This isn't about cheap computers, and it isn't about open source. It is a reaction to a reaction. Wall St. reacted badly following the NPLI IPO, when they heard some greasy hackers had a way to subvert their perception of the business model. Note that this is the venerable NSC Webpad, and NPLI isn't the only one to take this fine platform forward (see Qubit). If they're smart, Netpliance won't care - just sell them. No one expects them to make money for quite some time anyway. Besides, their competition will have versions with hard drives, PCMCIA slots and 11mbps Wireless networks very very soon. Whether these systems will run Windoze, BEos, Linux (my bet) or CP/M really shouldn't matter to these guys. The real money will be delivering applications (beyond Mozilla).
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Not sure - but I bet TiVo can be... I wonder why no one has done this.
This isn't about cheap computers, and it isn't about open source. It is a reaction to a reaction. Wall St. reacted badly following the NPLI IPO, when they heard some greasy hackers had a way to subvert their perception of the business model. Note that this is the venerable NSC Webpad, and NPLI isn't the only one to take this fine platform forward (see Qubit). If they're smart, Netpliance won't care - just sell them. No one expects them to make money for quite some time anyway. Besides, their competition will have versions with hard drives, PCMCIA slots and 11mbps Wireless networks very very soon. Whether these systems will run Windoze, BEos, Linux (my bet) or CP/M really shouldn't matter to these guys. The real money will be delivering applications (beyond Mozilla).