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A Replacement for the i-Opener?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the a-no-hassle-internet-appliance dept.

kenh writes "For years my father has gotten along the Information Superhighway with just an i-Opener and an Earthlink account. However, the internet has moved too far ahead for his burned-in-ROM browser to be useful to him anymore, and dial-up is a bit slow these days. While investigating various options (Apple Macintosh, Knoppix Linux/Ubuntu Linux with USB key file storage, WebTV) I didn't find any that were very appealing, for a variety of reasons. Right now, I'm looking for something that has: dial-up support, no update/anti-virus/etc pop-ups, and no software 'update' downloads, support for PDFs, Flash, Javascript, and other features necessary to accommodate more modern websites. The i-Opener was 'foolproof', and if things went wrong, you could just shut it off and try again, Everything I see today lacks that ability (to varying extents)." What decent i-Opener replacements, if any, exist today?

1 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. somewhat off-topic by sinner0423 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    To the submitter : Get a laptop. Seriously, they've never been so cheap as they are today. You can get a *FULL FEATURED* laptop for around $500, if that. A Mac mini or a used Powerbook are two other good suggestions, and both require a lot less maintenance / tweaking.

    -----SHAMELESS PLUG WARNING-----

    Speaking of I-openers, I have a V1 I-opener for sale if anyones interested in it.

    $50 and it's yours, seriously take it off my hands. We'll set up something on Paypal or Ebay, I'll UPS it out the minute I get payment. I can't seem to get rid of the thing. If you're in the greater Chicagoland area, I'll even come gladly deliver & power it up for you myself.

    The screen is a tad yellowed from being so old, but I really only booted it up once or twice, with the intention of modding it, and never got around to it. It still boots to this very day. It's a V1 without the gooped up bios, so you can pretty much go to town with it.

    Not trolling, or bullshitting. E-mail me, we'll talk price. I'm more than willing to go the extra mile to ship this thing out to someone who will actually use it.

    Thanks for your time.