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Hardware

Netpliance Sponsors 100 Creative Mobile Computing 62

Posted by Hemos from the interesting-paradox dept.
Halcyon writes: "The maker of the Flat Panel Linux Box for $99, Netpliance once again gains the interest of the open source community by posting the winners of the Pilot 100 Program. The program originally started by the development department of Netpliance in order to tap a new market created by these $99 Internet terminals turned portable pc's. Some skeptics of Netpliance have speculated that these refurbished machines are a cheap way to conduct R&D through easily bought community members, but I don't see any of the winners complaining. Decide for yourself. " What's strange is that they are trying to get people to put Linux/*BSD on machines, when I had thought that's what they were trying to *stop* before.
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Netpliance Sponsors 100 Creative Mobile Computing More

Netpliance Sponsors 100 Creative Mobile Computing

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  • I mean, Squeak is already works great on a x86 Linux box. Why in the world would you need a guy to port this over? In fact, it can probably exist in iopener's 16mb dataspace using a small linux kernel. I'm betting most of these guys just want a free computer. :)

  • No. (Score:1)

    by Dman33 ( 110217 )
    and will simply need to pay the $25.95 a month in order to keep winning with our great service...

    On a serious note, the developers do not have to pay anything at all. Quoted from Netpliance dev website; "There will be no Netpliance ISP service associated with the device and each developer will be able to keep the device after the Pilot 100 program is ended. "
    I will let you know more details when I get the thing later on this week. AFAIK, it is a pre-March 20 model that can boot off of IDE and has no OS installed.

  • Re:This thing is total vaporware. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you'll notice, Netpliance only ever got 230 submissions. They had to choose 100 of them. *Obviously* many of them are going to be weak.
  • >1. a linux/gui combon in 8mb of flash vs the
    >10mb that QNX uses

    This is deeply unlikely...

    Linux is just too fat. Getting a version of text mode linux with out any gui into 8MB of flash it is tough enough (the IOpener doesn't have a lot of ram so compressed RAM disks are going to have to be damn small). Getting a halfway decent lightweight web browser and micro GUI to sit ontop of that is also more than a little difficult.

    A more credible solution would be to consider one of the Open Source Real Time embedded operating systems like <a href="http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/">eCos</a> or more likely <a href="http://www.rtems.com">RTEMS</a> running <a href="http://microwindows.censoft.com/">Microwindo ws</a>. This would possibly leave enough room in the flash for offline message stores and the like if required.

    Dave
  • hehe now i cut and pasted it without deleting the space

    http://www.attro.co.uk/industrial-computer-hardw are-html/data-sheets/poseidon-120-panel-pc .htm


    .oO0Oo.
  • http://www.attro.co.uk/industrial-computer-hardwar e-html/data-sheets/poseidon-120-panel-pc .htm

    when I cut & pasted it!

    .oO0Oo.
  • it did it again! ah at least it's not me
    .oO0Oo.
  • I have no idea about the TV-out, as I haven't ever tried it. You would think that it would be just a hardware issue, with the exception that some video modes (basically anything much over 640x480) is not going to be useful on the typical TV.

  • Netpliance had to do something to stop people from buying the boxes at $99 and not subscribing - they lost a few hundred dollars every time someone did that, and they weren't going to stay in business long with that happening. They did a knee-jerk reaction at first, but everything I've heard from them since has been fairly mature, in making sure that they don't lose money selling the hardware (which would be rather stupid and moreover, if they went broke, that would be the end of those terminals at any price), while trying to find a way to approach the new demand - namely, the new, unforseen use the community found for them. So they made refurbs available (and I wouldn't complain if I got one, either!). Within days of the fiasco earlier, they said "we want to work with this - how can we do it?" And it looks for all the world like they're trying.

    I'm not sure if that top-of-the-story blurb was supposed to spark discussion, but it came across rather troll-ish. I don't think Netpliance has been acting anti-linux since the first days of the hardware hack, when they had a money-sucking crisis on their hands.
  • The point about the lack of a COM port on the BookPC is a good one, and it should be noted as well that the integrated modem is a crapola Win-Modem which I would suspect is not supported at all under Linux. For me, it doesn't matter, as we are only using the kyb, ps2-mouse, SVGA-video, ethernet and spkr-out ports on our BookPCs.

  • Not to mention the PR.

    - Steeltoe
  • Well, I posted earlier on the subject of the pilot100 program. Now I'd like to shift things and talk about Netpliance and the whole shindig sorrounding them ;)

    Some people will say that I'm tainted because I just got a free IO. Nope, this is my opinion and I'm stickin to it.

    Netpliance had no choice but to change their ToS to force people to buy their ISP service. It's their business model, and that's how it has to be. What if you bought a car for $10, and it was just understood that you bought gas from that dealer. All of a sudden someone found a way to use someone else's gas, that was cheaper. What would the original dealer do? Find a way to FORCE the customer to buy their gas again.

    In essence, this is what Netpliance did. Moderate me Troll, but the Open Source community loves to get their panties in a bunch about stuff like this, but really, business is business.

    I really don't see anything wrong with it, I've recommended I-Openers to numerous people that wanted to get their grandmother or whatever on the Internet without a computer. The device is excellent, and the service is good enough.

    Maybe, just maybe, Netpliance has gotten a hint though, and is going to find a way to get us some neat toys. Maybe the pilot100 is the start of that?
  • BTW, there's a VGA-out port in the I-Opener, so if your grandparents wanna try the 14" monitor for readability, it should work (sync/refresh rates permitting) fine with the IO. Total time invested, about 15 minutes with a soldering iron ;-)
  • Um, golly thanks, but I got that far already...

    Got a link for the device this thread is talking about?! (Hence "link at buy.com" not "link to buy.com....")

    ---
  • Father, I have a confession to make. I did my share of buzz-word tossing in my idea proposal. It was a total shot in the dark, I never win anything anyway. I took an idea I thought would be cool, and proposed it. Albeit with a couple buzzwords to set off their Perl-Powered Judge-O-Matic.

    Oh well, w00t, I get an IOpener. I had 3 ordered, never got one :(

    How did I ever win?
  • You're lucky because you actually heard from them. I emailed them my idea the day the site went up and never a peep from them. I saw two posted 'winners' stating my idea of a home network appliance. I really don't know who is running the business but it sure isn't someone with technical skills/savy.
  • "What's strange is that they are trying to get people to put Linux/*BSD on machines, when I had thought that's what they were trying to *stop* before"

    look at their project goals:
    1. a linux/gui combon in 8mb of flash vs the 10mb that QNX uses

    2. a linux browser in 7.5mb flash (equal to their current product)

    clearly, they want to be able to insert linux and stop paying QNX licensing fees.

  • After the market correction, I think that many tech companies will be reevaluating their position in the marketplace--especially B2C companies that offer expensive loss-leaders. Earlier in the year, Netpliance alienated an entire community of people interested in their product simply because it did not fit their original business plan.

    Now that the market has made it clear that even tech companies must be profitable, Netpliance is trying to reach out to OSS developers who would be willing to either pay a premium for their machines or develop free applications that could make the I-Opener an even more valuable platform.

    As indicated by the chargebacks without customer consent made in March, Netpliance's realationship with its own customers is shaky. They seem to be motivated only by an overriding sense of self-interest even at the complete expense of customer satisfaction. I foresee a major culture clash in their interactions with the OSS community that will ultimately not be beneficial for either party. It's too bad, though, they make a cool product.
  • People have commented on how weak many of the proposals were. There were only 230 entries to choose from. Personally I'm disappointed that my project (thin client for public library use) didn't get picked, but as long as this eventually leads to some code that could be used in that environment, I suppose I'll be happy.

  • Netpliance has finally realized... (Score:3)

    by inquis ( 143542 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2000 @04:03AM (#1023314)

    ...what kind of demand they have for their little LCD box. If I were in Netpliance's shoes, and I saw the field day that hackers had with those boxes, I would have no idea how to begin because apparently people want to use my box for things other than dedicated net access. What would be the easiest way to see what people want to do with the boxes?

    Why, just what they are doing now, of course. If you look on that page, you see all the things that people (potential customers) would like to do with the i-opener if they had the chance. It is a marketing coup: you get 1) free programming through the power of open source, 2) free promotion throughout a possible target audience, and 3) happy potential customers. What more could a company ask for?

    The inquisitor has spoken.

  • TV sucks for text. The iOpener has a sharp screen going for it, plus it is much closer to the person using it than your typical television set.
  • For now, yes, it comes with name-your-flavour-Windows. We'll see next year, with Linux sharing 8% of desktop (50% more than apple), growing strong in Europe, leading the i-server market... Specially if the usb-makers decide to join Linux as the 3D-card makers have done. And the legacy ports... a "secret" way of comunicating good'ol 486 servers with your home-made x86 appliance. (I guess today it was warmer than expected -grinn-)
  • I agree with those commenting that it looked a little too easy to get on the list.

    But as for theories that NPLI is doing this as "only a publicity stunt", it may be so -- but there's one other option that hasn't been considered. As pure market research, that project list is easily worth the $40000-odd in hardware it cost them to get it. And I applaud them for sharing it with us.

    I was going for an MP3 player out of one of mine, and use the serial port for input for my digicam and/or embedded GPS unit (Garmin GPS-25). The other one was gonna run a stripped-down Linux and vgetty to act as a voice mail terminal.

    I didn't sign up, mainly because I figured that while this would be fun for me to do, it didn't really involve enough development on my part to qualify for the programme. I mean, I was just gonna put together some software that other people had already built, and tell the compiler to optimize for size instead of speed. While I've enjoyed poking around with the hardware (headphone-out, line-out, VGA-out, mounting an external IDE CDROM case for MP3s, and lots of fun with a Dremel tool to make sure all my mods looked as though they'd been built into the machine from the factory) I figured my software projects were "too lame".

    Hmph! Looks like I missed out on a free IO! ;-)

    Meanwhile, my congratulations to all whose projects were selected. While some may have the look of "gee, someone got a free IO for doing that", some look very promising. But the bottom line is that whatever the project, folks are getting their hands dirty and their feet wet, and a company is rewarding them for it. This can only be a Good Thing.

    The beauty of open source (and the thing I overlooked when evaluating my project) is that with open source, "nothing's too lame". Because we're developing on our own time, we're allowed (even encouraged!) to follow our whims.

    Out of any 100 ideas, only a handful will find market acceptance anyways - but only in our development model can we afford to make the 99 mistakes before we get the Killer App. We make lots of mistakes, but we can afford to, so we learn from them. We evolve. We - to resurrect a much-abused term these days - innovate.

  • To clarify - "nothing's too lame" - I really meant "no idea is too lame to develop", not that no written code is too lame to release.

    Poor/unmaintainable/insecure code always sucks.

    (P.S. Thanks for calling me on my misuse of "allowed". To develop software is an inherent right, not something bestowed upon us.)

  • This thing is total vaporware. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I sincerely doubt that Netpliance will gain much from this program. Out of the 100 people that they are sending I-Op's to, they would be lucky to get 5 decent, innovative projects. If that many.

    How do I know this? Well, I am one of the winners, and all I did was throw in a bunch of buzzwords and catchphrases to increase my chances of winning the hardware. "Smart home" "Self-aware appliances" "Java middleware" "Wireless authentication" You get the idea.

    I, like most other people, will turn this unit into a MiniLinux based gateway / firewall / bedside alarm clock and mp3 player. But I initially considered that proposal to be too tame and not likely to win a free I-Op, so I made up this really impressive sounding proposal. The kind of proposal that I could possibly follow up on, only if I had the funding and the time. (And I have neither)

    It turns out that more than half of the winning proposals are as tame, if not moreso, than my real plans. Most of the proposals that are featured sound clueless as hell. It makes you realize just how BAD the non-winning proposals must have been.
  • It is a marketing coup: you get 1) free programming through the power of open source, 2) free promotion throughout a possible target audience, and 3) happy potential customers. What more could a company ask for?

    Not taking a loss at every sale?

    Kaa
  • If it bears fruit then this will have been a remarkable turn of events. And if not, no small loss for Netpliance (people are doing this anyway). Some of the ideas are actually really good ones and could lead to future market potentials very easily. Its risks like this that make companies great, or kill them completely. Now Netappliance will need to prove themselves in the free market economy. I'm just happy to see them have the balls to do so.

    Its also a model companies like those that belong to the RIAA, computer hardware/software, and mre should consider. Open-sourcing leads potentially greater returns at smaller risk, by spreading the development out to hundreds or thousands of people. I mention RIAA, because they could so have easily joined the on-line mp3 movement and easily grabbed massive influence. When companies choose to innovate we all win, thanks for a great start Netpliance! I hope your efforts succeed and the marketplace rewards you.

  • Good point. QNX costs big bucks and no mistake. I just hope noone tries to get X on there. There are some nice and tiny little GUIs available for linux now. The only advantage to porting X is you get the apps for free, but lets face it, most X apps are dogs, the good ones are based on either KDE (Qt) or Gnome (GDK) platforms and getting them to work on a new GUI is a question of changing the toolkit, not the app.
    --
  • Don't knock yourself or the other MP3 box developers, heck, that was the first thing I thought of and built :-)

    Ideas you may wish to take back to NPLI for future hardware revisions:

    • Replace the IDE port with a SanDisk port and make it accessible. The thing boots off the 16M SanDisk, and a user-supplied 32- or 64-M CompactFlash card can be used to "load" the stereo with MP3s.
    • NTSC-out. The 10" screen is cool for day-to-day use, but if you hooked the MP3-loaded CompactFlash-enhanced thing up to your TV and ran visualizations... This would require a major redesign of the motherboard, but might still be cheaper than going active matrix on the display.
    • Wireless (IR) keyboard interface and software to support the use of a remote control.
    • Line-out, which, as we know, is already 99% built into the existing design.
    Basically, I'm thinking there's a secondary market - there's obvious demand for turnkey MP3 solutions. MP3 solutions that give the user a "home audio component" feel plus things like TV visualizations that they can't get anywhere else may be a big market.

    Since NPLI derives revenue from service fees, how about either adding a CDROM built-in and phoning-home to get the CDDB data. The aggregated data of who listens to what and when could be resold. The user's value-add is that it's a CD player that tells them what the name of the song is, as well as has all that funky NTSC-out visualization.

    Not terribly nice from a privacy point of view, I know, but hey, it's what CDDB is probably doing anyway ;-)

  • An AC, waiting for his IO, and deserving of a moderation uptick, writes:
    > I'm a bit disturbed that the Netpliance page mentions that the internal IDE header has been disabled.

    Maybe in BIOS, but everyone who's bought one has been able to hack it. It just takes a little more effort (either boot with a hard drive and proper geometry settings, or remove the epoxy from the old BIOS socket and swap in a new chip) now than it did in March :-)

    If you've ordered one, it'll eventually get there, and you'll eventually be able to hack it.

    The AC continues:
    > If Netpliance just wanted a stable Java environment and a suitable browser, they'd need to look no further than Tao's Elate for the OS and JRE side and Espial's Escape for the browser solution

    When you get your IO, hack away. The resources (Ken's BBS, the IO mailing list @scsiboy.com, and all the web sites) are all still out there. I for one would love to see what you come up with. I wimped out and got a 6.4G hard drive for one of my boxen, but I still have another one for which "no moving parts" is my design objective.

    > This is obviously about saving money, not delivering the best product, although in light of how much money us cheapskates have cost them (have a heart, guys, you might end up working at a startup with a crappy business model someday), they probably need the break to stay alive

    The "arms race" between NPLI's hardware mods and the hackers countering them served only to provide the hackers with amusement. The real way to stop sales to the hacker community (as you correctly point out, this is something they pretty much had to do) was to beef up their TOS. Which they did.

    It's just that with the credit card charging issues to people who really did buy them for their parents, and their strong-arm phone tactics on people who ordered pre-TOS (trying to tell them that the new "$500 termination fee" TOS applied retroactively) they (IMHO) overstepped the bounds of good taste and sound business practices.

    That said, these tactics have stopped now, and NPLI has behaved well for the past month or two. Yes, they're constrained in their ability to meet demand for the units, but they no longer appear to be engaged in questionable business practices.

    (Sadly, that was another reason I passed on the Developer's Corner. At the time I would have been most tempted to sign up, they were (IMHO again) really skirting the limits of the bait-and-switch laws, I just didn't trust them. I'm immensely gratified to see they've cleaned up their act.)

  • How much does 100 Netpliance boxes cost them? What if just one of the 100 projects produces a killer app? Something that makes it hugely marketable? How much is that worth?
  • The beauty of open source (and the thing I overlooked when evaluating my project) is that with open source, "nothing's too lame". Because we're developing on our own time, we're allowed (even encouraged!) to follow our whims.

    Second, maybe. First, no.

    As to developing on a whim, anybody who develops on his own time -- open source or not -- is free to (not allowed, but free to -- important difference) to do whatever he wants. On my whim I can write some code that I'll never show to another person in my life. Open source has nothing to do with it.

    Whether "nothing's too lame", I beg to disagree. The world has enough ugliness as is, and more is not really needed. As long as you write for yourself, it's OK 'cause the ugliness is going to be its own punishment. But I object to people releasing lame code/applications for public consumption. At best it's a waste of everybody's time, at worst it's a slow and non-obvious corruption of data or a root-producing security hole.

    Of course, everybody is free to release what he wants. I am not arguing for prohibiting people from releasing code or for licensing programmers (as some misguided souls have suggested). All I am wishing for is a little wisdom from people about to unleash their creation upon the unsuspecting world. I know, I know, I am going to be disappointed. But at least I can bitch in Slashdot about it...


    Kaa
  • I've seen these around, and I've been wondering about their compatibility with Linux and BeOS. More specifically, does the TV-out functionality require drivers, for these operating systems, or is TV-out a hardware issue only? Is this true for most video cards with TV-Out?
  • True, but the iopener works extremely well in the limited room they have in the trailer. The iopener and keyboard w/integrated mouse takes up about the same amount of room as the 14" monitor did. Now they have a more readable image than before, plus more room in their trailer.

    They also find the integrated mouse easier to use, no more hitting the edge of the mouse pad, or grabbing the mouse sideways.

  • There is an unpopulated CF slot on the MB of my v1 I-opener. Of course the case would have to be redesigned and an internal HD would not be possible without adding another IDE controller. I don't know if the unpopulated CF slot is on its own IDE bus or if the CF slot would be the Master device on the same chain the Sandisk is on.
  • Speaking as one of the winners in the I-Opener contest, our team worked hard on it's submission which was pages long.

    The silly little summary posted on the Winner's page was just the cinnamon of the sticky-bun.

    This is a great gesture.

    The real problem with Netpliance's approach is not a lack of generosity, but a lack of interest in pursuing the profitable aspects of opensource develpment.

    One of my clients has an application (that I wrote for them) that absolutely screams for this box. Even if I-Opener priced them at the E-machine level ($550), it would still pay this client to purchase I-Openers for the reduced noise, additional desk space, virus resistance and ease of deployment. My needs were flexible. I needed cost/availability of Non-applianced I-Openers, or a pricing plan to pay royalties to have their design produced in Tiawan for my client, completly at my client's expense.

    As much as this may seem like easy money for Netpliance the answer was a very firm "No, thank you."

    The summary of extensive, well-considered replies I recieved, was that bringing the Internet to the the entire planet's non-technical population was all they were planning to do in the near future, but they "appreciated my interest."

    Even with this business model, The Pilot 100 program will yeild several projects that dove-tail nicely with their current offering. In particular, the employment of the I-Opener as the next generation stereo that downloads music of your selected type, and plays it unbidden will be pleasantly cool. Superfriendly X10 control from a quiet, solid state computer (Andrew Williams and My submisssion), will be a profitable addition as well.

    I hope their business plan changes down the road. I'd really like my client to buy 1200 of these things, so they can cut support costs, and most of all of licensing fees to a Big Company(tm).

  • Re:Too late. We're moving to iPaq (Score:3)

    by SoftwareJanitor ( 15983 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2000 @05:51AM (#1023331)
    Check these little "BookPC" boxes out... They use the same i810 chipset as the iPaq, but include both a floppy and CD-ROM drive (or DVD-ROM, depending on configuration). It is possible to buy them with no OS installed (which is what we did). You can find more info on them here:

    http://www.pal-tec.com/BOOKPC.htm [pal-tec.com]

    We bought ours through buy.com, and they were also significantly cheaper than the iPaq. Performance between the iPaq with a P III-500 wasn't significantly different than the BookPC with a Celeron 500.

  • Netpliance posted their quarterly report [netpliance.com] not too long ago. In it are figures describing the number of subscribers they've gotten so far, and a line item for "appliance subsidies". Divide it out, and you get about $400 per subscriber. Add the $99 iOpener charges the customer, and you get $500/machine.

    Schwab

  • I believe that would be "Linux is only free if your time has no value." Do a search on the whole phrase and you will see it attributed to none other than jwz in several places, I could not quickly locate the original interview.

    jwz certainly has some choice quotes to his name. Check out some of them in the "Unix Hater's Handbook". But he hasn't even updated the links section of www.jwz.org in quite a while, not to mention Gruntle. I guess now that he owns a night club he's got nothing to complain about anymore. Must be nice.
  • Yeah right.
    The pigs are fueled, watered and ready for take off.

    Whilst what you say is all true. To achieve equal functionality with Linux rather than QNX or RTEMS will require a lot of bloat. Linux is bloated. I've spent the last couple of months working on a contract using ucCLinux which is the most pared down version yet. Trust me, Linux is bloated for deeply embedded systems like the iopener.

    In many respect Linux is like Window CE (except that CE has better realtime response). All hype, lots of eager followers and very little performance. The only thing it has going for it is that it is Open Source. Keep it on the goddamn desktop where it belongs! (and does a very good job thankyou)
  • First, I sign up for this developers corner thing. Then, I get spammed big time 'cause the zipperheads include ppl who did not want to be included, and mic-configured their majordomo. I unsubscribe, only to have this 'contest' slip away.

    I'm not impressed by this company. Not impressed at all.
  • I submitted what I think was a unique idea to use a netpliance in a point of sale system at a store. However, none of these types of applications were accepted. Perhaps I should have thrown in the words wireless, mp3 and car somewhere in my suggestion...
  • After their initial (disasterous) attempt to create a list presence, they seem to have gotten a better grip on dealing with the open-source community. Also, I've done some digging, and found myself more charitable to them when I learned more about them... both in the /. followup and from several friends in the Austin tech community. Their road is still rocky, so we may see these things on the surplus market sooner rather than later, but it might also be a Good Thing (C) for the open source community to see this concept of low-end entitlement grow some.
  • Some skeptics of Netpliance have speculated that these refurbished machines are a cheap way to conduct R&D through easily bought community members,

    No kidding. Who cares though? This is the same sort of thing as corporations sponsoring university research projects. As long as both sides are happy why complain?
  • Well, it's been just a little bit to late. We've already agreed on moving from PC to iPaq (http://www.compaq.com/ipaq ) machines. It will be a blessing for overcrowded desks.

    iOpener + MOD-Kit iscool, but also still too far away in the future for us.

    Anyway, Netpliance movement is heading the right direction (cheap Linux boxes will get sold better than hot cookies). And it's way ahead of other "internet appliances" that haven't yet arrived to the market.

    Maybe I'll get one for home ;)
    .
    .
    .
  • If you've got two grand spare check these out

    http://www.attro.co.uk/industrial-computer-hardw are-html/data-sheets/poseidon-120-panel-pc .htm

    here [attro.co.uk]


    .oO0Oo.
  • "Some skeptics of Netpliance have speculated that these refurbished machines are a cheap way to conduct R&D through easily bought community members..."

    Replace the word "Netpliance" with "Linux", and you'll see how ridiculously stupid the skeptics sound.
  • Too bad you can't buy the iPaq without a Microsoft product... that could lower the price even more.

    I'm also not sure I like to see the parallel and serial ports called "Legacy..." :-)

    ---
  • This is a better deal than a lot of open-source projects -- at least here they give you some hardware to work with that they don't want back! On another note, I'm curious whether the donation of the hardware constitutes "payment", and if even technically those producing software for it would be liable for income taxe. Granted, a $99 box is not much income, but the IRS being the IRS...
  • I just read around 30-40 of those submissions, and they are weak as hell!!!!! Okay, perhaps there is 5 neat ideas there. But they all wanna build an mp3 player, la la la, "impressive snake!"
    This is just a publicity stunt as far as I am concerned.

  • Has anyone compared one of these things to say WebTV.

    I bought a WebTV for my grandmother when they first came out and it has been a big hit.

    How does the i-Opener actually stack up? From reading their webPR it is hard to say. Other than the fact that it contains some Open Source code, and or can be hacked to run Linux, what has it got going for it?

    Thanks
  • Obviously they can't make money on these machines at $99... they want to sell the ISP service with them, and that's where they are going to make their cash - they hope.

    So they don't care what OS you run on it - as long as you pay them their $20 a month (or whatever it is) to get the service from them.

    That's why they were discouraging the conversion - because then you aren't tied to them any more, and they los money on the hardware. People were treating it as if $99 was the actual price tag - and trying to dump the ISP service - so they could just get a cheap, relatively protable, linux box with a flat-screen.
  • I had built a computer w/14" monitor for my mom's parents to get them on the internet. They had trouble reading the text(the old video card I used only handled 640x480), and were way confused whenever they would click on a window behind the one they were using "gee, where did my letter go?" Remember, they grew up before the freeway system existed. Using computer's is not a part of their life experience.

    Over the holidays I saw the iopener on display and thought it might be easier for them to use, no windows to accidently click on. Even though the iopener only has a 10" screen, they have no trouble reading it at all(I suspect the 800x600 resolution helps). Now both sets of grandparents are using the iopener for email. They might also be web browsing, I just don't know.

    WebTV would not have worked well for my mom's parents, they are mobile(live in a trailer, summers in Wisconsin and winters in Texas) and thus only have a 13" TV. The picture quality isn't that great, and WebTV would have been unreadable.

    Based on using my laptop as a DVD player on my TV, I'd think something like WebTV might be usable. However, my TV is properly calibrated(I have the laser disk w/the TV test patterns and the blue filter for color adjustment). When I hooked up the laptop to my aunt's TV the text was unreadable. I suspect most people do not have their TV properly calibrated, and thus would get a crappy picture using something like WebTV. It's probably part of the reason the old C= 64 only used a 40 column display, they were designed to use TV sets as monitors.

  • Developer(I guess) perspective (Score:4)

    by David D ( 16194 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2000 @03:08AM (#1023348) Homepage
    I'm one of the people that got into the pilot100 program, and I have to admit, most of the projects, including my own, were kinda weak. I don't know what all got submitted (Netpliance: Post all submissions!) but a lot of the ones chosen were exactly the same. "I want to configure an IO to play Mp3s"

    What can I say though, I'm getting free hardware for the first time in my life. More than I can say for any other company. And, I'd like to actually see if I can pull of my project, in some form atleast.

    Don't get me wrong - other developers - some of the project ideas were also really cool. But the majority was same ol same ol.
  • ...it's a kick-ass little x-mame box. Oh yeah.
  • Dear Opened Source Enthusiast,

    Congratulations! You may already be a winner! Your Netpliance computer is waiting for you. Winners will will receive accomodations in their own homes, and will simply need to pay the $25.95 a month in order to keep winning with our great service...

    ----

  • When you BUY a box from them, it has to be new, they can't be selling you one that someone sent back. Yes, on in warrenty exchange they can send these out again, but that's about all. These are machines that they will have on their hands otherwise, since I doubt that they would start liquidating thru ONSALE or such.

    This company has a serious problem. Nice concept, lousy implementation. They have managed to totally blow their retail channels apart (first CC now COMPUSA). They are quite backlogged on their site as to new units (roughly 4 weeks) so their retail channels will go hang for a long time. This is because they will serivce their own site first since they can enforce their TOS there before they provide the retail channel where they can't/won't/or are unsure of.

    I wish them luck, they will need it...

  • Netpliance watching out for themselves. (Score:3)

    by Wellspring ( 111524 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2000 @04:43AM (#1023352)

    Some skeptics of Netpliance have speculated that these refurbished machines are a cheap way to conduct R&D through easily bought community members...

    So what? This is the whole idea of releasing source code. The community gets cheap, cool xterms, they get cheap R&D. If a big Open Source project starts, sure they lose some code control, but in exchange they get an R&D Department that dwarfs MS, et al.

    That's the reason Netscape released its code. Everyone benefits. You get vastly improved R&D and mindshare from the developer community. They get control over the code development, and a product that they want badly enough to be coding for themselves. Customers get peer-reviewed security and stability, feature rich and inexpensive products. Stockholders get improved profits due to quality and lower development and support costs. Everyone wins. Except your closed source competitors.

    I'm not sure I would call myself a Netpliance skeptic (I'd love to see a computer that even my mom could use), but there is nothing wrong with pursuing a profit for their shareholders. This move maximizes that profit, so more power to them.

    If this hurts your altruism gland, just remember that that stock price will be people's retirement plans and college savings funds. Or that when people make more money, that they tend to give more to worthy but unprofitable charities.

  • Linux could easily fit into the memory provided.

    Point in case the lin7k project, Linux for Psion 5 and related hardware. I personally have had linux running on my Psion 5, purely in the standard 8MB RAM, no not even a compact flash disk. Admitedly there is only so much you can do with such a device but it boots and will give you a shell, even network using Slip!

    The iopener comes with 8MB of Flash and 32MB of RAM, build a tiny kernel which just supports the iopener hardware and a compressed initrd image and you probably have a very functional system. X may also be possible, even ignoring projects such as nanoX, XFree86 v4.0 includes a mini X server for devices such as the itsy.

    Linux does not have to be Fat, RedHat were talking about their embeded linux project at the UK Linux Expo las week, kernels as small as 32k were mentioned.
  • I liked the overall idea of the contest because it generates ideas and promotes new and unusual ways to utilize the technology. However in this case, all of the projects that were winners, or at least all the ones I cliocked on, were just vaporware. Most narratives started with "I would like to develop". Sheesh, at this rate Anyyone could have submitted stuff like, I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will fetch the paper for me in the morning, or maybe I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will feed all the worlds hungry perople.

    So, next time they have a contest just fill in the blanks.
    I would like to develop an Netpliance application that will__________________________.

  • Got a link at buy.com?

    Thanks,

    -Eric

    ---
  • I'm hacking one too(but am not part of the pilot 100). I've got Linux installed, beta USB ethernet going(though it locks up hard on occasion - waiting for 2.4.0 to be finished). I'm making mine into an MP3 player w/photo slide show for the screensaver.

    I found MP3BOX [mp3sb.org] which has a way-cool CGI [mp3sb.org] interface so you can control the MP3 playback from any system on your network!

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