Slashdot Mirror
Cheap Solid State Computers Could Kill Microsoft
Eh-Wire writes "This is an interesting point made by a Clayton Hallmark on IndyMedia out of Argentina. He predicts that cheap Asian computing appliances with an Open Source Operating System on a chip will be the ultimate MS killer. References to the US$220 Mobilis out of India suggest the begining of newer, more powerful, and cheaper things to come. Mr. Hallmark also points to the success of the Wal-Mart cheap PC as proof the end is near for proprietory software. Overall an in interesting and thought provoking read."
The end of M$ has been foretold ever so often, more often than I would care to remember. But nothing has happened as of yet, that would pose a significant threat to them. Before you go about how xyz could kill M$ - just ponder for a moment, how much cash M$ has in their pockets - they are not immediately threatened by anything - and they HAVE the kind of money to sit out minor glitches and/or buy them the neccessary time to re-adjust (or just throw humongous amounts of money at the problem to overcome it). And even if someone goes for the cheap PC option, as long as large companies aren't switching over to these devices, I guess the PC will remain a strong seller (just think about all the parents buying PCs for their kids to play with - while knowing they have a machine they can also do their regular work on)...
... "could" have ended the MS monopoly - when they were released, they were faster than PCs, and cheaper; and you could get good software for them, too - still, they didn't make it because they never became widely accepted in the commercial market.
The likes of Atari ST / Amiga /
M$ is not going to be "killed" any time soon - the most realistic chance there is, is that they will eventually be (financially) ground down far enough for them to no longer be able to react quickly enough to save their own hide. But that is most likely still quite a few years away - and it depends on there being enough serious outside threats.
Also, it would be more important to engage them on more fronts - if they are only in a skirmish with google over the search engine, their income will more than pay for that. If there were more (and different) fresh new competitors to emerge in different markets where M$ is a player (or sees that the market is too important for them to neglect), that could hurt them - but a single issue (the early browser wars; search engines now; cheaper computing platforms in the future) most likely won't be enough.
(And - no - the "new browser wars" I won't even count as a secondary issue - M$ already has the expertise to deal with that - it will cost them money, but it isn't something new they have to worry about - they need to be challenged on new frontiers - just look how long it took for them to catch up with netscape in the first place; and I would be prepared to bet that google is going to last for a few years yet, before M$ can kill them off - it will still be a while since M$ still need to build up a good deal more expertise in this market.
Wouldn't cheap solid state computers be a little blunt and heavy? Surely an axe would do the job better? No software needed either.
Since you are reading this on a computer, you are a slave to MS and you should care. /sarcasm/ Yes, I care deeply.
(switches screens on Linux system)
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
All the *-Killers have been extremely successful so far, right? No one is buying iPods anymore, right?
No?
Next story,then.
Hmmmm? the idea of OS in a ROM on the computer sounds dodgy. I mean in that it forced you to always use the operating system that comes with the computer.
If that becomes common practice then it can turn around and bite us
What if microsoft do the same. Windows in ROM with some patches coming through software. It would force your machine to always only ever use windows.
Once it's legislated that you can't mess with your hardware, it means you then have to use windows.
I think Microsoft's xbox DRM to make sure no other operating system runs easily on the hardware is an entryway into this system.
And I don't like the sound of it
The death of Microsoft will come, there is little question about that. The only problem is that they will fight it, and not just go down. The browser wars will be decided shortly after IE7 comes out (more importantly: if a major security flaw is found), the console wars will be won when Nintendo realise there is a different market now days, sony will keep them out for at least another generation to come... the OS wars could be won by these computers, but its more likely to come when *nix becomes a computer that is more compatable with windows (i know the problem is the other way around, but thats not the general perception). Basically, in most areas, Microsoft has two things going for them: lock-u-in style formats, and the perception that it just works (if it doesnt work, of course its another companies fault). As more and more governments (slowly) get turned to open source for security, more and more companies are going to need programs that can read more then MSOffice documents. These computers (I would assume) are another big step to getting rid of the "MS Office files by default" mindset that 90% of the world is in right now. Once that is gone, it will be only a matter of time before the giant is killed and order will return to the force... er computing industry
Microsoft primary market is U.S. and Europe. For other countries, it doesn't really matter. So I guess it could have impact of Microsoft chances of growh in certain region, but not in overall.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Yeah, linux will kill MS, cheap computers will kill MS, your dog will kill MS ...
Every few months there is someone predicting the demise of Microsoft. What do all these people have in common? They've all been 100% wrong, 100% of the time. I mean, we're talking about a company that could run at a loss for years and not bat an eye.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It seems that while we are debating various MS killer technologies, MS has itself identified the most likely cause of the weakening of its desktop dominance. Mobile Phones and devices. MS has been late in entering the sector (reminds me of the internet), but then the OS has caught up, or surpassed the others in most areas. The new Windows CE 5.0 is pretty solid.
... yeah and gaming console.
If we analyze the submission, the main reasons why people would switch to solid state devices would be
1. Price
2. You don't need a PC to send mails and make documents
3. Compactness and looks better
4. Easier to use
But if these are the factors, wouldn't mobile devices be way way easier than these computing appliances? And guess what, MS has an even better chance at capturing the market than anything else with XBox 360, which is now a multimedia + entertainment + communication
The reasons why people would use PCs would be
1. Powerful machine (For games, multimedia, programming etc etc)
2. Developers, Power users
3. Upgradeability
4. and most importantly, they prefer a PC for some reason.
By the way, about the $220 Mobilis, I don't see it as any different from the Simputer (which was yet another Slashdot favorite, and also from India) but failed to make any waves. IAAI, and I have not seen a Simputer, except at a trade show.
Life is just a conviction.
The Crimes:
A) ALL CAPS (almost) ALL THE TIME
B) Flameworthy headline reminiscent of a Babelfish treatment: (BIG NEWS ON USA MICROSOFT: Slavery to It Is Ending
C) No real news in what follows the "Big News" headline.
D) Anti-Microsoft tied to anti-Americanism without even a thin veil of sophistication:
Why not say: "BIG NEWS: THE WORLD WILL CHANGE FROM BASE. WE ARE NOTHING -- Let Us Be Everything?"
E) OS HISTORY -- GROWING LIKE TOPSY
F) Okay, now let me get this right: all US corporations, including Sun (praised and damned in the same rant) are evil, or can be evil, but Walmart is good?
G) Mentioning that Car Lots have a 108-day supply of SUVs. I don't even know where to begin with that.
I mean, I hate M$ as much as the next guy, but that is the nuttiest troll of an article I've seen in a while.
From TFA: "...has its OS on chips -- where, by the way, viruses can't get to them..."
Why would this stop a virus? Answer: It wouldn't.
BTW, he doesn't tout the success of the Walmart PC, he just notes it's existance. Who said it's successful?
you mean like... no tubes anymore?
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Give me a solid state PC WITHOUT harddisk (now that should drop the price a little). Give it some flash for local settings. Hook it up to the net and use GMAIL, a webversion of Picasa, and let me use some of those 2 Gbytes to store wordprocessor documents. It would be good enough for my mother, and no virus/worm/spyware on earth would be able to get to it. Hell, it wouldn't need a firewall or AV. Combine it with a flatscreen which I can also use as TV. How much would that cost?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Why so often the discussions about who/what will be the MS killer? Surprisingly, these stories always somehow assume that MS will stand completely still in progress/development until this holy grail hits the market.
Does it really matter anyway? Do we want microsoft gone? Let's say there is no microsoft anymore from this very day on. Does the industry improve? Try not to respond emotionally, but think about it.
This is a little like people who'll say China is catching up on America. They're correct, it sure is. In about 50 years they will have caught up.
If microsoft topples, it wont be because of free software - maybe aided but not because. Probably a company like Apple will take the lead over anyone else. They have a superior product, the benefits of open source, an appropriate business model.
I could go on but my dinner is ready... sorry!
it's difficult to market a very cheap computer when there is a $30 to $80 Microsoft tax per machine.
It's in the nature of things that electronics approaches zero cost over time (I've got a $5 calculator that has more features than the $100 one I bought five years ago.) MS can't follow hardware down in price without affecting profits.
It's the nature of things that the status quo always changes, given long enough. But I do agree that the modern so-called MS-Killers aren't anything of the kind.
(I'm a long-term Linux user thinking of switching to a mac soon - and my non-technical friends have mostly been converted oover to Linux or MacOS at this point - but I don't think it's likely to happen to everyone anytime soon)
James P. Barrett
march of the appliance.
/. readers capable of a cogent, concise explanation, without reference materials.
Computer as appliance will eventually lead to, as it has with all appliances, a huge reduction in both specialized workers and people who become motivated to understand how a thing works.
How many people these days understand how NTSC color encoding works while retaining compatibility with black and white sets? I suspect there are fewer than three
How many know how to rebraid the end of aworn buggy whip?
When understanding is no longer necessary, people, for the most part and even if capable, don't bother. The result? Perhaps a slowdown in software innovation. Perhaps an increase in other pursuits where understanding is required to get anything interesting done.
b
The opportunities are endless. They could put it into a waterproof box and let it run the fuel injection system in a low cost automobile -- made in India, of course. And with a little screen, they could combine it with a GPS receiver to make a "portable map" for fishermen and hikers. And maybe it could include a calendar and address book (all open source) and call it a "personal digital assistant". And games -- good gosh, the games it could play. Does Nintendo know about this?
Most people do not remember the days that there used to be computers desiged for home use, the likes of Sinclair, Amiga, ST and so forth. In the 80's they used to be the majority of the computers produced. But they failed to compete with price and development with PC clone makers. Now we are in the situation that we have computers designed solely for accountants and managers where the software is actually completely divorced in terms of design from the hardware, in short the mess that everyone knows that is microsoft. Only brave survivor is Apple (they should own something as they invented the personal computer) but they are for media and high end home users, not aimed at mass marked (I am an OSX user by the way).
So why should the mass market, the home users, use systems designed solely for accountants and managers that were retrofitted for home use? What we need is a computer that have been desiged from ground up for home use with hardware closely designed with software. In short a mass market Apple. Linux could be and has been shown to be the operating system for this dream as it is inexpensive, well supported and customzable as it has been shown in cunsumer products as some DVD players and TiVO style boxes.
Hope we have real home computers comming back soon, has been a while.
This text appears to be a 'wake-up call' for Joe Sixpack and the Stereotypical family (Mary, Andrew, John, Katherine and Paul Stereotypical). It's at indymedia.org, so is really a wake-up call to the activists and libertarians who don't realise that the gadgets you use are another arena to which activism can be applied.
The writer describes a home computer appliance that simply does what a home user might want, without the need for proprietry and non-free intellectual property, home use devices that work like washing machines and fridges. That would require a limitation to be set upon the features available to such a system -- which the system designers would balk at, using such flexible general-purpose hardware -- and the system cut down to that level.
However, the home appliance market has moved to a cyclical model where we replace anything that's slightly defective with the newest model. This applies to computer hardware too, with each family's notebook or desktop computer is usable by most people but also sufficiently gadget-like that people would rather have a newer/prettier model than maintain it properly.
I think it's been tried before: WebTV stuff; personal tablets; VHS-tape sized ultra-portables, with the problem that, in the majority of cases, the hardware wasn't ready. Now we have hardware approaching the complexity required, but I would question the need for such things. U.S. computer consumption works in one way, but the developing nations will work in a different way, because of differing economic considerations and pressures.
An ultra-reliable rock-solid device for schools in African states, China or India would find a market among the untapped beginners markets wherever it was sold if it met the needs of those people. I doubt that the OSS devlopment people will provide one unless someone launches a project to do so; Ubuntu may be a step in the right direction but its hardware requirements (including default use of Gnome 2.10) are perhaps too great for this device.
I am going to have to agree wholeheartedly with you. A super cheap computer will also have to come with supercheap components. The writer of the article seems to forget entirely that 90% of a computers cost (if you buy a reasonably powerful one) is the hardware, always has been. And you usually get what you pay for. The only credible threat to the PC is a massive move to... what? Consoles? Considering that most of the major PC component players are already IN that market that would simply rename what we are already purchasing. Bill Gates is a clever man, I would not bet on him being out of the business until he is pushing up daisies.
I'm an admin for a large national law firm in the US. I must say that really what is going to kill Microsoft is Windoes XP and Server 2003. These OSes are so much better than previous ones from Microsoft that I see no reason to upgrade in the remotely foreseaable future. Software assurance? Forget it. I.E. becomes a problem again? Use Mozilla. MS stops "supporting" them? Big deal. We plan to use these OSes ad infinitum. Now I suspect that most of corporate america is thinking the same thing. So where's the future revenue coming from? That's why MS is moving into Antivirus. They'll move into other enterprise areas also. I'd say they're in for a rough ride. Especially considering their multifront battles with Sony and Google and Linux. I don't wish them good luck.
??? Microsoft never produced a free OS, the IBM PC was not an open source hardware platform. The only area where open standards played a role was that the manufacturers of PC 'clones' refused to support the proprietary closed microchannel architecture and OS/2 that IBM was trying to introduce to monopolize the market.
Open standards are not open source.
Like most slashdot stories on this topic the article is not thought provoking in the slightest, it is simply a repetition of the same prejudices that have been repeated ad-nauseam without any thought at all.
Falling hardware prices have been an issue for years, Dell were selling a full spec PC with LCD monitor for $400 six months ago. Microsoft themselves sell their X-Box for around $200. It isn't very long since the cheapest usefull PC cost over $2000.
The masses go off and pay $50 for one computer game. There is no way that Tomb Raider or EverQuest have even one percent of the intellectual effort of Windows put into them. Open Source games are practically non existent, people are still working on a rip off of Civ 3.
Linux is nowhere near providing a mass market user experience and most people working on Linux have absolutely no interest in making it mass market. What some of them want to do is to make the mass market realise how superior the C shell is to a GUI interface but most of the serious developers understand that they are producing something for techies.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I saw a report on TV over the weekend that said software in China was 90% pirated, and that up until a little while ago, maybe even still, i'm not sure, illegal copies of windows were being used in the Beijing city government. They also state that less people in America, and Canada, have much lower rates of pirating. I really don't think this is true. Maybe they have less rate of total programs pirated, because most NA computers come bundled with a good set of software. But I would still say that 90% of computers, in homes, have pirated software on them. Which really is the issue. Maybe they aren't pirating all their software, but they still don't feel like paying for software. Unless it comes preinstalled on the system, they aren't going to be paying for it. I also believe its harder to monitor in NA because you can't really check what software is installed on most peoples computers. In Asia, they sell it on the street corners. So you can kind of compare those numbers, to the number of licenced copies bought. In NA, nobody buys pirated software, they get it off a friend, who downloaded it from the internet.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Famous computer visionary Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab is developing and promoting a $100 laptop with proposed specifications including a 500-MHz processor, 1 GB of memory, an XVGA display, and free Linux. He envisions 200,000,000 million of them being distributed to countries like China in two years.
..
...
That's 200.000 billion. With about 1 billion people currently living in China, that's 200.000 laptops each. Allowing for you know, like, supply and demand to kick in, that will level out to about 30.000 laptops to each of 6 billion people on earth.
Now, I can't decide: should the joke be about the inherent need of IPv6 or (ooh) a beowolf cluster of these? Sweeeet
And who will shell out the $20 million billion these things will cost?
Ah, the joy of an extra factor 10^6 here and there
Beware of the US spies at the USAID? Give me a fucking break. The article read like a poorly written communist manifesto. It was old, hackneyed, and had no basis in either science or reason.
They may not stay in the OS business for PCs, but that business is going to die anyway. We are not in a static market, technology is moving fast. The time of the $2000 home computer is over. The margins are fading. As with all technology, once it becomes ubiquitous and monopoly strangleholds are broken, it's value drops to zero.
Microsoft made it's billions there already. It will enter your wallet from another direction soon enough, you can bet on it. With the type of cash they have, they can command R&D budgets that are the envy of nations. Discounting their capabilities is a serious strategic error.
You don't have to like them. In fact, they are most definitely capatilistic parasites. But they are rich and they are smart. You will probably buy more from them in your lifetime and you will probably, for a time, even like it.
That is the way of things. Get used to it.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Um, NO. The first model of computer was indeed sold with 4K, but TRSDOS absolutely required 16K minimum, and even then it was barely usable (you had 5K left for BASIC). Try "16K minimum, 32K recommended". And CP/M needed more to be useful because it didn't have 12K ROM BASIC like the TRS-80.
Also, he forgot to add "128M minimum, 512M recommended" for OS X. OS X is a dog (though usable) with 256M. 384M might be enough, but at that point you might as well go for 512M. It'll boot with 64M, though. What he fails to point out is that the later OSen provide many more features (which take up more memory), and application memory requirements go up with time, too. And I'd still rather have a six-year-old Mac than this toy on my desktop, though as a PDA it might be interesting.
Indymedia is the fanfiction.net of journalism, but at least this is clearly a blog rant, not an attempt at journalism. I think he's basically right in that these things could put a dent into the generic PC marketplace, not just Microsoft, but anyone who wants games or multimedia isn't going to be satsified. And it's not like Microsoft is completely ignoring this space... what do you think the Xbox 360 is all about? It's this low-end consumer space, only they're starting from the multimedia/games end of the low-end space, which is the harder problem anyhow.
I don't hear much about Indians being gamers, you know. The Koreans wouldn't be satisfied with a toy like this, that's for sure.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I believe Xbox was a pre-emtive strike against such low end boxes:
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http://www.charlesjo.com/newsletterissue?newslett
Charles Jo
Don't be; MS is losing the embedded market. Check out this picture of the current market:p g
http://linuxdevices.com/files/article056/vdc_28.j
Linux is at 25% and growing. All of the Windows versions together give 24%, and not one of them on their own tops 10%. This is down from a total of a 33% marketshare from 5 years ago.
So Linux already is the Market Leader in the embedded space. And if it keeps growing like it has, MS will just have a fraction of the sales. Sort of like how VxWorks has gone from a 35% to a 12% marketshare over the past 5 years.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
...it is about the software that runs on it.
Microsoft does not dominate the OS market because the OS is more secure than Linux, faster than Linux, or *better* in any other way that Linux. Microsoft dominates because of Microsoft Office. Of course, their tendrils would never rest in just that one place, but that IS the core of the company.
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Put Knoppix or Slax on a CF card, install on a mini ITX Board (or eventually a nano). The result is a machine with all the functionality necessary for day to day functionality. Get the price down just a bit and you have bubble pack PC which is an impulse buy . While servers will still be needed a complementary linux solution will be better any way.
OK, a bit of hyperbole here, but not by far. If you cherry-pick the killer apps, and market the devices properly, only geeks will care about the fact that the underlying machine is a general-purpose computer.
If these consumer devices have an office suite, web browser and media player, most users aren't going to stray from those applications. The afformentioned apps are all commoditized by OS/FS to some degree. Once they are fully commoditized, nobody will care about the operating system or the applications, as long as the *data* can be exchanged with all other systems.
This is neither bad nor good for OS/FS. It's bad for people who develop the software because it means their job is done and they need to find a new one. Only maintenance programmers will be needed, and fewer and fewer of them.
In the end, it will be like arguments over FM vs. AM and what kind of amplifier circuit your radio uses. All those questions are answered, and you don't see too many ads for "analog radio engineer" do you? In other words, all the battles over software that seem so important now will be nothing more than academic when theh software is fully commoditized. Whether or not its proprietary won't matter, because software will all be the same anyway.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
IBM/Microsoft DOS was based on CPM, an open source/free OS
Gary Kildall must be spinning in his grave right now. CP/M was a PROPRIETARY operating system by Digital Research. Maybe there is an open or public domain incarnation today, but it was very much proprietary when DR still extisted. The STANDARDS were open in that the BDOS calls were pubically available, and CP/M variants ran on multiple platforms (8080, 8085, Z80, 8086, 68000) and CP/M machines were usually open architecture S100 machines. You could definitely not obtain a copy of CP/M legally for free nor could you see the source code without a special agreement and extra cost.
The BIOS for the IBM PC was also open
ummm...no it wasn't. Even the BIOS calls weren't 100% fully published. Phoenix and Compaq developed a compatible BIOS against the wished of IBM (it was the one and only part of the original PC that wasn't an off-the-shelf component in a design a small group of hoppyists could easily replicate). The way it went was like this: a group of people disassembled the IBM bios and wrote a detailed specification of all the entry and exit points of all the calls and what effect they had on the system. Then a separate group of developers at different company (Phoenix) who had sworn a legal oath that they had never examined an IBM PC used that specification to create the first IBM compatible BIOS.
It wasn't really Microsoft or IBM that created the advantage of which you speak at all--they merely took good advantage of "open architecture" and the co-operative efforts of others. When it comes to the creation of the industry, others did all the work and IBM and MS used their marketing savvy to take maximum advantage and profit (the ones who did the work were not marketers obviously).
When IBM finally realised that a little firmware was not enough to keep a lock on the market it was too late--they no longer steered the direction of that market. The MCA bus was technically superior to EISA, but it was closed and incompatible and IBMs share of the market they created was less than 50% or at least fast heading that way.
Don't confuse open architecture hardware platforms with Free/open software--they both have an advantage in that information is more free to move about, however control oof the design and direction of the former is still firmly in the grip of a select few hardware vendors: Intel controls the bus and motherboard dimensions, Intel and AMD the CPU and chipset, ATI and NVidia video and so on.
I don't think that outside of the Linux community anyone takes the "death of Microsoft" is a serious prediction - and I would think that even most Linux (or other OSS OS users) will judge this to be more of wishful thinking rather than a well founded serious prediction...
CP/M was not free or open source.
Since the cost of version 1.3 (1.4?*) was only 70 $, this operating system soon became installed on every 8080 computer. CP/M, what's that?
I'll leave adjustment for inflation as an exercise for the reader.
Your vision of the future makes no sense to me. People are constantly coming up with new uses for general purpose computers and these new uses are demonstrably popular with end-users. If you had "cherry picked" the apps in 1993, you would have missed the Internet. If you had done it in 1999, you would have missed Napster. If you did it in 2003, you would have missed iTunes. Today you might miss BitTorrent or Podcasting.
Maybe we will eventually reach a point where we can push the general purpose computing to a remote server but then you are talking about serious dependence on third parties and probably subscription fees (how else are you going to expect QOS). But "experts" have been predicting this "thin client" vision for years and I'm pretty skeptical.
If you look at the history of statements of Ballmer, Gates you will realize that they never have thought MS is untouchable. They see it as a constant war.
This is how I've even seen Microsoft for the last 20 years and this is the first time I see someone else pointing it out. I never saw Microsoft (Gates, really) as a greedy corporation wanting to take over the world. I've always seen him as a pathological paranoid schizophrenic thinking the entire planet was after him. Every one of his move is a "reaction" rather than an action. A "defensive" reaction.
Granted, today there are a lot of people out to get him, but this was not the case not that long ago. Things have changed, the markets have changed quite radically but the mentality remains. For anyone who has spent any lenght of time at the Microsoft campus, this is obviously clear. Microsoft behavior is hard to grasp for those without much understanding of the market and technology (the bulk of people). Few people understand what happens to competition when you control the OS, the development tools and the applications market. The whole anti-trust brouhaha was a joke as it never touched these issues and latched itself to silly browser integration and media players, things that people got used to and did not understand the underlying problems. Oh well... we all know what that means.
If you're interested in more details about the Mobilis here's another article with couple different photos.
Whenever subject of solid state computers comes up I have to throw in a few words about the Audrey, a failed Internet appliance made by 3Com a few years ago. When they didn't sell for $499 3Com dumped them and they are readily available on EBay for about $85.
The Audrey has a 7-inch 640x480 color touch screen built into a 2-inch-thick package that looks like like a Jetson's version of an Etch-a-Sketch. Several dedicated buttons on the front were intended to start dedicated apps like email, address book and web browser. It was made to sit on the kitchen table so you could read the news, send email and look up recipes. Inside is about a P200, 32Mb ROM and a 32 Mb flashcard for RAM. The original built-in software included a telephony app. There is a built-in 56K modem, microphone and two tiny speakers, also 2 USB ports and an audio out jack, and a no-frills wireless IR keyboard. Most of the ones sold on EBay include a USB LAN interface and have replacement software, an embedded Unix called QNX.
When these things came out on the market for such a low price a hacking community quickly sprang up (for example Audreyhacking.com). You can find lots of free goodies such as an mp3 player and home automation software. Because of the touch screen I bought 5 of them to use as UIs for streaming music to stereos all over the house. Anyway, they are fun toys.