Worth Reading?
+1 [1 votes]
Ever since the beginning of the broadband age we’ve been promised thin-clients relying on secure, off-site storage with all our lovely files and media whizzing through the chunky ADSL pipes. Sadly that hasn’t really happened; yes, online backup is profligate and we’re used to using massive email dumping grounds like Gmail, but we’re still expected to have full, power-hungry and ever-ageing PCs at home for the bulk of storage duties. Gizmodo have been playing with a halfway solution, Zonbu’s $99 Linux PC, which runs open-source software on a fanless 1.2MHz platform but utilises Amazon’s S3 storage servers to save your files.
It relies on a monthly subscription to hit that $99 price: $13-20 a month for 25 to 100GB of synchronised storage. The OS and local cache is kept to a 4GB Compact Flash card, it has 6 USB ports, VGA, mic and headphone out. PS2 Mouse and keyboard connectivity, and while ethernet is standard WiFi is an option.
So far the Giz boys seem happy; we’ll have to wait and see how successful the ongoing subscription model works for them. The first 500 ship in June, while there’ll be a full release in September.
Included software:
Browser: Firefox
Email and Calendar: Evolution
IM: Pidgin works with AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and IRC networks.
VOIP: Skype
Peer-to-Peer clients: Azureus and aMule. Bit Torrent and other standard protocols such as eMule and eDonkey.
Office productivity: Open Office. word processor, spreadsheet, presentation,draw, database, math, Acrobat, Personal Finance Manager.
Media Player: MPlayer
Music Library: Banshee
Photo Organizer: F-Spot
Sound: Sound Recorder and Recording Level Monitor.
Photo Editor: Gimp
Web Page Editor: Nvu
22 things to know about the the $99 Zonbu Linux PC [Gizmodo]
OK as an example of one solution… For a flat $100 to $139.99, got drives of 300 to 500 Gb delivered to my door! Then, they go into a ‘curbside donation’ Dell or Compaq system, that is now the network drone storage unit at my cave. Offsite storage uses Gmail servers. But, hey, each to their own!
We don’t need more “subscriptions”. The goal is one, or less.
You’re right, of course, but I’d wager the Zonbu people are aiming at the sort of computer user who isn’t at all comfortable with the idea even of slotting a hard-drive into a computer. What remains to be seen is if such a demographic will be willing to pay $156+ a year (on top of what would likely have to be a fairly broad internet pipe) for the privilege of remaining relatively hands-off.
I am looking for exactly this to use as my server. 1.2ghz is fine (even 350mhz does the job), toss in 1gb of ram. even 256 will do, but the whole offsite storage thing is retarded. toss a nice 8/16gb compact flash card in to it and you got a nice email/web/gopher/bittorrent/dns/proxy/cifs/sql server. have a separate NAS to store all nonessential files on
Not only is the machine green, but it’s quiet. That’s what’s important. Nothing is moving in there.