The main problem is that no one has a reason to mass produce the components at the price points that they'd have to be. Who's interested in making a 1 gig hard drive for $8? Or 32 MB RAM for $5? Or a 100 MHz CPU for $10?
At least in the current market, you can't get the bulk high enough to make it worth it.
Heck, virtually all PDAs cost more than what you're talking about.
Some of the game consoles e.g. the XBox are lost leaders i.e. they actually cost more to make than they're selling for. Microsoft plans to make the difference (and more) back by selling games.
Not quite at the $100 mark, but certainly cheap nonetheless, Linspire is aiming to attack this market as well. Plus, they have done a lot to make a very Windows-compatible Linux build.
The issue they need to worry about is support costs. One phone call could wipe out the entire gross margin on the sale. Less of a problem in 3rd world countries where labor costs are lower, but still an issue.
Nine out of 10 drivers just need a 90-HP engine plastic-seated hatchback. Don't see many of them on the road, either. People want the 200 HP they never use, the sport-tuned suspension they never use, or the off-road and towing they never use, just to have the option of using it if they need/want it.
Let's skip the supply-side issues - where is the demand? The target market is presumably poor people and newbies. Newby in Best Buy - "Can I put Office on this?" "No, but it comes with an office emulator which is very similar." "We use Office at work, I need MS Office." "This will open and save MS Office documents, it has most of the same features as office." "I don't know, I'd rather just get the same thing." Or "Can I play "Half-Life 2 on this?" Or "What software and support are available...you mean, of those 10 rows of software you have over there, only half of one shelf can be used on this...I don't care if YOU think everything I need is on that shelf, I want options!" "Linux? Does that run on Windows XP?"
The $100 computer will fall in the same marketing black hole as the $5000 car from the '80s. Even Hyundai now sells leather.
My belief is that the market is there for cheap PCs and that the cost of Windows and the demand for compatibility with it has been the real issue.
Tech support? I must be the only one who remembers the 1980s, when there was NO SUCH THING as tech support for PCs. Or the tech support was extremely limited, anyway. What tech support existed was there for whatever software you purchased--and if you used free software, you didn't expect any more tech support than you could get from friends, clubs, etc.
Part of the price you'll pay for a super cheap PC is that you don't get much tech support. If you build the PC right you won't need much, either.
Look at the package that SolarPC is putting together. Looks quite attractive. Perfect for grade school students, schools, etc. I'd buy one for my boy.
There is a huge market for cheap DVD players, cheap CD players, etc. No reason there shouldn't be one for very basic PCs either.
By the way, yeah, the Xbox et. al. are loss leaders. But here's my point: those machines actually have far more horsepower than is required to do decent web browsing, word processing, checkbook balancing, or email. Indeed, you could do all those things quite effectively on machines with considerably less power.
All you need is a cheap processor--and very cheap processors ARE available, they're still used all the time in embedded systems--cheap RAM, and cheap storage. I imagine that with off-the-shelf components today you could build a PC running at, oh, about 500 mhz, with about 128 meg of RAM and about a gig of storage, an ethernet port, and a basic SVGA video controller for well under $100.
Very achievable. Once again, it depends on what your market is and what you offer that market. Tech support? You get no more than you get for your DVD player. Other than that you're on your own.
Part of what you're paying for is that it's basically disposable. Short replacement warranty, just like a DVD player. Want new features? Buy a new one, just like a DVD player.
There are currently tens of millions of people in the world still running Windows 98 on machines running well under 500 Mhz with less than a gig of hard drive space. And perfectly happy with them since they don't do any more than surf the web, do email, maybe make some greeting cards or write some papers for school or church. Machines they have never even thought about upgrading or adding anything to.
This kind of PC isn't for people like me. Although actually I might buy one as a spare for the bedroom, or for my 7 year old son.
Who "upgrades" their VCR? Well okay, some lunatics do but most don't.
Cheap, disposable, no support, fine for greeting cards, papers? A used PC has all of those characteristics. A glut of them exists, I suspect someone could make a market out of wiping hard drives, reinstalling Windows 98 or ME or whatever was on them before, and reselling them undercutting whatever Linux machines one could produce. For, yes, $100 or so. Like cars. The difference between this and other "appliances" is that there really is no reason to buy a newer DVD player or CD player until the old one breaks. With computers (like cars) there often is, so there exist plenty of excess older units. Goodwill used to have whole outlets devoted to this - I expect they still do.
The problem is that one can't really get 1 gig HDs in quantity nowadays. There isn't much of a market for them, so no one really makes them.
Hell, look at things like the ipod. The one cost raiser in it is its tiny form factor, but other than that it's a weak computer with minimal storage (the cheaper model, or consider competitors).
On an item this big and delicate, shipping becomes a concern. Don't forget that you need a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.
Go solid state. Use flash memory or NVRAM. I've got 1G of storage in my digital camera.
On the other hand, I know this has been tried before and failed. It may be that now, current machines are so overpowered and standards sufficiently mature that you could do it.
Rvman: There's a big used market for PCs, just as with used cars. Problem is there's no warranty on them, and they're notoriously flaky.
The difference with cheap news cars is that government safety, emissions, and fuel consumption regulations make making really cheap ones impossible. If you could make a cheap $4,000 car that drove reliably and had a decent warranty, you could sell them, I guarantee it.
I note that there is no comparable market in used VCRs or DVD players of significance. It's there but not much.
Chris: While I used an HD as an example, if you examine the linked article they're not actually using hard drives, they're using solid state storage, which is these days quite cheap to come by.
I'm amused by you guys claiming there's no market for something like this when there is obviously a huge used market at this kind of price point, and there are several companies now planning on offering products in this price range again.
Just because you don't want one of thees doesn't mean no one does. I'd kill to have something like this for my mother. %-)
...although I should say that the real price point on the consumer end right now is around $200-300. The $100 is on the wholesaler/distributor end.
Dell is currently selling brand new systems at around $350. But they're still standard PCs. Build a dedicated system around an open source OS and one that's designed as solid state and to be dispoable and not particularly expandable, and you'd have a product people would buy.
After all, they're already buying them in droves. They're just putting up with the flakiness and non-standard nature of used hardware.
There're a lot of ways in which the computer market is different from the rest of the electronics market. For example, I would be quite pissed if my Playstation crashed in the middle of Final Fantasy--but a computer is expected to crash every once in a while. I don't get viruses on my cell phone or fax machine--but apparently the situation is so bad that a Windows computer can be compromised by malware, spyware, and adware within twenty minutes, which is not enough time for one to download all the necessary security updates. VCRs don't take two minutes to turn on. The average refrigerator lasts about 10 times longer than the average computer. Certainly one could say that there's a market for a more reliable computer, but it oddly does not seem to exist.
My computer has locked up once this year that I can remember. Proper maintenance will do wonders (defrag, cleanup, scandisk, etc), and being picky about what you install and download.
Computers probably last longer than refrigerators, but they just become obsolete early on.
Knock on wood with your cellphone. There have been hoax cellphone virus' for years, but of late they are real. In either case you have to unwittingly accept the virus, i.e download a ringtone, or accept a text message.
Once called Cabir:
Cabir uses the Bluetooth wireless peer protocol to propagate, copying itself to other Bluetooth devices as far as 30 feet away, depending on the environment.
The other is dubbed Skulls:
When run, the Skulls program breaks all the links to Symbian system applications and replaces the icons with images of skulls. Third-party applications are not affected, Hypponen said, allowing users that have installed a non-Symbian file manager to actually find and delete the malicious program files, cleaning the phone.
The one called Cabir will as soon as it is on your phone will try to get other phones within 30 feet to accept it also. I believe both are trojan virus'.
The "glut" of cheap PCs are overwhelmingly PCs with SIMM memory chips, and not very much memory. Trying to add more memory, or replace bad memory, can cost more than the computer. The fantastically cheap memory chips advertised are always DIMMs. You can easily spend $200 on SIMMs (if you could find them) just trying to get an old machine enough memory to run Win 98.
I have a home network with five computers, one for each of us. I am the power user with a newer computer with XP. The other four are used, with SIMMs running Windows 98, and nobody in my family needs any more than that. We have one kid playing old toddler games, two kids who mostly use the internet and write papers for school, and a spouse who almost exclusively uses his computer for the internet.
I am tired of fussing with their cranky used computers, but I can't afford 4 x $300 to get them new Dells. I could afford 4 x $100, or 4 x $150, or if they were $200 get a couple this year and a couple next year.
I think that there is definitely a market for these cheap computers, especially as more and more households have multiple computers. You only need one or two that can do the heavy lifting, and the rest can just generally be browsers. If my kids need to do something that their computers aren't capable of, they come and use mine.
Think about it: if you had five TVs in your house, would they all be big screen flat panels with picture in picture? Or one or two really big ones, the rest just little portables for kitchen, bedroom, basement, whatever?
Not to mention what a cheap PC could do to give inner-city and rural kids a chance to get on an equal footing with the kids whose families have had computers for years. If you get a kid started with a computer that browses and writes papers, then they can move on to more powerful machines later on. The key is to get them comfortable with keyboarding and researching and how you do things with a computer.
Maybe you could swing it in 2 1/2 or 3 years with this for $299.99
AMD DT-2400 processor, 256meg DDR, 40GB HD, CD-RW and 450W power. Also integrated Audio, 8X AGP video, LAN and Windows XP. Oh and a Lexmark X2250 printer.
I'm not convinced that a computer that cheap could be sourced in a way that it was more bulletproof than a used PC, but I may be wrong. My expectation is that a $100 PC would be about as reliable as a Yugo - that is, not very. Cheap components tend to be sourced generically, which means driver issues, which means unreliability, though maybe Linux can mitigate some of that. Demand for that system would be weak, I think.
Actually, I'd guess that many/most sales of this thing might be to folks trying to set up massively parallel Google-ish processor farms where individual units don't have to be particularly reliable. In that case they'd be putting their own software on, anyway, and a Linux based system may suit their needs ok.
It is true that safety systems drive up the cost of new cars, but I still think that the existence of large stocks of used cars truncates the bottom of the car market - it would be POSSIBLE to build a $6000 new car at absolute base in engine and components. It just would be less attractive and probably less reliable than a $6000 used car. I think the same would hold for the $100 PC. (The cheapest new cars on the existing market run maybe $9000.)
I note from the solarlite website that this $100 PC advertised has no monitor or printer, and is intended for large-batch sales to, say, third world education systems. I suppose it hooks up to a TV like my old C64 did. Printing would also be an issue. I'm skeptical that they a) could sell at anything like a reasonable price-point to a retail market, and b) could be used in a home environment without significant add-ons. ($50 for keyboard, mouse, and printer, plus whatever of the CD/floppy/hard drive set you would need - the included flash drive isn't going to be much bigger than what is necessary to run the beast without saving files, though it is a good way to give this thing some usable memory cheap.)
The "easy" way to $100 PCs is through, essentially, smart terminals which access some sort of network. That, of course, requires a server for these clients, which would cost. Didn't Larry Ellison try something like this a few years back? I know others have basically bundled free computers with long-term service contracts - the cell-phone approach. These a)failed and b) don't fit the bill for a truly $100 PC.
No, I suspect the innovation to get the $100 PC in reach of 1st world customers will be someone who is willing to warrant their used PCs the way CarMax warrants its used cars.
Just so you know, Dean, the Xbox, which is the most powerful console at the moment, runs on a 700mhz (or so) Celeron processor, with 8gb (or 10gb) HDD. The video card (64mb) is the only semi-current technology in it. And at $249 (CDN), it's *still* losing money.
I would say that's barely adequate (if adequate at all) for normal day-to-day computing. Unless you use a *very* stripped down OS, it'll run at a snail's pace. And 10gb HDD space doesn't go very far these days. The reason the Xbox is such a powerful game console is because *that's all it does*...it doesn't *need* to do anything else.
By the way, there is an easy way to install Linux on an Xbox, and equip it with a keyboard, mouse, and VGA monitor. Bang, a cheap PC (that can still play any and all Xbox games).
1986 Amstrad 16-bit Personal Computer - $0 on the sidewalk in front of my old apartment building, complete with keyboard and 3-colour monitor (mouse? get real).
Just one more thing: The Xbox OS runs on an NT4 kernel. Do you really expect someone to pay $100-$200 for a computer capable of running NT4?
In 2000, I paid about $1000 for a Celeron 433 with 6gb HDD and 64mb RAM (4mb shared-memory integrated video). In 2004, I wouldn't expect anyone to pay more than $10 for the same machine. In fact, I'd *give* you that old computer if it was still in once piece (and hadn't been struck by lightning several times). If you're looking for a cheap PC, and your standards are as ridiculously low as you say, go to used computer shops. If they make you pay more than $100 for a 433, you're being ripped off royally. In fact, the Salvation Army might have one for $20 (still a rip-off). But be warned, it isn't sufficient for current word processing and internet browsing. Times change.
Chris: I'm pretty much starting to find this discussion frustrating.
Your view of what is "barely adequate" is far above what I would call "barely adequate," probably because my experience with PCs goes back 20 years, and I used to work on them for a living (I'm just mostly out of that business now).
There exists storage devices, processors, and RAM that you could buy, at the manufacturer level in quantities, sufficient to design and build a computer that would run a decent word processor, web browser, mail client, and a few other basic applications besides.
Indeed, pick up a $100 digital camera and it has all of that already in it. All you need is an OS.
In fact the camera likely has an OS, and there's a good chance it's some flavor of Linux or BSD.
I guess if I can't get you guys out of the mindset of what YOU can build by buying spare parts, or out of the mindset that to build a decent PC that people would use, it needs all sorts of bells and whistles.
Baloney. Commodore sold millions of Commodore 64s before giving up the market--and they went out of business for a variety of reasons, but the main one wasn't that they weren't selling computers or that their computers were so unreliable they were unusable.
The components exist for manufacturers to do this. Built right, they would be far more reliable than any used unit. They would be highly limited in power and expansion capabilities: so what?
If they have horsepower sufficient to run Windows 95, Internet Explorer, and a copy of Office 95, they have enough for tens of millions of computer users. But the nice thing is that you have things like Lindows that are much better and more reliable than Win95 or 98.
Processor. RAM. Solid-state storage. SVGA, ethernet, and USB ports. Everything in one single compact board. No expansion capabilities beyond whatever's available in USB. End of description of unit.
Extremely easy to manufacture such a unit and make it very reliable and very cheap. That you guys keep saying this just can't possibly done is factually incorrect. If you say it would be inherently unreliable you're just wrong.
One point that I think ought to be made: In some states, such as California, it's dowright illegal to just throw out a computer. You have to pay extra for the "toxics" processing.
Yes, I do have an old ATX box I'm looking to get rid of. Unfortunately, this is not like my old apartment complex which had a spot you could put something with a note saying FREE and just have it evaporate, as if by magic...
When I said 'not happening', I meant market forces. No digital camera (or smartphone) has enough processing power to function as a full-fledged desktop computer (where you can word process, surf the web, listen to mp3s, etc). Same with RAM - no one makes the right size (64-128) MB in large enough quantities to make them cheap enough for our $100 computer. I don't think solid-state storage has fast enough access speeds to replace hard drives (I could be wrong). Displays are about as cheap as they'll get in a while (while 17" screens are now dirt cheap, that doesn't mean $30 15" screens).
It's completely technically viable to produce $100 computers, but it would take venture capitalists with a lot of cojones and a lot of dinero, because for a long while initially, you'll be selling the hardware at a loss. And if you do manage to affect the market enough to make the product viable, you'll get bazillions of clones by companies that don't suffer from investing untold millions.
Maybe in 5 years things will be different. But right now I don't see it happening.
What might work is a sort of refitting. Buy used processors and RAM (500-700 Celerons), test them, reuse them. Cheap 4-5 GB hard drives should be pretty cheap due to the huge growth in HDD mp3 players such as the iPod mini and its clones. Motherboards can be specifically manufactured, with on-board USB, LAN, audio, and video. Add a screen and a cheap CD burner, load up Linux and you've got a $150 computer.
Dean, my point is, times change. What was adequate 10 years ago literally isn't now. In the '80s, you could easily get by on 256mb HDD, if you had a hard disk at *all*. Well, a 256mb HDD would be pretty cheap nowadays, but completely and utterly useless. Do you get my drift? I have serious doubts at how well a 533mhz processor would fair in today's world. Seriously. And even many small desktop applications nowadays take at *least* 64mb RAM. The things you use a computer for -- even basic things like word processing, surfing, email -- change and so therefore the hardware needed to run them in any realistic manner changes. You could sell a really cheap PC with some old 16-bit processor but it quite literally wouldn't run anything developed in the past 8 or 9 years.
My view is that you don't need to run "modern apps." You need decent word processing--something on the level of Word 97 would do--a web browser (Firefox runs just great even on low-power Linux systems), and...
Well the point is yeah it'll seem slow and underpowered to people like us. But I note again: there are literally tens of millions of Win 95 and Win 98 machines still out there in everyday use with people perfectly happy with 'em. I know, I deal with 'em all the time. %-) And obviously, if they can get by with such underpowered stuff, so can others.
Oh well, we'll see whether the market supports this or not.
I saw an interview with some Norton executive. They said they still support windows 3.1 *and* there's still people *using* windows 3.1. So I guess anything's possible. Of course, a machine *that* old would just be free.
The main problem is that no one has a reason to mass produce the components at the price points that they'd have to be. Who's interested in making a 1 gig hard drive for $8? Or 32 MB RAM for $5? Or a 100 MHz CPU for $10?
At least in the current market, you can't get the bulk high enough to make it worth it.
Heck, virtually all PDAs cost more than what you're talking about.
Not quite at the $100 mark, but certainly cheap nonetheless, Linspire is aiming to attack this market as well. Plus, they have done a lot to make a very Windows-compatible Linux build.
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_feature_preinstall.php
;^D
Let's skip the supply-side issues - where is the demand? The target market is presumably poor people and newbies. Newby in Best Buy - "Can I put Office on this?" "No, but it comes with an office emulator which is very similar." "We use Office at work, I need MS Office." "This will open and save MS Office documents, it has most of the same features as office." "I don't know, I'd rather just get the same thing." Or "Can I play "Half-Life 2 on this?" Or "What software and support are available...you mean, of those 10 rows of software you have over there, only half of one shelf can be used on this...I don't care if YOU think everything I need is on that shelf, I want options!" "Linux? Does that run on Windows XP?"
The $100 computer will fall in the same marketing black hole as the $5000 car from the '80s. Even Hyundai now sells leather.
Tech support? I must be the only one who remembers the 1980s, when there was NO SUCH THING as tech support for PCs. Or the tech support was extremely limited, anyway. What tech support existed was there for whatever software you purchased--and if you used free software, you didn't expect any more tech support than you could get from friends, clubs, etc.
Part of the price you'll pay for a super cheap PC is that you don't get much tech support. If you build the PC right you won't need much, either.
Look at the package that SolarPC is putting together. Looks quite attractive. Perfect for grade school students, schools, etc. I'd buy one for my boy.
There is a huge market for cheap DVD players, cheap CD players, etc. No reason there shouldn't be one for very basic PCs either.
All you need is a cheap processor--and very cheap processors ARE available, they're still used all the time in embedded systems--cheap RAM, and cheap storage. I imagine that with off-the-shelf components today you could build a PC running at, oh, about 500 mhz, with about 128 meg of RAM and about a gig of storage, an ethernet port, and a basic SVGA video controller for well under $100.
Very achievable. Once again, it depends on what your market is and what you offer that market. Tech support? You get no more than you get for your DVD player. Other than that you're on your own.
Part of what you're paying for is that it's basically disposable. Short replacement warranty, just like a DVD player. Want new features? Buy a new one, just like a DVD player.
There are currently tens of millions of people in the world still running Windows 98 on machines running well under 500 Mhz with less than a gig of hard drive space. And perfectly happy with them since they don't do any more than surf the web, do email, maybe make some greeting cards or write some papers for school or church. Machines they have never even thought about upgrading or adding anything to.
This kind of PC isn't for people like me. Although actually I might buy one as a spare for the bedroom, or for my 7 year old son.
Who "upgrades" their VCR? Well okay, some lunatics do but most don't.
The problem is that one can't really get 1 gig HDs in quantity nowadays. There isn't much of a market for them, so no one really makes them.
Hell, look at things like the ipod. The one cost raiser in it is its tiny form factor, but other than that it's a weak computer with minimal storage (the cheaper model, or consider competitors).
On an item this big and delicate, shipping becomes a concern. Don't forget that you need a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.
Go solid state. Use flash memory or NVRAM. I've got 1G of storage in my digital camera.
On the other hand, I know this has been tried before and failed. It may be that now, current machines are so overpowered and standards sufficiently mature that you could do it.
The difference with cheap news cars is that government safety, emissions, and fuel consumption regulations make making really cheap ones impossible. If you could make a cheap $4,000 car that drove reliably and had a decent warranty, you could sell them, I guarantee it.
I note that there is no comparable market in used VCRs or DVD players of significance. It's there but not much.
Chris: While I used an HD as an example, if you examine the linked article they're not actually using hard drives, they're using solid state storage, which is these days quite cheap to come by.
I'm amused by you guys claiming there's no market for something like this when there is obviously a huge used market at this kind of price point, and there are several companies now planning on offering products in this price range again.
Just because you don't want one of thees doesn't mean no one does. I'd kill to have something like this for my mother. %-)
Dell is currently selling brand new systems at around $350. But they're still standard PCs. Build a dedicated system around an open source OS and one that's designed as solid state and to be dispoable and not particularly expandable, and you'd have a product people would buy.
After all, they're already buying them in droves. They're just putting up with the flakiness and non-standard nature of used hardware.
My computer has locked up once this year that I can remember. Proper maintenance will do wonders (defrag, cleanup, scandisk, etc), and being picky about what you install and download.
Computers probably last longer than refrigerators, but they just become obsolete early on.
Knock on wood with your cellphone. There have been hoax cellphone virus' for years, but of late they are real. In either case you have to unwittingly accept the virus, i.e download a ringtone, or accept a text message.
Once called Cabir:
Cabir uses the Bluetooth wireless peer protocol to propagate, copying itself to other Bluetooth devices as far as 30 feet away, depending on the environment.
The other is dubbed Skulls:
When run, the Skulls program breaks all the links to Symbian system applications and replaces the icons with images of skulls. Third-party applications are not affected, Hypponen said, allowing users that have installed a non-Symbian file manager to actually find and delete the malicious program files, cleaning the phone.
The one called Cabir will as soon as it is on your phone will try to get other phones within 30 feet to accept it also. I believe both are trojan virus'.
The "glut" of cheap PCs are overwhelmingly PCs with SIMM memory chips, and not very much memory. Trying to add more memory, or replace bad memory, can cost more than the computer. The fantastically cheap memory chips advertised are always DIMMs. You can easily spend $200 on SIMMs (if you could find them) just trying to get an old machine enough memory to run Win 98.
I have a home network with five computers, one for each of us. I am the power user with a newer computer with XP. The other four are used, with SIMMs running Windows 98, and nobody in my family needs any more than that. We have one kid playing old toddler games, two kids who mostly use the internet and write papers for school, and a spouse who almost exclusively uses his computer for the internet.
I am tired of fussing with their cranky used computers, but I can't afford 4 x $300 to get them new Dells. I could afford 4 x $100, or 4 x $150, or if they were $200 get a couple this year and a couple next year.
I think that there is definitely a market for these cheap computers, especially as more and more households have multiple computers. You only need one or two that can do the heavy lifting, and the rest can just generally be browsers. If my kids need to do something that their computers aren't capable of, they come and use mine.
Think about it: if you had five TVs in your house, would they all be big screen flat panels with picture in picture? Or one or two really big ones, the rest just little portables for kitchen, bedroom, basement, whatever?
Not to mention what a cheap PC could do to give inner-city and rural kids a chance to get on an equal footing with the kids whose families have had computers for years. If you get a kid started with a computer that browses and writes papers, then they can move on to more powerful machines later on. The key is to get them comfortable with keyboarding and researching and how you do things with a computer.
Maybe you could swing it in 2 1/2 or 3 years with this for $299.99
AMD DT-2400 processor, 256meg DDR, 40GB HD, CD-RW and 450W power. Also integrated Audio, 8X AGP video, LAN and Windows XP. Oh and a Lexmark X2250 printer.
Actually, I'd guess that many/most sales of this thing might be to folks trying to set up massively parallel Google-ish processor farms where individual units don't have to be particularly reliable. In that case they'd be putting their own software on, anyway, and a Linux based system may suit their needs ok.
It is true that safety systems drive up the cost of new cars, but I still think that the existence of large stocks of used cars truncates the bottom of the car market - it would be POSSIBLE to build a $6000 new car at absolute base in engine and components. It just would be less attractive and probably less reliable than a $6000 used car. I think the same would hold for the $100 PC. (The cheapest new cars on the existing market run maybe $9000.)
I note from the solarlite website that this $100 PC advertised has no monitor or printer, and is intended for large-batch sales to, say, third world education systems. I suppose it hooks up to a TV like my old C64 did. Printing would also be an issue. I'm skeptical that they a) could sell at anything like a reasonable price-point to a retail market, and b) could be used in a home environment without significant add-ons. ($50 for keyboard, mouse, and printer, plus whatever of the CD/floppy/hard drive set you would need - the included flash drive isn't going to be much bigger than what is necessary to run the beast without saving files, though it is a good way to give this thing some usable memory cheap.)
The "easy" way to $100 PCs is through, essentially, smart terminals which access some sort of network. That, of course, requires a server for these clients, which would cost. Didn't Larry Ellison try something like this a few years back? I know others have basically bundled free computers with long-term service contracts - the cell-phone approach. These a)failed and b) don't fit the bill for a truly $100 PC.
No, I suspect the innovation to get the $100 PC in reach of 1st world customers will be someone who is willing to warrant their used PCs the way CarMax warrants its used cars.
$250 computer? I'll build one for you.
MB - any cheap Socket A (USB/LAN/VGA/Audio) - $50
CPU - AMD Duron 1,60GHz + fan - $50
RAM - Kingston DDR 266MHz 128MB - $25
Case and Power Supply - JNC 300W ATX - $18
Media - cheap CDRW - $20
HDD - Hitachi Deskstar 40GB - $60
Keyboard and mouse - $10
used 15 inch monitor - $25
Total: $258
OS - some Linux or just buy a legal copy of 98/Me off someone for ten bucks.
Oh, and it'll run Half-Life 2. Just barely playable, but it'll run.
I would say that's barely adequate (if adequate at all) for normal day-to-day computing. Unless you use a *very* stripped down OS, it'll run at a snail's pace. And 10gb HDD space doesn't go very far these days. The reason the Xbox is such a powerful game console is because *that's all it does*...it doesn't *need* to do anything else.
By the way, there is an easy way to install Linux on an Xbox, and equip it with a keyboard, mouse, and VGA monitor. Bang, a cheap PC (that can still play any and all Xbox games).
1986 Amstrad 16-bit Personal Computer - $0 on the sidewalk in front of my old apartment building, complete with keyboard and 3-colour monitor (mouse? get real).
In 2000, I paid about $1000 for a Celeron 433 with 6gb HDD and 64mb RAM (4mb shared-memory integrated video). In 2004, I wouldn't expect anyone to pay more than $10 for the same machine. In fact, I'd *give* you that old computer if it was still in once piece (and hadn't been struck by lightning several times). If you're looking for a cheap PC, and your standards are as ridiculously low as you say, go to used computer shops. If they make you pay more than $100 for a 433, you're being ripped off royally. In fact, the Salvation Army might have one for $20 (still a rip-off). But be warned, it isn't sufficient for current word processing and internet browsing. Times change.
Your view of what is "barely adequate" is far above what I would call "barely adequate," probably because my experience with PCs goes back 20 years, and I used to work on them for a living (I'm just mostly out of that business now).
There exists storage devices, processors, and RAM that you could buy, at the manufacturer level in quantities, sufficient to design and build a computer that would run a decent word processor, web browser, mail client, and a few other basic applications besides.
Indeed, pick up a $100 digital camera and it has all of that already in it. All you need is an OS.
In fact the camera likely has an OS, and there's a good chance it's some flavor of Linux or BSD.
I guess if I can't get you guys out of the mindset of what YOU can build by buying spare parts, or out of the mindset that to build a decent PC that people would use, it needs all sorts of bells and whistles.
Baloney. Commodore sold millions of Commodore 64s before giving up the market--and they went out of business for a variety of reasons, but the main one wasn't that they weren't selling computers or that their computers were so unreliable they were unusable.
The components exist for manufacturers to do this. Built right, they would be far more reliable than any used unit. They would be highly limited in power and expansion capabilities: so what?
If they have horsepower sufficient to run Windows 95, Internet Explorer, and a copy of Office 95, they have enough for tens of millions of computer users. But the nice thing is that you have things like Lindows that are much better and more reliable than Win95 or 98.
Processor. RAM. Solid-state storage. SVGA, ethernet, and USB ports. Everything in one single compact board. No expansion capabilities beyond whatever's available in USB. End of description of unit.
Extremely easy to manufacture such a unit and make it very reliable and very cheap. That you guys keep saying this just can't possibly done is factually incorrect. If you say it would be inherently unreliable you're just wrong.
The only real question goes to market demand.
Yes, I do have an old ATX box I'm looking to get rid of. Unfortunately, this is not like my old apartment complex which had a spot you could put something with a note saying FREE and just have it evaporate, as if by magic...
It's completely technically viable to produce $100 computers, but it would take venture capitalists with a lot of cojones and a lot of dinero, because for a long while initially, you'll be selling the hardware at a loss. And if you do manage to affect the market enough to make the product viable, you'll get bazillions of clones by companies that don't suffer from investing untold millions.
Maybe in 5 years things will be different. But right now I don't see it happening.
Anyone have $10 mil or so lying around?
Well the point is yeah it'll seem slow and underpowered to people like us. But I note again: there are literally tens of millions of Win 95 and Win 98 machines still out there in everyday use with people perfectly happy with 'em. I know, I deal with 'em all the time. %-) And obviously, if they can get by with such underpowered stuff, so can others.
Oh well, we'll see whether the market supports this or not.