On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 09:52, A. Pagaltzis wrote:

* Jodi Thomson <jodi@waikato.ac.nz> [2004-04-14 23:46]:
> Actually I should say majority of 'Computer' users. People who
> want to be able to type their Letters, Email their friends,
> Surf the web and listen to their MP3's without having to set
> anything up if they can avoid it.

Sounds like KNOPPIX. :-P

I'm always amazed that Computing Appliances never took off. It seems that the market wants to spend thousands of dollars on computers they use 10% of the functionality of. Would it not make more sense to spend 10% of the money and use 100% of the features of a Computing Appliance?

You could develop a device that was the size of an LCD screen that had a wireless keyboard and mouse. It would have 2 USB ports. One to plug in a an optional printer for printing your letters and emails, and the second for plugging in your digitial camera for sending pictures of your children to people. It would be entirely solid state with no HDD. It would run a very customized Linux distro. It could be produced sold for about 200-300 USD. Probably less depending on the size of the LCD.

I want Unix pipes for appliances. Ie, one tool that does one thing well and a universal interconnect (Ethernet/xml/zeroconf).

I want 'ls -la |grep "^\." | wc -l' but as Computer Appliances... :)

Regards




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