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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.
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?
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.
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 - .
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.
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.
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.