Posted by
michael
on from the penguin-in-a-box dept.
red5 writes: "Newsforge has a
report of a new "iMac-like" internet computer from the good people over at OEone. On an interesting note it uses Mozilla as its GUI. Read the article for all the details." Another submitter sent in an interview with the company.
Is it just me?
by
jerw134
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Is it just me, or does every single one of these "Internet computers" fail shortly after it comes out? Not including the iMac, every other one I know of (iOpener, NIC, iPaq, WebPC...) has failed. What are the chances this one won't meet the same fate?
Re:A bit pricy
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I buy my Mandrake too. In fact I average a purchase of a boxed set about one every two months. I then give them away to people too intimidated to burn their own iso's. Mandrake wins, We win. $800 is certainly a bit more than $500, but I would pay the premium because the device is Linux based. Since the distro is obviously tuned to the hardware, it is clearly a supperior product to the Windows junk boxes you can get for $500 at Best Buy. I would say the same about Sun and Apple, but then they are proprietary.
Too expensive. The brand is unknown, and people are not going to spend $800 for something that just looks nice. This will likely come and go like the Internet computers before it. If they would market it as a versatile Net/multimedia station / PVR, maybe they would sell some units (however, the patents involved in PVR may create problems).
Also, Mozilla 0.93.. if I remember correctly 0.95 was the point where Mozilla became usable on a daily basis. 0.93 may not cut it and lacks some of the wonderful later features like tabs. They probably should have waited one more month before going public so they could present a mature product instead of hurrying something that still has many loose ends (the DNS requirement for dial-up ISPs is probably a major showstopper for newbies). So my strategy to place this thing on the market would be:
Make sure Internet setup is very easy with all configurations
MP3 and DVD playback are nice, but can be had very cheap nowadays. PVR is not so common -- this is therefore an essential feature that should be marketed accordingly
Get all software to the latest versions and use apt-get, apt-rpm or something like that to fetch the latest packages regularly
Eliminate stupid product registrations -- they hurt you more than they help you
Games: There are some nice, free open-source games like Armagetron (which I have yet to get working but the shots looked promising), Heroes, Freeciv, Tuxracer,... These should be installed by default and easily accessible. It may be possible to cut a deal with Transgaming or Loki in return for access to their subscription services.
Community: People just love online forums, chat, weblogs and the like. The system should come with easy access to preselected chat rooms (IRC?) and forums (newsgroups?).
Down with the price. A "healthy" margin is a good thing if you're not planning to sell many units or if you're Apple.
Clever marketing. If you think the product is really good, donate some to various schools/libraries with an added prominent, non-removable "I want to buy a machine like this" link somewhere. Try to create as much hype for the product as possible.
Send a cleverly formulated "story" asking for more ideas to "Ask Slashdot" and choose the ones at +5 and -1 for preselection.
It may be possible to create a viable product in this fashion. Oh yeah, I forgot: STEP 3: PROFIT!!!!!
Re:Good deal.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It is a real thing. Understand the comparison of options, say, for my 50 year old mother. The best solution for her up to now has been a secondhand Win98 laptop - all in one, but as stable as a Win98 box gets for under $500. A slow chip but a smooth machine, and just for websurfing. She's had several viruses, and has slowed the thing to a crawl by downloading and installing the "freeware" type novelty programs that grandmothers tend to install. On top of that she still doesn't have a quality office suite for it, because a legal copy of MS Office, the only popular option, retails for $400. An "internet appliance" doesn't give enough functionality, for the typical lack of a hard drive, but it's now demonstrated that a full windows box is asking for trouble, for these types of people anyway. This distro of Linux is adequately full-featured to do everything she needs, but proprietary enough to evade 99% of all viruses and 99% of all dumbware. I just wish I could spare a paycheck to buy her one.. and then wean her off Freecell (evil Nicotine-additive of Windows). It's the perfect compromise, if we must call it a compromise.
Office computers
by
crimsonhead
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
A month ago I've written a
comment about Linux for the office envieroment. If OEone will make an small office/enterprise version it might be Linux's way to mainstream.
The built-in speakers aren't great, but they never are in low-cost computers.
That's a bit rich considering that the machine this is ripping off (the old style iMac), for the same US$799 price, has Harman Kardon (read: good) speakers.
They proudly boast about how user friendly it is but then talk about using a terminal window to install a simple Office suite?! A web browser for the main interface?! Are they on crack? Why is everyone trying to do everything with a web browser these days. A web browser was designed to browse the web (shock horror).
I love the idea of backing up data to a sever in case you delete the file. Here's a thought: make a copy somewhere else on the hard disk or copy it to a floppy. Who's going to waste their bandwidth? Do you trust them not to look at your files?
I see this crashing and burning. Basically, for the same price you can get a real iMac. I thought rip offs were supposed to be cheaper? That's if Apple legal doesn't kill it first.
Re:Compare to iMac
by
90XDoubleSide
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Compare to iMac, eh? Sounds fair, I'll compare it to the $799 iMac. The computers are very similar in some ways: both have a 20GB HDD, 128 MB RAM, 24X CD-ROM, 100Base-T, 56K modem, and 2 USB ports. The AIO benefits from a 17" display and a TV tuner (which is mostly useless; you could add one to the iMac, but I can't imagine anyone doing so). The iMac benefits from two FireWire ports, Harman/Kardon speakers, a RAGE 128 Ultra, and VGA out. I'd say that VGA out is better than a TV tuner, but having a 17" display offset's the iMacs video card and speakers. The iMac still offers FireWire, has a far superior software bundle (sorry, but giving people commercial software adds more value than saving them a few minutes of downloading) and most importantly, I can play popular games on an iMac, both because it has an OS that supports them and because it has a real video card. The iMac also has a full BSD subsystem, so the AIO has no real advantage being on linux. And lets not forget that the AIO is godawful ugly (it looks like they were copying a Compaq copy of an iMac, badly).
So I think it's fair to say the $799 iMac has an edge over the $799 AIO. <sarcasm>This is incredibly shocking considering everyone knows Apple charges 4-8 times what their wintel competitors do</sarcasm>.
-- "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity"
-Alvy Ray Smith
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or does every single one of these "Internet computers" fail shortly after it comes out? Not including the iMac, every other one I know of (iOpener, NIC, iPaq, WebPC...) has failed. What are the chances this one won't meet the same fate?
I buy my Mandrake too. In fact I average a purchase of a boxed set about one every two months. I then give them away to people too intimidated to burn their own iso's. Mandrake wins, We win. $800 is certainly a bit more than $500, but I would pay the premium because the device is Linux based. Since the distro is obviously tuned to the hardware, it is clearly a supperior product to the Windows junk boxes you can get for $500 at Best Buy. I would say the same about Sun and Apple, but then they are proprietary.
Also, Mozilla 0.93 .. if I remember correctly 0.95 was the point where Mozilla became usable on a daily basis. 0.93 may not cut it and lacks some of the wonderful later features like tabs. They probably should have waited one more month before going public so they could present a mature product instead of hurrying something that still has many loose ends (the DNS requirement for dial-up ISPs is probably a major showstopper for newbies). So my strategy to place this thing on the market would be:
- Make sure Internet setup is very easy with all configurations
- MP3 and DVD playback are nice, but can be had very cheap nowadays. PVR is not so common -- this is therefore an essential feature that should be marketed accordingly
- Get all software to the latest versions and use apt-get, apt-rpm or something like that to fetch the latest packages regularly
- Eliminate stupid product registrations -- they hurt you more than they help you
- Games: There are some nice, free open-source games like Armagetron (which I have yet to get working but the shots looked promising), Heroes, Freeciv, Tuxracer,
... These should be installed by default and easily accessible. It may be possible to cut a deal with Transgaming or Loki in return for access to their subscription services.
- Community: People just love online forums, chat, weblogs and the like. The system should come with easy access to preselected chat rooms (IRC?) and forums (newsgroups?).
- Down with the price. A "healthy" margin is a good thing if you're not planning to sell many units or if you're Apple.
- Clever marketing. If you think the product is really good, donate some to various schools/libraries with an added prominent, non-removable "I want to buy a machine like this" link somewhere. Try to create as much hype for the product as possible.
- Send a cleverly formulated "story" asking for more ideas to "Ask Slashdot" and choose the ones at +5 and -1 for preselection.
It may be possible to create a viable product in this fashion. Oh yeah, I forgot: STEP 3: PROFIT!!!!!It is a real thing. Understand the comparison of options, say, for my 50 year old mother. The best solution for her up to now has been a secondhand Win98 laptop - all in one, but as stable as a Win98 box gets for under $500. A slow chip but a smooth machine, and just for websurfing. She's had several viruses, and has slowed the thing to a crawl by downloading and installing the "freeware" type novelty programs that grandmothers tend to install. On top of that she still doesn't have a quality office suite for it, because a legal copy of MS Office, the only popular option, retails for $400. An "internet appliance" doesn't give enough functionality, for the typical lack of a hard drive, but it's now demonstrated that a full windows box is asking for trouble, for these types of people anyway. This distro of Linux is adequately full-featured to do everything she needs, but proprietary enough to evade 99% of all viruses and 99% of all dumbware. I just wish I could spare a paycheck to buy her one.. and then wean her off Freecell (evil Nicotine-additive of Windows). It's the perfect compromise, if we must call it a compromise.
A month ago I've written a comment about Linux for the office envieroment. If OEone will make an small office/enterprise version it might be Linux's way to mainstream.
(Score:5, Whoring)
That's a bit rich considering that the machine this is ripping off (the old style iMac), for the same US$799 price, has Harman Kardon (read: good) speakers.
They proudly boast about how user friendly it is but then talk about using a terminal window to install a simple Office suite?! A web browser for the main interface?! Are they on crack? Why is everyone trying to do everything with a web browser these days. A web browser was designed to browse the web (shock horror).
I love the idea of backing up data to a sever in case you delete the file. Here's a thought: make a copy somewhere else on the hard disk or copy it to a floppy. Who's going to waste their bandwidth? Do you trust them not to look at your files?
I see this crashing and burning. Basically, for the same price you can get a real iMac. I thought rip offs were supposed to be cheaper? That's if Apple legal doesn't kill it first.
So I think it's fair to say the $799 iMac has an edge over the $799 AIO. <sarcasm>This is incredibly shocking considering everyone knows Apple charges 4-8 times what their wintel competitors do</sarcasm>.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith