS, but it's still a completely mysterious thing to many older users. "Your machine broke my telephone! People call me and get a busy signal I'm not talking to anyone..."

4. Their proprietary OSs and browsers have just about guaranteed that they would perpetually be playing catch-up. Try running a copy of Netscape 1.0 and surf to some modern websites. It's basically useless. Sony was smart enough to recognize that, without active development, BeIA would be just as worthless in a few years. I think that it's unlikely that QNX (the other major player in the Internet Appliance OS market) is going to have the development budget to keep up with Apple, Realplayer, Macromedia, Microsoft, etc. when it comes to releasing browser plug-ins. Thus, many web pages will not work on these devices.

5. There is no growth path. None of the Internet appliance manufacturers have offered hard drives, word processing, spreadhsheet software, etc. for users that want to move beyond e-mail and the web. This makes many computer-savvy people hesitant to recommend these devices to family and friends.

I think that this should be about the final chapter in the history of the proprietary Internet appliance.

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[4mn0t1337]

Web appliances are wrong on so many counts.

While I agree with almost all of your points, I don't think that Web appliances a flawed in concept -- they have just failed so far in implemention.

Keep in mind that there are great unwashed masses out there that aren't slashdot readers (ie, their computer skills are limited to *maybe* being able to turn one on. (Uh... come to think of it, that describes some portion of the slashdot crowd too.)). They might not have ever used a computer, but might benefit from one. I think getting a machine into their hands is a good thing.

What do most non-technical people use a machine for? Writting a few letters, balancing the checkbook, email and browsing. 90% (random high number) of the population has very simple needs, and if you think about it, really don't need a computer, per se. They just need a simple device that does most of the tasks I listed.

What is keeping most of the people from getting a computer (that don't own one)? Cost is a factor. Technophobia is another. If you can build a machine that is both simple to build (costs are kept down) and is simple to use (no futzing with dll's or crashing OS's, nothing to install), then you would have somethign that would put computing power in the hands of a lot of people that otherwise wouldn't have a computer.

How much of a strech is it then to say that an internet appliance is a good solution? If one could produce a 200$ (or less) box that was no more complex than a phone to use, I think these would become ubiquitous.

[Keep in mind that although you and I need the power of a "computer", most of the people out there simply do not need some 1.8GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD machine (despite what the manufacturers tell you). In fact, if it weren't for codebloat, most people would do just fine with a P1 or less.]

5. There is no growth path. None of the Internet appliance manufacturers have offered hard drives, word processing, spreadhsheet software, etc. for users that want to move beyond e-mail and the web.

As we are seeing the rebirth of the client-server relation (When the personal computer put more computing power in our hands at a cheaper cost, we moved away from the expensive machines (university's/companies') that we all had to time-share on. We lost track of our client-server roots.), we are seeing more and more computing power "out there" and a lot more of what happens on your machine is dependent on other's computers. Why bother spending all of that money on a lot of processing power on your desk when you use 5% of it for only a few hours of the day? Doesn't it make more sense, on a large scale, to rent processing power from someone else as you need it? You would have much more at your disposal, and you would only pay for what you use, which makes it more affordable.

In addition, already we have companies that deploy applications that are web based. Is it too much of a strech to see a future where word processing, spreadhsheets, and any other apps a customer needs are web (or whatever replaces the web) deployed? Once again, you rent as you need. You no longer have to pay $300 for software. You don't have to pay $100 for the next upgrade (and the one after that...and the one after that). It isn't your problem to figure out why the app is crashing. Perfect for the person who otherwise wouldn't use a computer.

None of the Internet appliance manufacturers have offered hard drives

Ah, but there are plenty of services out there right now that offer on-line storage. (I have about 90MB of *free* storage out there -- more than enough for most users.(mp3's and movies aside at the momment)) As the cost of storage continues to drop, the ammount available will increase. This is a chunk of data that the user has *no* responsibility for maintaining and backing up. If a HD crashes, the hosting company just yanks it out of its RAID and slips in a new one. The user never sees the difference. One less headache for the novice user.

I think that making a simple cheap appliance box that is basically a client/terminal is the best way to get computing power/internet/etc into the hands of the rest of the world that aren't geeks. Now, I, on the otherhand will never surrender my 5 workstations, but then again my needs (and the rest of my geek brethren) are greater than Joe Public's.

Oh,... and please excuse if I ramble a bit. One really shouldn't slashdot hungover...

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[Whyzzi]

I personally think the problem lies marketing style. They are trying to sell internet appliances to the wrong people!

Children are going to schools and using technologies by the millions. Hospitals and airports have thousands of people waiting for certain things to happen. Librarians hate to have computers for internet stations because they have to invest unnesessary time and dollars fixing sloppy programs running on unsecured operating systems.

What could be simplier than one single device, a reset and a power button, running ONLY an almost current web browser all loaded from an upgradeable ROM?

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[xtermz]

And now...for something completely different:

You are totally wrong. The baby-boomer generation and or their parents who you claim is the target market for this type of thing is hardly even a factor these days. Read any marketing magazine and you'll see, the kids rule. Billion of dollars are being thrown at the supposed 'Generation Y' children...why? Because their numbers are huge... And statisticaly, they are usually computer literate...not the techno-phobic types of people you claim are supposed to buy these things....

they didnt sell because they were crap, plain and simple

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[TandyMasterControl]

I believe the thing you speak of exists. It's called N|C.
Costs next to nothing. Has no reset button -it's turned on from the power button and off from the power button. It only runs a browser. Send "quit" to the browser and it automatically respawns. There are plugins and some apps accessed from the browser itself, but no other user interface exists besides the browser (no start menus, no panels, no taskbar) The OS and browser are loaded from a cdrom. It includes onboard 100mbit ethernet. it does not require an ISP contract. There is no harddrive.

It's perfect for libraries, hotels, schools, and some of the other places you mentioned right out of the box --and that's where many of them have gone so far.

I'm amazed that relatively few people seem to be aware of N|C. Ziff Davis / Cnet certainly have done a sterling service for Microsoft keeping this thing quiet.

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[Black Perl]

Web appliances are wrong on so many counts.
1. They have been a marketing scheme. Rather than sell the devices at fair prices, the vendors have tried to sell the devices at or below cost in the hopes of making a bundle on overpriced, proprietary ISP contracts. Netpliance is the worst example in this arena.

Agreed. Except for 3com, whose Audrey could connect to any non-proprietary ISP. But they sold for $550. [Side note: you can get them now for <$100 on eBay]

1a. You can't sell them at a profit because they cost $400 or so to manufacture. What little-old-computer-phobic-lady is going to plunk down $600 or more for something that she doesn't really understand or know if she needs?

I agree wholeheartedly. Even I have questioned whether anyone "needs" one. You don't realize their utility until you have one. Not having to boot something to get a quick news/weather/email fix is really quite nice. Of course, computer-phobic people are more likely to just use a TV until they are just as easy to use as a TV. And quite frankly, most of them aren't. 3com got close with the Audrey, with its channels dial and all. But the initial setup experience is a bit more like setting up a high-end VCR, which is scary enough for computer-phobics.

2. The vendors try to peddle them to people that are put-off by computers. So how do they do this? By selling them in the computer sections of Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. Yeah, that's where I expect to find computer-phobic older people shopping.

Now this is right on the mark! What were they THINKING?!

3. The computer-illiterate audience to which Internet appliances appeal means that a vendor is looking at tremendously high support costs. Sure, they dumbed down the OS, but it's still a completely mysterious thing to many older users. "Your machine broke my telephone! People call me and get a busy signal I'm not talking to anyone..."

Probably true. But with as stupid as the front-line PC support people are, I think the PC support lines must get more than their share of similar questions.

4. Their proprietary OSs and browsers have just about guaranteed that they would perpetually be playing catch-up. Try running a copy of Netscape 1.0 and surf to some modern websites. It's basically useless. Sony was smart enough to recognize that, without active development, BeIA would be just as worthless in a few years. I think that it's unlikely that QNX (the other major player in the Internet Appliance OS market) is going to have the development budget to keep up with Apple, Realplayer, Macromedia, Microsoft, etc. when it comes to releasing browser plug-ins. Thus, many web pages will not work on these devices.

This is where I disagree. Let me use the Audrey again as an example, only because I have one and have played with it. I would say that it doesn't have to keep up with the IE plugins and such as long as it keeps up with the widespread standards. However, the built-in browser understands realaudio and Macromedia Flash, and well as javascript and CSS. It is amazing to see how well it renders a wide variety of pages. And this is the kicker: it automatically updated itself over the internet. Seamlessly. No users having to worry about upgrading their plugins, etc.

5. There is no growth path. None of the Internet appliance manufacturers have offered hard drives, word processing, spreadhsheet software, etc. for users that want to move beyond e-mail and the web. This makes many computer-savvy people hesitant to recommend these devices to family and friends.

Computer-savvy people (myself included) have trouble seeing the value in anything less flexible than a computer. But sometimes that's what people really need.

After playing with the Audrey, I started realizing that it would be perfect for certain people. For example, my grandmother. Right now she has a PC with AOL for email (and uses it all the time but has to ask for help when something unusual happens like a dialog box appears that she doesn't understand) and a Kodak PictureFrame that we send pictures to because she can never figure out how to view the ones we send in email. The Audrey could easily replace both and be easier for her to use. And cheaper to replace AOL and Storybox (Kodak's Pictureframe service) with a standards-based ISP.

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[fmaxwell]

So, you think that I am "totally wrong"? Well, prepare to get smacked down hard...

Netpliance i-opener ads appeared in the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) Modern Maturity magazine. There's a real way to attract "Generation Y" consumers: Advertise in a magazine for retired people over 50.

According the C/Net:

With the debut of eVilla, Sony has become the latest company to market a Web-browsing appliance to the roughly half of American households that don't own a computer.

Think of all those Gen-Y people that don't have a computer in the house. There's a big demographic for you.

They went on to say:

Internet appliance makers such as Netpliance that have targeted Net neophytes have found the going tough

"Neophyte" means "beginner." That hardly sounds like the tech-savvy Generation Y crowd you claim that they were targeting.

What does Compaq's own web page say about their Compaq iPAQ Home Internet Appliance?

The Compaq iPAQ Home Internet Appliance makes getting to your e-mail and the Internet as easy as 1-2-3. With a simple setup, no software to load and built-in help, no computer experience is necessary.

That's right! The perfect device for all of you computer-literate Generation Y kids that have trouble "getting to your e-mail and the Internet."

Before proclaiming me "wrong" again, I suggest that you do some research. Internet Appliances are a market segment with which I am extremely familiar. I know a lot about where ads were placed, the target demographics, the manufacturing costs, and the technology.

By the way, you claim the failure of Internet appliances was because "they were crap, plain and simple." Then tell us what they did wrong and how you would have made a successful Internet appliance. Don't go off on any flights of fancy with 21" LCD monitors, wireless networking, and gigahertz processors for $99. Tell us, in realistic terms, how you could make an Internet appliance that would be a commercial success.

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[fmaxwell]

Thanks for the reply. I did have one issue:

And this is the kicker: it automatically updated itself over the internet. Seamlessly.

If only it were so easy... The browser was updated at great cost by software engineers at QNX and only the delivery of the update was automatic. I know that you are aware of this, but it makes a point. The updates to the browser would only occur so long as it was a profitable venture for QNX. If they decide that the market isn't there, no more updates. When that happens, you will be stuck with something that renders fewer and fewer web pages correctly.

The only sensible Internet appliance would be one based on an open source OS and browser. Anything else is going to end up an orphan.

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[knorthern knight]

4mn0t1337 wrote...
>>>>>>
As we are seeing the rebirth of the client-server relation (When the personal computer put more computing power in our hands at a cheaper cost, we moved away from the expensive machines (university's/companies') that we all had to time-share on. We lost track of our client-server roots.), we are seeing more and more computing power "out there" and a lot more of what happens on your machine is dependent on other's computers. Why bother spending all of that money on a lot of processing power on your desk when you use 5% of it for only a few hours of the day? Doesn't it make more sense, on a large scale, to rent processing power from someone else as you need it? You would have much more at your disposal, and you would only pay for what you use, which makes it more affordable.
>>>>>>

You should hire on with Microsoft as a copy writer. This is the most concise, cogent description of DOT.NET I've seen. One question... what reason do you have to believe that the cost of "software as a service" isn't going to blow away (many times over) the couple of hundred bucks difference between a low-end computer and a web appliance ?

>>>>>>
> None of the Internet appliance manufacturers
> have offered hard drives

Ah, but there are plenty of services out there right now that offer on-line storage. (I have about 90MB of *free* storage out there -- more than enough for most users.(mp3's and movies aside at the momment)) As the cost of storage continues to drop, the ammount available will increase. This is a chunk of data that the user has *no* responsibility for maintaining and backing up. If a HD crashes, the hosting company just yanks it out of its RAID and slips in a new one. The user never sees the difference. One less headache for the novice user.
>>>>>>

And you hope that it won't take a whole week for the company to restore service after a crash. Besides, there's stuff on my home machines I don't want on the net. For a few years I kept the membership database for a contsituency association of Canadian political party. That list was kept and maintained on a machine that was not connected to the net. I don't care how good my firewall looks today. There are risks that one simply doesn't take.

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[4mn0t1337]

You should hire on with Microsoft as a copy writer.

Damn! I should know better than to post hungover.

This is the most concise, cogent description of DOT.NET I've seen.

Uh,... I don't know if I should laugh or be scared.
I didn't mean to sound as if I was talking about Dot.Net (actually I haven't read too much about it) -- I was just ranting about some of the things I have been talking with friends about for years. But now that you say that this is what microsoft is doing, perhaps I should rethink how good of an idea this might be... :)

what reason do you have to believe that the cost of "software as a service" isn't going to blow away

Well I don't if you say that M$ is involved. If they weren't, I could have imagined a world where lots of companies competed for your business and it was just a few cents to use a program for a while. (Of course, business would use a lot more and *have* high bills, as they should. (They are using the software to make money and it is a legitimate expense). But there is no reason for Joe User to buy a 300$ software package. Joe would have a small bill and have the latest software at his disposal.)

Oh, and if you can rent software for a few cents, there is no reason to pirate it. Software companies would (theoretically) charge less, but be making more money as they have more subscribers.

whole week for the company to restore service after a crash

Well, in the world of the future, you distribute you servers (physically) and distribute the data. Kinda like the idea of a disk RAID, but with whole servers. And you just have redundancy all over the country/world.

there's stuff on my home machines I don't want on the net.

Well, as I suggested, devices like this aren't for geeks like us. I was talking about Joe User that otherwise wouldn't use a computer. Or, better yet, I am talking about your "Grandmother." For the Grandma's out there, anything they would need to store in a safe fashion could be saved in an encrypted (whatever the PGP of 2023 is) partition on the net and read over a secure link.

a contsituency association of Canadian political party. That list was kept and maintained on a machine that was not connected to the net.

And that was secure? Yeah, it's not like there have been any politically motivated break-ins. *cough* Watergate *cough*
But seriously, that would only prevent casual snooping -- Not the kind of directed snooping done by someone looking for just that information. I presume you had it in an encrypted partition. But, that didn't stop the FBI in the recent case where they keylogged the mobster. And groups that aren't restricted by having to get things like search warrants have a lot more freedom to do stuff like this. I'm just saying that there is no 100% security, and you always have to asume there is some risk. And for most people the risk of a good encrypted storage space is fine.

Re:No, that's it for web appliances

[Whyzzi]

I believe the thing you speak of exists. It's called N|C

Ya, I know. They do not distribute outside the U.S. I checked.

Then again, some of us are purists.

[BigBlockMopar]

"Am I the only person who LIKES having a small internet terminal in the kitchen/family room?"
Apparently, yes. I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.

I'm a purist. I've got a DEC VT-100 terminal in my kitchen, and it's connected to my BSD box. The best part is that it has video and genlock input jacks - so it can double as a TV set.

I love that thing.

Pad is more what I'd want

[John Jorsett]

I think the failure of this thing is more due to the keyboard and mouse than anything else. If I want those things, I'd use a true laptop. A truely useful network appliance, on the other hand, would be closer to a large-screen PocketPC or Palm. Something with enough screen real estate to be useful, but no keyboard or mouse, just a finger or stylus. You could cradle it in one arm and input to it with the other like you would a clipboard. And it should have the ability to play streaming audio so that it could be used like a portable radio. I'd love something like that, so I could tote it all over the house and use it without having to set it down on something. Some of webpads like the Viewsonic 100 are getting close.

I've said it before...

[Ratbert42]

I'll say it again: The only company that can make an internet appliance that sells is AOL.

healthy baby, festering bathwater

[fnurb]

Actually, I think the failure of these devices is more a product of fubared marketing and lack of business vision than lack of consumer need.

Many if not all of these devices were sold with mandatory sign-up packages, such as the iPaq's original deal where you got the device essentially "free"--IF you signed up for MSN's ridiculously priced service.

The problem is that most of the early adopters for these kinds of devices already have an ISP, so the suposed "savings" were non-existent and the product ended up, in fact, being overpriced and underfeatured.

The second problem is that they viewed their business as selling the razors for a profit to recoup their initial R&D (which is really corp-speak for cutting their losses right from the start, because the muc-a-mucks never really believed they would sell enough of these to make a difference), when they should have been giving the razors away and selling razorblades.

If there was compelling content along with genuinely useful utilities that were offered through an appliance that weren't easily or as conveniently available elsewhere, people would have been hooked. If the model were to make money off a subscription for services, rather than a co-marketing deal to push a useless log-on service, and if the companies were willing to stick with it for the long haul and put some actual resources behind it, it would work. Microsoft often wins simply because they don't give up when v.1 of their products fail miserably.

Too much of shareholder-appeasement corporate culture today seeks the quick cheap hit rather than the long-term bonanza.

Ultimately, the problem is that, like so many technology products, these were created to meet a vendor's need rather than the consumer's.

My bet is that utility companies will be the ones to get this right.

rebate?

[dpease]

can someone elaborate on how the rebate for this thing is supposed to work? i.e. if I waltz down to my local CavernousComputerWarehouse and pick one of these things up, what kind of cash can I expect back from Sony? (assuming they're even sold retail...)

I own a Panasonic CF-01 tablet PC...

[Thag]

And while it's nice, the lack of a keyboard is more of a drawback than you'd expect. A downright pain, in fact.

I mainly bought it to use as a drawing tablet, and for that it seems to suffice.

Wireless internet connectivity would be neat, but it's a battery killer (unless I got a cable that would run to a cellphone, hmm...).

Look at http://www.linux-hacker.net for more details.

Jon Acheson

Pain in the ass factor

[xtal]

Ummm, now, I don't know about you.. but this doesn't strike me as handy. It strikes me as a pain in the posterior. Why do I want my fridge to be connected to the interenet? That'll inflate the cost of the appliance at least $100, and it will likely get out of sync with the products I buy - I'm sure as hell not going to waste time tracking food. I buy whatever suits my fancy at the time, toss it in the fridge, and chuck it when it starts getting nasty. End of story.

Internet appliances are all going to flop on their ass. Hell, set-top units are having a pretty tough go of it. It's the PITA factor. If I want internet in the kitchen or bathroom, I'll get a discount notebook and 802.11, problem solved. No subscriptions required, even.

If it's a pain in the ass for me, your average 5-cpu linux hippie with goatee, the odds of a soccer mom buying one of these are slightly below those of Aimee Sweet deciding the pr0n business doesn't pay good enough and moving into VLSI engineering.

Re:Pain in the ass factor

[twitter]

I agree! Who on earth is going to scann their mustard jar everytime they put it in the fridge? And who, besides me, should be interested in such useless information? Barf! I can imagine the MS fridge reporting food use as well as clippy figures out what I'm writing, then singsonging at me everytime I open the door, "You must be making a burrito, it's time to buy some more MS toilet paper".

Slashdot sucks again

[Anonymous Coward]

Got this while searching

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 17:44:24 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25 X-Powered-By: Slash 2.001000 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

OK
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, pater@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Barcode and lookup

[Anonymous Coward]

did someone say CueCat(tm)?

X-Terminals

[Anonymous Coward]

For less than 100$ (can.), and about 4 hours work, I put together a X-Terminal in our place. Now me and my roomates can check our email, surf the web even play games while the commercials are on. With a on off, no shutdown stuff, switch and no fans it really bring home the point of what an internet appliance is all about. The suggestion of putting one in the bathroom was turned down however....

Linux Terminal Server Project!

What I want

[Eric Seppanen]

I have three computers (OK, three that run) already. I don't need another computer. But I would like something that I could leave in my living room that:

• Doesn't have loud cooling fans
• Doesn't have noisy disks
• Can be powered off at any time and powers up in seconds
• Can talk TCP/IP over ethernet to my other machines
• Is compact enough that I can leave it on a corner table
• Runs free software (without a month of hacking on my part) so I know I'm not getting locked in to whatever the manufacturer wants to force on me in the future

Things like wireless networking, flat screen, wireless keyboard, TV-video outputs are cool, but they should be options. I'd really like to buy a bare-bones network computer.

I don't need a killer CPU or video chip; I'm not going to play Quake3 on the thing. I just want to be able to surf, check mail, stuff like that.

Somebody's got to be able to create a flash-memory based laptop-sized terminal machine with the power of, say, a Celeron 300, for a pretty low price. But mostly what I see are underpowered machines that won't run commodity OSes, and overpowered, overpriced machines that seem to try and replace PCs. Nothing in between.

Re:What I want

[Accipiter]

How about one of these?

There are no loud fans and no loud disks. Power-up is almost instant. Full networking support is available, is tremendously compact (while still having a large, readable display), and it has an available Linux Port.

Re:What I want

[inditek]

sounds like you want an iMac running OS X or Linux for PPC. :) no fan. compact (even more so when the LCD model comes out). runs free software - either the core of the shipping commercial OS, or other flavors of BSD and Linux. sleep and powering-up/down in OS X is *very* fast.

also, actually, it sounds like BeOS on any older PPC mac or x86 box. except BeOS isn't free... plenty of OSS software for it, though.

Re:What I want

[mblase]

You could also get most of this with an iMac. Buy a used one, drop your favorite PPC Linux distro on it, and soup it up with as much RAM as you can afford. A more recent iMac will even support their wireless Airport cards, which may or may not be Linux-accessible by this time, and will give you all the benefits of fanless computing.

As for TV-output options: your TV's resolution is probably too low. Wait for HDTV displays to come down, and for computers to ship from the manufacturer with interfaces for them. (I look forward to adding an old Intel box to my living room as an MP3 jukebox when that happens.)

Re:What I want

[Anonymous Coward]

X-Terminals:

Do not have loud cooling fans

Do not have noisy disks

Talk TCP/IP

Depending on the case are compact.

Run free software

Re:What I want

[flatrock]

I think you missed part of his post. One of the things he said he didn't want was "overpowered, overpriced machines that seem to try and replace PCs."

This isn't a troll. Ok, maybe quoting the "try to replace PCs" part is a little bit of a troll in this context. The point is that this guy doesn't need a full fledged computer. He just needs some kind of X Terminal. No need for a hard drive. He can use one of his three working computers to act as the apps and storage server.

Re:What I want

[flatrock]

Even a used iMac is awfully expensive to just browse the web and look at some email. He could probably get a nice quiet, underpowered, used x86 laptop a lot cheaper, and it would take up less space, and seemingly suit his needs.

Re:What I want

[marcop]

I would love to see a unit with the specs that you mention but I would add:

1) Enough processing power (CPU and video) to handle DivX ;-) and SVCD files.

2) Some expansion (1 PCI or ISA slot) for a little customization. For example, I would like to get a small unit to hookup to my digital piano via MIDI. A laptop wouldn't do since the MIDI voices that are on typical laptops are good enough.

3) Finally, flat screen is a must for me. I don't want a bulky monitor in my entertainment center or on top of my digital piano.

Re:What I want

[Whatever Fits]

This is exactly what I want too! The thing is that I do not need any substantial CPU on the device. Long battery life is an absolute must. This device requires hardly any CPU power and very little RAM. All it needs is a VNC client and a wireless network card. VNC servers exist for Linux as well as Windows. It is a stateful snapshot of your interface. You can disconnect and reconnect at the same point later. Oh, and did I mention that it doesn't use much CPU power?

I would like to be able to use the thing in a brighter ambient light than indoors, but I don't need that.

Re:What I want

[edremy]

What I've noticed from the Clios we have here at work: great form factor, slow, poor screen, slow, tiny (but somewhat useable) keyboard and slow.

Did I mention that they were slow? One of the professors here tried using them in class to pull up images on web pages: they were too slow rendering the pictures to be of use. Simple web pages take a long time, complex ones take longer.

My iPaq is faster, and has a better (if smaller) screen. Now if only someone would come out with a better machine in that form factor: the case design is just awesome.

Eric

Re:What I want

[Eric Seppanen]

Thanks for all the tips; I'll definitely have to look harder at some of them. Without some research I won't know for sure if any of them are right for me, but here my impressions of some of the suggested boxes:

1. iMac: can be expensive, somewhat proprietary hardware, and they still have noisy hard drives, right? OSX is still heavy on non-free software, although LinuxPPC sounds appealing, although I'd be happier running it on less proprietary hardware.
2. Vadem Clio (Ebay): seems underpowered, and way too proprietary. Looks like running Linux on it requires lots of hacking, and while I'm sure that it's interesting, it's just not a project I'm interested in. I'd rather have something that is PC-like enough to run linux out of the box.
3. Used laptop (Ebay): I have to admit, that's probably a pretty good idea. Still has hard drives and fans, though, and still takes a pretty long time to boot. Another thing (and this applies to the last item, too): you have to buy them used to get them cheap. Buying new would be better: you don't get screwed by crooks selling broken hardware, and you get a warranty and support. Plus, if you want to set up two (or set up one for a friend), it's lots easier if you can get more identical boxes on demand.
4. X-terminal: Yes! That's exactly what I want. But hardly anybody seems to sell them anymore. And the ones that are available are so underpowered, overpriced, and proprietary that I really have a hard time liking them. If somebody sold an X-terminal powered by Linux and XFree, I'd be there in a heartbeat. A dedicated VNC terminal would be just as cool.

Re:What I want

[TandyMasterControl]

Thinknic.com has a $199 Xterminal. The software (like appropriate kernel image) you need to run it is included on the stock cdrom. Ltsp.org has details on just this application for the thinkNIC.
It also happens to very close to the general requirements you state: runs Linux/Xfree out of box. Without any hw mods or hacking, the ThinkNIC will run your X apps remotely. Unmodified it will print to your LPD or CUPS based printer hosts across the LAN. It includes XFree86, of course, but also includes the VNC client for Linux, SSH client, telnet, and for the not-quite-with-it crowd, Citrix ICA. If you really want it quiet and used as an Xterminal you could underclock the CPU and disable the case fan. Some people convert them to full PCs with laptop harddrives but that's going the opposite direction of your Xterminal ideal.

You will need a monitor. I scored a $300 13." tft flatscreen for my folks on ebay. Obviously used crts, or new 15" crts are much less.

I can make a $50 - $65 total Xterminal from a used PC using netbooting ethernet cards from disklessworkstations.com, but personally I have no place where I would put up with the size of the old PC I can get for 20 or 35 dollars. They're all stinkin huge.

Re:What I want

[-tji]

You an me both..

The closest I have found so far is the VIA InformationPC concept. It is based on their C3 processor, which at 800MHz only requires passive cooling.

http://www.via.com.tw/jsp/en/products/VInternet/ip c.jsp

Combine that with Linux on a CompactFlash card, or a hard drive and good power management/spindown, and you would have a good solution. If it has Sleep-to-RAM capabilities, it's pretty much instant-on. And, if you want to run Windows & Office Apps on it, it's fully compatible.

Re:What I want

[Zeno_1]

I bought one of those netpliances from that guy from Oracle, forgot his name, and I forgot the name of the machine I bought (shows how much I use it)

But there were many sites that showed how to make it a full fledged computer, and it only costs 200 bucks. Sure it comes with a cyrix processor, and all the other stuff is low end, but for just a simple xterminal it works good.

Re:What I want

[TWR]

Heck, I'm willing to sell my underpowered, used PowerBook 1400 to someone who wants a web browsing computer. It's been upgraded to 40MB of RAM, a 250MHz G3, a 3GB hard drive, and 10Base-T and 802.11b PC Cards. These aren't exactly killer specs, but they were state of the art in 1997 ;-)

I want to buy an iBook, but can't justify having two laptops, and the damn PowerBook just won't die, despite being knocked off the coffee table twice in the last six months (the antenna part of the case on the wireless PC card is getting beat all to hell, though). I use the PowerBook as a web pad all the time. The only problems it has are 20 minute battery life (because the battery is 3 years old and it's trying to power a ton more hardware than it was originally designed to power) and it usually crashes when it tries to wake up from sleep (I think this is due to the power drawn by the wireless card, upgraded CPU, upgraded hard drive, and upgraded RAM. If I pull the wireless card, the problem goes away, but the laptop is virtually useless to me).

As a side note in the net appliance category, I use the PowerBook as an MP3 player for my stereo, too. I've got about 100 of my CDs ripped on my iMac. The iMac's hard drive is shared via 802.11b, and iTunes running on the PowerBook is able to play MP3s with nary a skip. Just plug the audio out of the PowerBook into the stereo, and I've got a nice stereo component.

-jon

Re:What I want

[Anonymous Coward]

I have already exactly what you describe: A PowerMac G4 Cube with 17" LCD! Haha

Re:What I want

[foobar104]

(Bye-bye, karma.)

You know, an iMac with OS X meets most of those criteria.

Doesn't have loud cooling fans

No fans in an iMac.

Doesn't have noisy disks

Okay, the hard drive in my iMac can be annoying, but there are two options. Either I could replace it with a quieter one, or (my choice) just set the disk to spin down when not in use. Silence is golden.

Can be powered off at any time and powers up in seconds

Hit the power button on the front, and the computer goes to sleep in about five seconds. Waking up under OS X takes about one second. By the time the screen lights up, the computer is ready for use.

Can talk TCP/IP over ethernet to my other machines

Yup. OS X is based on Darwin, which is based on a BSD-type core.

Is compact enough that I can leave it on a corner table

Your definition of compact may differ from mine, but I find my iMac to be pretty small, especially in light of the features and costs.

Runs free software (without a month of hacking on my part) so I know I'm not getting locked in to whatever the manufacturer wants to force on me in the future

If by "runs free software" you mean, "can run only free software," then install LinuxPPC or Yellow Dog or whatever. But if you're happy with OS X but want free apps, go right ahead. There's a big effort underway to port lots of free (gratis) software to Darwin-slash-OS X.

I work with big-ass computers all day-- IRIX, Linux, Windows, whatever. When I go home, I want to read my email and browse the web, play the occasional game or two, and sometimes log in to the office with XFree86 to work from home. I can do all those things on my iMac with no big BS. So it works for me.

and about BeIA

[Frederic54]

Palm has no plan to continue development of BeIA as reported by cnet

Re:and about BeIA

[halik]

beos doent support my audio and qnx doesnt even support my ethernet :(

Unless some evil script kiddie hacks your icebox..

[FirstNoel]

I could see it now...

after many months of downloading my shopping list from the fridge with no problems, I blindly do the same and head off to the Super-K.

Once there I finally take a look at my list:

200 ct-pk of Trojans
2 Cases of Jolt
2 31337 Leeks
200 cases of Code Red to share with friends

Sean D.

The ideal 'net appliance

[nels_tomlinson]

would
(1) have something like a 486 single-board computer mounted in a flat-panel display;
(2) be able to boot from ethernet via an optional ethernet card;
(3) be able to boot from optional CD or HD.
(4) use standard wireless keyboard and mouse
(5) be reasonably cheap.

What's reasonably cheap? Since it's INSIDE a flat panel, it would be worth more to me than a standard computer plus monitor. It would FIT! I could wall mount one in the living room to control music, etc, and have a way to check email (if I sat quite nearby...).

Why a 486? cheap, low-power so no fan, and quiet.

I think that if it were priced in the $400 to $500 range for the panel with one option (ethernet or HD) and keyboard, it would sell quite a few units.

Its not being filled..

[Thomas Charron]

Did it ever occur to anyone that the role ISN'T being filled becouse, it's simply not THERE yet?

Personally, being an engineer and a technoweenie, I like the idea, but many out there just look at me and kinda say 'Why?'.

Perhaps the role will eventually be considered as needed, but it may take a LONG time. Look at how long it actually took the PC to be in nearly everyones livingroom and part of every day life? YEARS. Sure, there where many 'toys' out there. Who doesn't have a Vic20 of Commodore 64 in their attic or basement, but these never became the centerpieces that these devices are looking to fill..

I dont forsee these being popular for several years yet. Unfortionatly, I said the same thing a few years back. Heck, in a few years, I might be saying it again. In the meantime, I hope at least one or two vendors survive, simply so I can have MY fix.. 8-P

You want a cheap laptop!

[John Harrison]

Here is a device that meets your requirements.

I have a laptop with 802.11b sitting on my coffee table and my wife and I end up using it more than the desktop back in the office just because it is convinient. Just flip it shut when you aren't using it.

KDE - Linus Torvalds

[Anonymous Coward]

"Within the last year, it's progressed past the eye-candy stage," Torvalds said during a panel discussion at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here, praising the KDE user interface and higher-level applications such as KOffice

AYDABTU

[Anonymous Coward]

All Your Desktop Are Belong To Us. - The Kompany

dot NET

[geek]

" 5. There is no growth path. None of the Internet appliance manufacturers have offered hard drives, word processing, spreadhsheet software, etc. for users that want to move beyond e-mail and the web. This makes many computer-savvy people hesitant to recommend these devices to family and friends."

I do believe this is the very point of .NET. Making the application downloadable over the web using common API's via Microsofts products and using a broadband connection you can safely not care what machine you are using.

Appliances may have their time when .NET comes out and they can actually have applications on them, but until then they are as usless as pet rocks.

killed by the name

[option8]

i'm sorry, but i don't want anything in my kitchen or in reach of my kids that simply shouts its bad intentions.

come on, the thing is called EVILla after all..

Re:killed by the name

[goldspider]

Out here we refer to an iOpener (or eye-opener) as that first beer of the morning, not a poorly-designed net appliance.

C'mon Sony...

[RIman001]

Sony seems like they're trying the lowest cost route to getting Internet Appliances to the US Market. I hope the slow showing for the eVilla won't stop Sony from trying some of their other appliances here.

One appliance that caught my eye was the AirBoard webpad (rough translation here) that broadcasts internet and TV from a base station. Now that I would buy. ; )

-= RIman001 =- --

the cube

[Anonymous Coward]

I borowed a Mac G$ Cube once with the 15 inch flat screen.. tHat's about what you get... since then I had to give it back but I bought an iMac for the living room. It's quite nice and really really silent.. it's even weird when typing email or browsing the MP3 Collection (on the Linux server in the other room) to really hear nothing at all. But you get used to it.

one the bright side

[halik]

Youll be able to get them on ebay for cheap. This is the 4th IA failure. Id say thats it for the applince market. But im still hapy with my gateway connected touchpad

Did you notice..

[ChillBeast]

the viewpad 1000? celeron 800 mhz, win 2k in a tablet, thatd be neat

Re:Did you notice..

[JoeGee]

Yah I saw that too. :) I wonder though if that's not maybe too much computer for the purposes I would have for it? Browsing from bed, maybe from the kitchen table with AM coffee doesn't take Win 2k.

Although imagine a presentation on one, and it's, what, USD $900 more? And who ever said "all I need is enough computing power, not one tiny bit more." It does walk all over a Palm, doesn't it? My oh my. :)

someone needs to moderate this up!

[Anonymous Coward]

eVil without the la is way way cooler.

Re:Unless some evil script kiddie hacks your icebo

[Anonymous Coward]

'd be more embarassing to find out you ordered:

pk of Trojans
Roll of duct tape

Should have bought an iMac

[Alan Partridge]

seriously, in a few weeks time you'll be able to buy the cheapest iMac with OSX 10.1 installed. Stick Omniweb in there and you've already got the best OS/web combination ever designed. Pleasetry it if you don't believe me, Omniweb is THAT good, and OSX WILL be the best OS ever real soon now.

NOT insightful - better to provide monitoring...

[SuperKendall]

All of the people who think it's a good idea to have the fridge monitor contents and tell you when you need something (and there seem to be many people who think this) are just crazy. The simple task of just knowing what is in your fridge is nigh impossible - things can be hidden, covered in sauces that have leaked from shelves above, be specalty items there is no way to know about. The effort requored to even keep a good list of 50% of the contents would be so expensive it would never be mass market.

What would be useful I think is to make use of telepresence - some sort of fridge cam you could manipulate from work to see if you have some key ingredients.

The other option I can see is to have some sort of "connected" containers or weight-sensitive platforms - since no-one can seem to think of anything but milk or soda/beer to keep track of, why not just have a milk container that could send out a signal when it was low. Much easier than having the fridge keep track of whatever weird container you stuck in and have to use some AI driven chemical sampler to know it is "Milk".

Similarily, a weight sensitive platform could tell how many soda cans were stacked on top and report that.

Sounds like a good use for Bluetooth to me.

Gee...

[Jim42688]

For some reason, I didn't even know this was out...

I tried it.

[Doktor Memory]

I spent a good hour at the last PC-Expo here in new york city giving one of these things a thorough shakedown. You didn't miss anything.

• It was slow as fuck. For all of BeOS/BeIA's vaunted performance, this thing was a turtle. The machine visibly chugged when redrawing large windows and switching between applications.
• The only removable storage option were those damn Sony memory sticks. There were USB ports, but USB hard drives, zip drives and floppy drives were unsupported with no plans to ever add support.
• There was some minimal support for opening up MS Word and Excel files (really, really minimal in Excel's case), but, astonishingly, no PDF support. Forget about flash/real/quicktime.
• While the case was definitely pretty, everybody who described it as "like a Mac Classic" forgot to add "...only 50% wider and deeper, and 75% heavier."
• The only good thing I can say about it is that it did successfully play mp3 playlists from my apache::mp3 server.

All in all, a pretty sad last stand for Jean-Louis Gassee's brilliant little OS. I'd be surprised if they sold even a hundred of these. If I ever see one for less than $75 on ubid or ebay, I might try to pick one up for sheer curiosity value, but I can't think of any other good reason to.

Re:I tried it.

[daviddennis]

This surprises me since BeOS itself on x86 was amazingly fast, and I would think you could put a surplus Pentium III (being given away in cereal boxes nowadays) and it would fly. My guess is that they must have cheaped out on the amount of memory they put in, which is pretty stupid considering how cheap 512MB modules are nowadays.

I did like the idea of the nice and large vertical Trinitron screen, though. That's probably what contributes to the weight. Maybe they would have been better off making the monitor into a consumer product instead of the system.

D

Re:I tried it.

[Doktor Memory]

This surprises me since BeOS itself on x86 was amazingly fast

Frankly, it shocked me as well. I remember playing around on a friend's BeBox back in 1996, and that damn thing was blisteringly fast on just a pair of 66mhz PPC 603s. I have to suspect that the bottleneck wasn't in the OS, but maybe in the video drivers or the like.

I would think you could put a surplus Pentium III (being given away in cereal boxes nowadays) and it would fly. My guess is that they must have cheaped out on the amount of memory they put in, which is pretty stupid considering how cheap 512MB modules are nowadays.

According to the Sony rep I was interrogating, the CPU was a 233MHz Cyrix chip, which can't have helped matters. Can't remember if it was 32 or 64MB of memory, but it certainly was constrained there in either case. Still, even so... given that the box really just wasn't doing that much, there wasn't any good excuse for the performance.

The whole thing had a very slapdash, still-in-beta feel to it. Which I guess was more or less the case.

LOL good one!

[Anonymous Coward]

"You must be making a burrito, it's time to buy some more MS toilet paper"

HAHAHAHA!

No ...

[LoudMusic]

A) It ran BeIA (Internet Appliance) not BeOS.
B) No you're not the only one that wanted one.

I could go for a lightweight wireless touchscreen device to surf the web. If its screen was about 8.5" x 11" and had resolution around 800px X 1000px you would essentially be holding a pad of paper. It doesn't need a hard drive, or amazing sound or video, but it does need all the current web drivers/plugins and the ability to upgrade. Its primary function would be surfing the web, which provides email (with address book), chat, and even word processing in some cases. A simple task tray could bring up a calculator and an on screen keyboard (that could be alphabetical or QWERTY ...) so the user could type information on web pages.

Wireless and light weight are the key though. And it has to be able to view better than 80% of the web sites out there today. I think it can be done with *BSD or Linux. This is somewhat what Transmeta is shooting for with their web tablets they presented a while back.

I'd pay a few hundred dollars for one. It'd be pimp.

~LoudMusic

Cheap Ethernet microcontrollers

[asmithmd1]

Cheap, small, low power microcontrollers with ethernet jacks are coming out that will put many things on the web The Rabbit semiconductor RCM 2100 is one example. Check out this motorized Etch-A-Sketch The $50 (qty 1) board is serving the web page and controlling the stepper motors

Re:Unless some evil script kiddie hacks your icebo

[Anonymous Coward]

"200 ct-pk of Trojans"

IN YER DREAMS, ELF!

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill."

That's bullshit. IAs were for grandma to send email, not for lifeless geeks that would blow 2 grand on a laptop so they can post at slashdot while sitting their lazy asses on the couch watching Dr. Who.

How About Audrey

[nft]

The now discontinued 3com Audrey is on sale over at Tiger Direct for a cheap $89. Add on a $40 USB network adapter and you're in there. I kinda want one, but I'm gonna get a wireless card for my labtob instead. Dig it...

Sell them web capable TVs instead

[DABANSHEE]

Just have the Internet Aplliance built into the TVs PCB, with a trackball built into the remote & equipe them with a wireless keyboard, a USB plug (for printers, etc) & a Firewire plug (for cam-corder connectivity).

Just think, 'all Sony TVs come with free internet', the grandmas will buy them in droves.

Re:Sell them web capable TVs instead

[MrDolby]

The problem with TV's is the lack of high resolution. It just makes text difficult to read. This would probably work with HDTV but those haven't come down enough in price yet.

Not quite...

[Svartalf]

It won't do Flash.
It won't do RealPlayer.
It won't do Quicktime.

The right x86 configuration will- and I don't mean a Windows based box. A PPC might fill the bill, but I can't see MacOS 9 or 10 sitting in a decent sized flash.

Re:NOT insightful - better to provide monitoring..

[Fishstick]

..except almost everything I put in my fridge these days has a UPC code on it (even some produce now). Seems like a possibility to have a barcode scanner in the door or something that you could waive items past as you load the fridge after your trip to the market. I don't expect my fridge to x-ray itself to determine what is hiding in the crisper.

I would love to be able to know when the last time a gallon jug of milk was scanned in (my family consumes bovine lactate products at a fairly constant rate, so knowing that it has been 6 days since the last replentishment would be enough for me to stop on the way home to pick up more. I hate coming home and hearing "oh, we're out of milk, can you run out later and pick some up?")

Damned Laptops Are Too Expensive and Complicated

[puppetman]

Am I the only one with non-technical relatives?

My parents-in-law desperately want to be able to send email, talk to other relatives on-line, but they don't want to pay an arm and a leg, and have to log into the machine, search for icons and applications.

You know, it blows me away when I read "I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill." The number of geeks out there willing to shell out for 802.11b, and sprinkle laptops around the house is miniscule. Just becuase ./ readers are technical, don't assume that the other 99.25% of the population is.

A decent laptop is in the quadruple digits. An IA that costs $500 is a bonus.

Why haven't I gotten one to date? Because the damned things are tied to specific ISP's, most of which aren't in Canada (or anywhere outside the US). You should get your IA through your ISP, not the other way around.

These things are dying because of moronic business decisions, not due to lack of a market.

I don't think so.

[Inoshiro]

Apparently, yes. I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.

Yes, I know my grandma who knows nothing about how to setup such a network would love to buy a laptop (1500$), WAP (500$), 801.11b NIC (200$), and the related stuff for the network -- as well as maintain and understand it. Rather than, say, an 800$ "simple" webpliance she can just use with no more training or help from me. (All prices in CDN.)

Once you realize that for every person who could setup and afford such a wireless laptop setup, you have a few hundred thousand who would go the eVilla route.. you see why Sony just made a silly move. Probably because of fears that the eVilla would work out like the PS2 for their bottom line (they are being sold under cost right now..).

Re:I don't think so.

[Meorah]

your grandmother also could probably care less about having the internet in HER kitchen.

Re:What's your favorite?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tag you're looking for is without spaces.

Less functionality at a higher price

[snarfer]

Internet appliances offered less functionality at a higher price. Duh.

Compare this to digital jukebox devices, letting you rip CDs into MP3s and the screen sorts by artist, album or tune... all the while hooked to the internet... Massive increase in functionality over a CD player.

So Be in their brilliance, after dropping their popular desktop OS and dissing all their customers and developers Be goes after the internet appliance market. DOH! Meanwhile they had their HARP device sitting there... DOH!

Re:NOT insightful - better to provide monitoring..

[SuperKendall]

Yes, I had thought of that - but do you REALLY want to remember to scan everything you put in the fridge? How would it know when the items were really consumed - would you have to remember to scan the empty container before you threw it out?

I don't think you could rely on any kind of time based system as invariably you'd be getting milk before you needed it (which the time based experation might label as gone before you even opened it!) or you might make something with a lot of milk in it and run out days early. Not to mention that it has to be able to index against all of the store and generic brands of X to know that what you scanned really was a container of milk. Some families have a fairly constant rate of consumption but even then I'll bet you'd be off one way or the other - give it a try sometime, mark on a post-it on the door when you buy the milk and then see if you really do have a constant rate of use. Not to mention that if you really DO have a constant rate of milk consumption, why not just put a reminder in your organizer for a few days hence when you buy the milk? Just as easy as scanning it in...

As I said before, why not just a special container that knows when it's near empty? All of these conditions (constant rate of consumption, consistent barcodes [assuming you mostly buy the same brand of milk which is probably true]) really apply only to milk. I'd like a container I could label as holding any liquid with a simple "reset" button for when I refill it and a signal that it had fallen below a certain amount. Much simpler and more practical, all you have to do is fill it.

I know a lot of people who empty milk into other containers anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a switch - I really don't think people would buy into the concept of having to hand-scan everything that goes in the fridge (if you put 24 sodas in the fridge, are you going to scan them one by one - or add a keypad to key in qty after a scan?). What would you do with produce?

If you really want to try the scanner system, just set up a cuecat with a laptop connected via wireless ethernet by the fridge, and then explain to your family about how all milk going into the fridge must be scanned. Good luck!

"Appliance" isn't appropriate

[WiggyWack]

The idea of an Internet "appliance" doesn't make much sense to me.

The Internet is always changing, and computers adapt. The online experience is much different than it was 5 years ago. There's more plug-ins, different browser specs, more broadband stuff, etc. However, over the past 5, 10, even 20 years of toasting bread, it's pretty much stayed the same: Make Bread Crispy.

I don't really need to upgrade my toaster. Or my blender. Or my fridge. Sure, I can get newer ones with new features, but I don't have to worry about the latest loaf of Wonder bread not toasting properly in my 1986 toaster.

Internet Appliances are way too closed and just don't adapt to the ever-changing Internet the way a computer can.

This coke tastes funny

[Graymalkin]

I'm starting to think that Internet Appliances are the bastard child of the PC revolution of the 90's. If the Audrey, eVilla, or iPaq were released five years ago when the cheapest PC you could buy was around two grand they would have sold like mad. However five years ago the internet was small and held little appeal for the masses and the connectivity and technology in new IAs didn't exist. Now such technology is abundant and cheap and you've got full fledged PCs selling for the price of one of these toys. You can get a laptop with the capabilities of a PC for less than a thousand dollars now. With IAs you're also stuck functionality wise. Often times they're designed around the vendor's website which they navigate well but fair poorly when you want to visit any other set of web pages. It's pretty evident IAs aren't well liked as-is because there's always such a big drive to hack them to make them into X terminals or just use a different set of software on them. Too bad the coolest thing about the eVilla was the look of it.

Re:This coke tastes funny

[Rude Turnip]

"If the Audrey, eVilla, or iPaq were released five years ago when the cheapest PC you could buy was around two grand they would have sold like mad."

Except that the technology that is used in those devices would have been considered high-end five years ago and due to their small sizes, would have cost *much more* than PCs of that time. It's not as if we can take the current batch and send them back in time :-)

Re:NOT insightful - better to provide monitoring..

[ryanwright]

What would be useful I think is to make use of telepresence - some sort of fridge cam you could manipulate from work to see if you have some key ingredients.

Hey, I have one of these! It's called "House Wife 1.0." I just call up and ask it anything. 9 out of 10 times I get a straight answer. I still have no idea how the damn thing works, though.

Unfortunately, it was considerably expensive, and requires a monthly subscription fee consisting of roughly 80% of my salary...

Dream Internet Appiance

[salesgeek]

I think all these guys missed the boat. Give me a $150-$200 device that works with WHATEVER ISP I WANT! The $99 + Activation + 24.95/MO is just stupid.

I think NA makers are missing out...

[cr0sh]

...on a particular niche market:

There is a reason why FoodTV has gotten big and popular, and why Emeril is getting a sitcom (though I think it is a stupid thing for him to do, but hey, it's his life) - people are turning to cooking in the kitchen more!

They are watching these shows, seeing how easy cooking really is (it is, after all, controlled burning at the heart of it - plus having a "taste" for things). I have also read of studies that what people want in a new home are tending toward more "kitchen-centric" areas - dining areas and more functional kitchens. Also, given the recession we are in, people are going to cook at home more, rather than going out, because it is cheaper (provided one cooks the right meals). Cooking magazine sales are also up - new food-oriented magazines seem to pop up everyday.

So, where am I going with all of this?

Well, the one thing I hate about being in the kitchen, and cooking - especially if I am trying a new recipe - is having a usually expensive cookbook open and such, trying to use it while doing things, etc - as well as not being able to search on recipe topic easily (say, oh - show me all recipes involving beef and broccoli, for instance) - it is hard with a lot of books, recipe cards, magazines, etc.

Why not a recipe terminal - with search capabilities, etc?

I have given thought to homebrewing such a device myself - I can easily see an i-opener permanently glued to allrecipes.com - but even that would fall somewhat short.

I can imagine a monthly service and terminal, with a simple interface for navigation, plus maybe some robust detachable foot pedal type device, so that navigation can be easily performed, even if you are stirring a pot, or rolling some dough, or you have your hands dirty. A speech synthesis system could be integrated, so that the device could read you the recipe as you make it - imagine it reading off the ingredient list as you gather them around your kitchen. Remote printer functionality would have to be included - to print off shopping lists, or hard copies of the recipes (to give to unconnected friends). Also ways of using other recipes in a standard format (there is one major standard format for recipe databases out there - that could be used, or some XML system or something), so that new recipes could be added.

This is a market that would buy such a device. It would have to be pretty robust to stand up to kitchen use, have a low power CPU and a bit of memory (it doesn't need to really be a web-browsing type system), a network interface and a compact flash interface (for storage of recipes).

Market the device in Cook's Magazine, Gourmet, Martha Stewart's Living, Woman's Day, and on FoodTV as well (get Emeril to push the thing and it's a shooin!). I am sure a lot of people would buy this device, if it had a low enough price (say, $150-200, and $5-10 dollars a month for service - heck, the price for the device could even be a little higher - get KitchenAid to build it in their color scheme, and people would happily put it next to their mixer)...

Kitchen Computer of... 1965

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this article about Honeywell's $10,000 kitchen computer from 1965. It didn't sell well either...

you guessed it

[evocate]

I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.

Yep, an old dell laptop with a wireless card. Kitchen, dining room, bedroom :-O, etc. And Slashdot makes great bathroom reading.

Grandmas don't care

[DABANSHEE]

As far as they are concerned they are just buying a TV with the internet as a free extra.

hardware cost is not a factor. there is a future.

[mydigitalself]

i agree with your points in relation to where we are now in the world. unfortunately your final statement "I think that this should be about the final chapter in the history of the proprietary Internet appliance." i cannot agree with for this reason:

i remember when mobile phones first hit south africa. you had to fork out about R 1500 ($ 300 at the time).

before i left for the bright lights of london, the last phone i got was worth about R 3000 ($ 400 - way to go South African economy!). how much did i pay for the phone. um. nothing.

an extension of "software as a service" is quickly becoming content as a service. in x years time (yes a subtle reference to the box) you will be given an internet appliance when you register with the "metapshere" and every time you listen to a music track, watch a video, download a book, whatever, you will be charged for it. gibson and stephenson wrote about this kind of stuff years ago.

and THAT is the future of internet appliances!

It is NOT too early for IA's...

[tswinzig]

What I would like to see is something that is wall mounted ala flat panel that I can talk and touch.

Hmmm. Why mount it to anything? I'd much rather have a webpad (touchscreen LCD, 802.11b), and 3 years down the road a newer one with voice recognition. And then 3 years further on, an IA with no LCD, but an option to beam the image into my retina so that it appears the screen floats in front of my face, and it only comes up when I tell it.

Most of this tech is here, but is rough and cost prohibitive.

But it is definitely NOT too early for a killer IA -- the webpad. CmdrTaco thinks laptops with wireless ethernet are cool. Well rip the keyboard off, add a touchscreen LCD, and a couple of USB ports for add-ons, and you've got a killer net appliance.

Hey Clueless Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

"However five years ago the internet was small and held little appeal for the masses"
Wrong, Moron ! Five years ago there were still people who hadn't heard or didn't know what the internet existed. If you weren't so busy trying to show us how smart you think you are, you'd realize that IAs are in the same boat now.

"... such technology is abundant and cheap and you've got full fledged PCs"
Thanks for proving me right, fuck-head. What do you think happened to all that 8088 and 80[1..4]86 technology ? Just dissapeared? Well I guess in a sense it did, as most things technical get abundant, cheap and smaller. Shit man, would you do us a favor and take some business classes ?

Re:Hey Clueless Boy

[Graymalkin]

Tough words for an anonymous coward. Just to make you look dumb, the technology I was talking about in IA's is displays and memory. I bought a Trinitron about five years ago (Sony was the only manufacturer of them then) and it set me back a couple hundred bucks. Even a regular 15'" monitor would set you back a pretty penny, now they're practically disposable. I also don't see how saying the internet holding little appeal for the masses doesn't relate to people not knowing what the fuck it was. You must be the same little kid who tried to flame me a couple days ago. Here's hoping your mommy takes away your computer privilages.

excuse me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.

$1200-$2200 laptops with $150 cards are filling the role of $300-$400 internet machines?

Re:excuse me?

[Meorah]

yes. If you think you "need" the internet in your kitchen instead of just going to your living room or bedroom or wherever your desktop PC is located, then a laptop will be purchased.

Vendor discontinuation - Linux hackers win

[TimRiker]

Each of these notices of a hardware vendor dropping a product are good news for the Linux Hackers out there. I've got an I-Opener running Linux and a Compaq IA for that matter, which is still a shipping product.

I'm also deeply involved in the TuxScreen project. This is a discontinued WebPhone that used to sell for $650 running Inferno. The remaining discontinued units are now available to Linux hackers everywhere for $99 usd. ARM Linux is now running on the devices, so they at least work as an X terminal.

The challenge with each of these discontinued hardware "bargins" is to get enough technical details from the original vendor to make them useful to Linux Hackers.

Linux on your phone, now that's hot ;-)

Good luck and happy hacking!

Re:Damned Laptops Are Too Expensive and Complicate

[Meorah]

If you can't figure out how to "USE" a PC after somebody else has installed and configured all your software for you, then you don't deserve to be on the internet. Surfing the net is a privilege, not a right.

Up yours

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, beOs is a waste of pixels. It's like taking Linux, dipping into an apple barrel, and coming up with a useless expensive proprietary operating system that box hackers don't need and apple queers have no idea how to use. Way to go Be/os.

Re:Halflife for linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Linux. Linux is cool. I think that everyone should use Linux.