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

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.

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

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.

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.