Another $99 Web Terminal

An Anonymous Coward writes: "If anyone is looking for a fun $99 hacking project, Tiger direct has Compaq Ipaq's for $99, great little web browsing terminals, they support Flash, jJava, ActiveX. The parts (LCD screen etc) are probably worth more than this. You'll need to get a USB Ethernet adapter so you can use broadband." Tiger Direct seems to have a mixed reputation for service, but at under a hundred dollars, this looks pretty tempting even if only used as a digital photo frame, or an adjunct mail terminal.

Comments

TigerDirect security issues

[Wonko42]

I strongly urge everyone to avoid buying anything from TigerDirect. First off, you'll likely save yourself some hassle because their service absolutely stinks. But most importantly, TigerDirect's order invoice system has one of the most retarded, wide-open security holes I've ever seen.

What's worse is that I've sent them several emails regarding this security issue, and they've ignored me. The hole still exists to this day. So unless you want the world to know a whole lot more about you than they probably need to, I'd suggest finding another online retailer to buy from.

Crooks

[marcolin]

Tiger Direct are criminals. Just troll any
vendor reviewer site. Whoever posted this needs
to check themselves.

Anyway, if TD has them, somebody else does too.
I'd buy one from a street vendor first. At least
you can smell if they've washed themselves lately.

Flame away, you 20%.

Unless it's for fun, WHY?

[zulux]

This is not the best example, 'cause $99 is cheep for an LCD screen, but heres a thought. YOU ARE ALL WASTING YOUR TIME.

Heare me out - I'm not trying to flame.

The same person that has the skills to flash a operating system kernel onto a CF card, boot from it in single user mode, reset the password, reboot and the get the system to load a new kernal from an NFS mount point is worth at least $60 per hour. Spend two hours doing this and you've broken even and haven't leaned much.

I'm absolutly depressed to think that there are clever people that muck around all day, pissing around with cruddy hardware, when they could be out makeing a bunch of money, making people lives easier, meeting people and have just as much fun as before. If you can do this - replacing NT servers with SAMBA servers is a peice of cake, OpenBSD fire walls are simple and PostgreSQL is a toy.

I have a very good friend who, like a lot of people here, is very smart and can do all sorts of wacky stuff - unfortunalty he isen't working at a decent job and is suffering for it.

If you can do this hack and don't have a decent paying job that you love to do - do the hack, have fun. Then, bath and put on some decent clothing, go forth and conquer.