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AMD's Personal Internet Communicator

Posted by michael on from the in-a-box dept.

mstefanus writes "SFGate.com has a story about AMD's 50x15 Personal Internet Communicator (PIC). It is basically a PC with an AMD Geode GX500 366MHz processor, 10GB hard drive and 128MB Memory; running some form of Windows CE. The device is intended as a cheap internet PC for the rest of the world population. AMDBoard has some pictures and specifications. The question is, will it run emm... FreeBSD?"

4 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Didn't this already fail once... by tha_mink · · Score: 3, Informative

    Didn't the consumer market decide that it didn't want this type of thing before? What was that thing that Be INC made again? (besides failure)

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    You'll have that sometimes...
  2. My Prediction: It Won't Fly by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't think this kyte is going to fly. Here's why:

    $ 185 is a lot of money. It's not worth it for many people. Especially if you can buy a 2200+ powered PC with modem and NIC, a larger hard drive, a standard form factor case and motherboard, etc. etc. for around the same price (I can buy them for 199 euros).

    So, poor people won't spend their money on it, and slightly richer people will get a better deal at a slightly higher price. And you can get a pretty decent PDA for less.

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    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  3. Already available? by Stephen+Samuel · · Score: 5, Informative
    My neighbourhood computer store sells pretty much such a machine (note that prices are in Canadian Dollars -> ~ $.80US/$1.00CAD). An AMD 2700 with 256MB ram, 40GB drive and CDROM for $289CAD -> $230US.It has an onboard 10/100 ethernet rather than a modem. Add Linux and a used monitor, and you're Rocking.

    I presume that you could find something similar in the US.

    --
    Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
  4. Re:Why ship it with WinCE? by dotcher · · Score: 3, Informative
    PocketPC is built on CE as a base - CE is a kernel and some services, and includes things like a shell and a command line interpreter, both based on desktop Windows.

    PocketPC replaces the shell, adds some apps, and has the configuration tweaked for the specific device it's on. The smartphone variant is similiar.