Thoughts on the MSN Web TV Device?

elmore asks: "I was watching television tonight and saw a commercial for the new MSN web TV device. Normally I completely dismiss anything Microsoft comes up with but this seems pretty nifty. I like this device because my grandparents and my mother are fairly...'challenged'...when it comes to the internet. Sticking with my gut, I'd like to ask the Slashdot community what web TV devices you've seen and/or given to your internet 'challenged' family or friends."

Comments

Re:Only do this...

[IntlHarvester]

I got my mother one of these about 3-4 years ago (because I hate providing tech support), and guess what? I have NEVER had to provide tech support. Whoop! So in my book these things are great.

(Once the thing borked, but the WebTV people talked her through reseting it, which I gather involved redownloading the OS.)

So, in my book these devices are great. Sure Mom is "permanently challenged" (is that PC for "retarded"?), but she gets her e-mail when the little light blinks and that's all that really matters.

Meanwhile her friends are scared shitless of their iMacs given to them by their 'helpful' sons and are always taking them in for "repair".

The one downside to these things is that the WebTV Internet is completely spamvertised. Everything about it is designed to encourage you to go to MS's marketing "partners" -- you can't set your home page, you can't set your search page, it's difficult to enter URLs, etc. But mom uses it mostly for e-mail, so it's OK.

The other downside is that MS takes a big loss on these things, they haven't proved very popular, dot-com stuff like this ain't cool anymore, and eventually the service will probably be disconnected (or there will be a XBox Forced Upgrade).

The thing to understand is that WebTV is a Dumb Terminal for End lUsers, which one would think fits the Unix jockey model of the world perfectly.

ISP lockin

[Hubert_Shrump]

(Before we start, let me mention I used to work for them, so this isn't just mad bashing, this was the policy I observed)

These will only get support using M$ as the ISP, if you try to go with another, you're going to have an uphill battle.

We were directly told to keep tech information about the web tv from the customer, like how to get it to work with other password formats than MSN's, and how to reset the firmware (even their embedded systems needed reboots?!).

Again, this was back when WebTv was another corp that had been recently been eaten by M$, I don't know if the design changed to be friendlier to other ISPs, but (ahem) I don't imagine that they went out of their way to have some competition.