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Another Internet Appliance Dies

Posted by Hemos on from the only-the-good-die-yoounngggg dept.

pescatello writes "Here's a CNET story describing the disappearance of the internet appliances from the market. The latest is the AOL/Gateway/Transmeta Internet Appliance. While it won Comdex's Best in Show in 2000, it hasn't been pushed by either AOL or Gateway, and is now unavailable anywhere. " Meanwhile, my Audrey came in yesterday.

3 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. The Audrey was actually pretty close by smartin · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's amazing how good the Audrey actually is, if you want simple internet access from a room like your kitchen. It takes up little space, has a usable browser, calender, address book and email capabilities. What makes the Audrey so nice is that you can integrate it seemlessly into your home LAN. It will talk to your mail and dns server and mount file systems using nfs or smb, no need for some bogus proprietay subscription service.

    The reason the Audry failed is simple, it is a great little machine for $89 but it's not worth $499. For $89 you have lots of people buying them and playing. 3Com and other appliance would be smart to follow what is going on over a linux-hacker.net and audreyhacking.com and re-evalutate their market strategies when they see what happens when you make a kickass little toy like the Audrey available to the computer literate community at an accessible price.

    --
    The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
  2. These things cost too much by inepom01 · · Score: 2, Informative

    $599? Are you kidding? The whole point of making something that's less than a computer is that it costs less. You can get computers for $599 that can do just about anything. Look at the audrey- didn't sell when it was $499, but now for $89 they're selling well (got mine!) and there're communities around hacking it and generally enhancing it. Of course the $89 doesn't cover what 3Com paid to make it, but $499 was still overpriced. On second hand... Maybe they should take a hint from the hacking communities around the I-Opener and the Audrey and have an open source internet appliance- they can sell it cheaply because all it'd cost is the hardware.

  3. Where to buy an Audrey for $89 by Elequin · · Score: 2, Informative

    I haven't seen this posted in the discussion yet... One can purchase an Audrey for $89, brand new in a sealed-by-3Com box, at Tiger Direct. I have two of them, and they're quite fun to play with. :-)

    - Eric