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

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

[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.

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

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.

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.

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.