AMD's Personal Internet Communicator

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?"

Comments

A modest proposal

[erick99]

I wonder if for $349, a hundred dollars more, they could produce a similar package for here in the US with a nic instead of a modem along with some sort of optical drive. I think they would sell like crazy. It would come with some newbie-friendly flavor of Linux and the user could always change that if they want, but why add a lot of cost upfront for an operating system. There are a lot of people in the US that will not be able to buy a computer unless they can get the price down to something like $350 or so. If this $249 machine can be profitable, then I think this $349 machine could be profitable as well and we'd be helping people here, as well as abroad. Or, am I just completely missing something?

Re:A modest proposal

[BrianH]

Yes, but you don't even need Internet access to make this thing useful. What use would they have for a computer without Internet? We tend to be spoiled for space in our world of MP3's, video files, and multigigabyte games, but we cannot forget that a gigabyte is a LOT of data. A 20 gigabyte hard drive can hold as much text as an ENTIRE LIBRARY.

You have to look at these types of products in the context of how their going to be used. Nobody living in a shack in Botswana is going to be surfing EBay on this, and a Ghanian tribesman isn't going to give a flying rock about how it runs Half Life 2. What they're going to care about is the fact that they can add an entire library to their remote village for $249 thats compact enough to be easily moved when the river rises and they have to evacuate on foot every spring, thats integrated and durable enough so that they won't have to worry about shaking the PCI cards loose if they set it down too hard, and that will draw little enough power to run happily on their villages 20 watt in-stream hydro generator or 15 watt solar panel without frying itself.

The world is a lot bigger than the west people, and this type of hardware is badly needed in many parts of the world. Yes, you can probably piece one together using cheap Internet sourced parts for a lower cost, but will it have the durability, the low power consumption, and the ease of transport that this thing offers? Can you honestly tell me that Bahooba the tribal elder, who has probably never even held a phillips screwdriver in his entire life, would be better off building his own PC? These people need something braindead simple...plug in the wire, turn it on, and use it. When you live in an area where the nearest computer tech is 100 miles away on foot, you don't have the luxury of buying untested hardware configurations and calling for support when you run into a problem.

No,

[Scythr0x0rs]

The question is, will it run emm... FreeBSD?
It'll run FreeBSD. The question is,
will it run windows?

Re:First Post?

[LittleGuernica]

Does it run solitaire?, because I know some people who would be satisfied with that, they don't need an AMD 64

Re:Of course it runs...

[grm_wnr]

Of course it will run any BSD or Linux

Everything does, sooner or later. It is INEVITABLE.

TV out

[maddh]

if they wanted to reach a poorer population they should have a regular TV coax output along side the VGA.

Already available?

[Stephen Samuel]

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.