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Lindows Webstation
dr.karl.b writes "Lindows.com has announced the WebStation, a hard-disk-less pc that boots from a CD, similar to the now dead ThinkNIC, for $169 (no monitor). Different versions are available from 2 vendors, TigerDirect and iDOTpc.com. The TigerDirect version has a 1.1GHz Duron, 256MB PC2100 DDR, 56X CD-ROM, 10/100Mbps NIC, floppy, modem, keyboard and mouse. The iDOTpc.com version has a 800MHz C3, 256MB PC133 SDRAM, 56X CD-ROM, 10/100Mbps NIC, but without a floppy, modem, keyboard or mouse. The TigerDirect looks like a better deal, at least now ($169 = $189 - $20 rebate). The 2 different versions seem to have confused the authors at C/Net and The Register, who only report the specs of the iDOTpc.com version."
Well, it's called the webstation, obviously designed for internet surfing only. If you are only going to be surfing the web, you don't really need to have any sort of hard drive, although I am sure that one would be useful for such things as cookies ( debate me on that point if you wish ). Games, well, you can certainly play small games such as tetris fine that would just play right off the cd, or off of a virtual drive in RAM. What happens when you reboot? Everything is wiped, obviously.
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
If it works with Lindows, then it should also be possible to stick in a Knoppix CD. In fact, it's surprising that nobody else is marketing cheap PCs using Knoppix or a similar distribution.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I think people are confusing these machines with systems you would have at your house. The main benefit would be to companys that do not want workers using their machines for non work related issues.
A good example would be a telemarketing center, where only data is passed to the system, a little input from the end-user, and then stored on another system.
This would work well with a POS system as well.
Or, an MP3 player in your house where the system just pulls music off your file server.
Get the idea now?
TruePunk | Games
basically you would have some server or another to save them, or to a floppy(floppy is quite limited though..).
from their webpage: "The Lindows WebStation is ideal for multi-computer households, school rooms, training labs, call center, community access machines, etc. It also makes an ideal computer kiosk. With such a low price, you can afford to put multiple WebStations through your home, school or business."
basically it's ideal for anywhere you have another computer(s) around, for datakeeping. basically it's just a computer with equivalent of knoppix in it.
though, this fails where lindows is trying to sell this (easy enough for people unfamiliar with linux), because setting up some storage through the net for it isn't that simple as plug this baby in (and people with a clue could make their own custom knoppix quite easily).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I've ordered several things from iDOT and never been disappointed. In fact, when I first ordered from them, someone noticed that I lived only 15 miles away from their warehouse. So they offered to refund my shipping costs and hold the parts for me to personally pick up! Even more surprising, they noticed that I had separately ordered the parts for a more-than-barebones system, and offered to assemble the hardware at no extra charge.
So consider this customer satisfied. If you're going to order one of these diskless PCs, you certainly won't have any reseller problems if you order from iDOT.
4-star general in a one-man army.
keeps chopping away at the bottom of the PC market, there may not be anything MS can do about it. One thing i would be interested in, and didnt see, is some sort of card reader so that users would have means to save at least their documents. At any rate, heres the obligatory comment on how the OEM XP Pro costs more than the machine AND the Operating system.
My bet is that you can, but there is a very good reason for being cd only. Its much more difficult to screw up a os on a cd than it is to screw up an os on a hdd. When a 12 year old skript kiddie hax0rz your library machine and inverts the mouse buttons, the techno-challenged librarians just need to know how to hit the reset button. No worries about fscks/scandisks, or actually having to undo the switch.
Yes, the above can all be accomplished with some weird write protection on the hdd, but compare costs here. A cheap cdrom can cost under $20. Try and find a hdd in the same price bracket. Then add the cost of all the magic necessary to make it kiddie-proof*.
[*] does not include said kiddies removing cdrom and coating with strawberry jam. But that's what backups are for.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
I wonder what lifetime a system that's CD-only (and with a fast CD drive) will have - lifetime of an average CD drive is about a week without break and at full speed and only thanks to stopping frequently and lowering read speed, plus working rarely more than several minutes a day at full speed, they survive more than a year. But replacing HDD with CD...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Am I the only one who saw an imaginary 'i' in there?
Thoughts on how it works...
1. Battery-backed FLASH RAM like in the ThinkNIC
2. USB-based "key" drive (sold separately)
3. Online storage ala X-Drive
If they can swing a deal with a cable/DSL provider for those people who don't own or want a "computer", they might have a killer item. Cable/DSL providers can lease or sell the units to people and then upsell their service with online storage and app-serving (ASP).
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Both iDOT and TigerPC allow you to add a HD before purchase. The base model is HD-free, though.
4-star general in a one-man army.
Lindows recommends to save the data either over a network or to a USB Memorykey. Actually this is not a bad idea, one can imagine a lot of possible uses for an extremely cost-effective PC ... with 64MB or so on a MemoryKey, that's nice, especially as you can carry those around.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to write a security exploit that would work on a computer with a readonly file system?
-a
Besides, you know that the machine is just going to get stuffed with pr0n. Better to limit them to what tmpfs will hold.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
you should teach my girlfriend how to do that
sig - .
NFS is not needed here, because all of the programs and data live on either the CDROM or in RAM.
You are obviously mistaking this for LTSP.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Low end processor and no HD mean LESS HEAT. So why did they put this stuff in a big empty box? I'd think a web terminal type pc would do a lot better packaged into something like this with a cheap LCD.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Lindows gave you the CD to create the LindowsCD OS for the computer. Think about how incredibly useful that would be!
You run a program on the CD to customize an installation of LindowsCD. You pick the home page, maybe the network share where files are saved, bookmarks, etc. It already knows the hardware so no config necessary.
You click a button and out of your burner pops a LindowsCD perfectly configured for your environment. You stick it in the machine, and deploy.
I can think of a thousand uses for this. You could rig a kiosk in the lobby that would only let people view the company webpage. You could rig some workstations that would allow visitors to view files you have made available in a public share but they can't save anything there or locally. You could rig that perfect PC so grandma could check her e-mail and thats all it does.
With no data kept locally, and no possibility of OS corruption, your only support requirements are to tell people to reboot. Or have the machine reboot once a day, etc. If you ever need to change anyting, reburn a disc with new settings. If the CD ever goes belly up, put in the backup. If it still won't work, you can be sure it's a hardware issue.
Lindows, SO CLOSE. Please (or Knoppix) someone take the OS-on-CD to the next level. Yes having Knoppix and LindowsCD is great, but no one wants to have to setup their mail settings each and every time the system reboots. Give us the tools to create our own custom task-oriented OS CD.
As an alternative...flashram? A CF reader and a 32MB card cost what, $25 on the street? More than enough to keep mail settings, bookmarks, etc.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Think "razor and razor blades" for this model.
The machine, virtually unbreakable, is designed to get you online. You'd be amazed at the number of e-mail stations sold in the world and the number of people who are only interested in e-mail, IM and E-Bay. Okay, okay, maybe online weather, stocks and sports scores, too.
The big deal here would be to sell online storage space. Save everything online!
Before people start whining about the speed of this, consider 2 things --
1. If done by the ISP, one hop upstream, it will be very fast.
2. No matter where it is stored, it'll beat the pants off of accessing everything from a damn CD-ROM.
This also creates a market for "personal streaming". Rip your own MP3s/OGGs and have them stored online. Have icecast run from the service with a limit of 1 or 2 simultaneous streams and maybe a password for access. This way people can store their music online and now worry about CDs or such.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Back then most people laughed. And described like that it still sounds laughable, doesn't it? Why would you pay money for an SDK and then sign a license for X$/install to sell a linux distro when you can put one together, based on debian (as lindows is) or redhat, for free?
Well, now look: lindows has a reasonable amount of brand recognition and press. You can put together a distro of redhat and try to get your compu-idiot clients to use it, or you can offer the same thing with a distro that is being sold at wal-mart and gets favorable press in all sorts of consumer press. Which do you think offers the better marketing opportunity when it comes to the technically challenged?
Sadly, even at $169, this system is overpriced for the hardware that you get.
Just for the hell of it, I went to mwave.com, and priced out their absolute cheapest pre-assembled barebones system. I was able to get a system with a faster processsor and a better motherboard for $153, or $165 with a cheap keyboard and mouse included.
Add a 50 cent burned Knoppix CD to the system, and you just got yourself a better system for $3.50 cheaper, and with no rebate hassles.
You seem to be forgetting the target audience DOES NOT ALREADY HAVE A COMPUTER, thus does not own 35 Gb of MP3s.
As for what happens if the business fails and it all gets auctioned off? Well, the only thing the end user would have lost would be some time. You DO own all the CDs you'd be ripping, right? Thus, you have backups.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I tried the LindowsCD 0S with a USB pen drive, and it finds it automatically and mounts it in /disks/dos. It doesn't make an icon on the Desktop like Knoppix, but that is still very straight forward.
You can get 64mb USB Flash drive for about $10. That is good enough to save a moderate amount of personal files. Don't think "only web" here, though. It comes with Open Office (or just use a knoppix flavor for whatever software you are into), which will, say, let kids write a word document, save it on the USB drive, and print at school. Definitely has potential as an "offline" tool(think "lower income").
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I've been wanting to have a Linux firewall that boots from CD (with no HD) for security reasons... script it to reboot every night a 3am, and you could be pretty confident in it not being cracked.
Any idea if the Lindows version has anything special to enable it to run 100% from CD? Is the entire CD GPL'd?
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
"Why not stick a 2gb drive or something small in there just for the OS? That way the CD drive would be free for people to play music CDs, etc. "
Cost + the concept that something could go corrupt? At least with a Read-Only media for the OS, a virus is wiped out with a reboot.
"Derp de derp."
...the up-front price (USD$189) is AUD$285.40 at today's rates.
Visiting a random local wholesaler and using their one-off retail prices: AllInOne Mobo $99.00 (choice of 3), CPU $104.40 (Athlon 1800+, or $130.80 for a Celeron 2GHz), RAM $54.00, CDROM $32.40 (writer $58.80 AOpen 48x, DVD $70.80 BenQ 16x), case $58.50 (midi tower, 300W PSU), total AUD$365.10. Their website is buggered again as usual because they derive it from an Excel spreadsheet and the code to do it sucks so badly that I completely eclipsed it with 90 minutes' worth of effort using gawk and oocalc to turn the spreadsheet into a PostgreSQL database and PHP to display it.
Options: 128MB USB thumb $66.00.
Treating another random wholesaler similarly gives $99, $118 (2000+, identical Celeron), $66.00, $50.00 (writer, no reader avail; cheapest DVD at $118.00 includes CD writer), case $40.00 total AUD$373.00.
USB thumb for $69.00.
Add roughly $15 for a keyboard and mouse, $20 for a modem (or $35 for a hardware modem, which I'd recommend for reliability), so $400.10 and $408.00, respectively. For $100 extra you'd get twice the CPU and in one case a burner on top of a reader, lose the floppy (or pay $17), and I'm guessing that either shop would bundle the collection for AUD$389 or less, especially if they expected to sell lots of them.
And guess what? The price of MS-Windows XP Home OEM is AUD$189, and MS-Office XP OEM is AUD$429 - more than the cost of either machine, and a combined total of half as much again as the hardware, just to do word-processing. Mandrake Linux 9.1 PowerPack edition is AUD$99.95 inc GST and includes two good office suites plus extras (and of course the ingrates amongst us can download it for free).
There are no slow low-capacity hard drives left. They'd cost nearly as much to make as a fast, high-capacity drive (similar materials, similar plant) and nobody's going to bother putting together a plant to build drives that won't sell. Put it this way, if you had a choice of a 5GB drive for AUD$75, a 10GB drive for AUD$80 or a 40GB drive for AUD$95, which would you buy? If you can get 128MB of Flash for AUD$69 and (with a compressed FS) that's enough to run your system, why would you want a bulky, noisy, unreliable hard drive? The Cyrix-based motherboards are only selling well for niche markets, and I suspect that low-capacity hard drives would be the same. Make one small, slow, low-power, low-heat, long-life and you might find a market - until Flash gets that cheap too.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It's actualy an idea borrowed from Kinoppix. Basicly, all you need is a Kinoppix CD and a USB Memory Monkey(TM). You keep your home directory on the Monkey and there you have it. Your desktop anywhere. .. Oh, i ment Memory Key
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Imagine a public computer lab that was filled with these thin clients (for the lack of a better term). People would have to buy specially made USB memory keychains that would be programmed with their user information, and then they could plug it into a terminal to use it and save their data to it. That would be both secure for the user, as they literally can't leave anything behind, and more convinent for the maintanance of the lab, as there is nothing that the user can do short of physically bashing the computer to actually damage it.
Rename Memory Editor to "explorer.exe"... Easy!
I actually always enjoyed figuring out ways to violate crappy Microsoft security (not just 95/98, even NT/2000/XP!)
Early on, it was just a matter of looking through the help files for links that would open exporer or anything else. Later it could be something like unmaping a network drive, so that the program that was supposed to run, can't... Then there's always the F8 trick, which has helped many times. With Win95, if that isn't there, you can hit CTRL-C when it gives you the message that scandisk needs to run, and get to the C: prompt that way.
For those that have even more serious restrictions, you need a little more talent. When a program can't be run, you rename it to something simple that is allowed. When write-access is taken away, you just have to search around to find a place where you have write access... Usually the Netscape cache folder, temp folder, etc. Then just download a program like poledit to that writable folder, name it exporer, and remove restrictions.
For better versions of Windows, users aren't allowed to write changes to the registry, so poledit and others don't work. For that, you go a step further... When a program like taskmgr won't run, you copy that to another machine, open it with a hex-editor, search for "Policies" and change any letter in "Policies" so it doesn't find the reg key that tells it it shouldn't run. Copy taskmgr back to a folder you have access to, and it will run. Same goes for regedit and others.
If you don't have access to certain folders in expolorer or comand.com, there are ways to get there... The help system works great for that. If help isn't available, you can enable "Links" on the taskbar, and clicking on that you can tell explorer to open that folder, which then allows you to navigate up to top level folders, then down to any place you want.
From my experience, breaking policies on dozens of computers with incredibly restrictive policies, I am conviced that there is no way to enforce policies... Windows just doesn't have that strong of security in place to make it possible.
On the other hand, there's no question that Unix systems are completely capable to enforcing the will of the administrator, so it's a very good thing for curious individuals like myself that Unix wasn't more popular at schools, and other public places. Then again, with good security, maybe the admins wouldn't have been so terribly afraid of users screwing up the system with any tools they were given, so maybe they would have let users do anything they wanted within their confined space...
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