my money's on zonbu
A hundred bucks, and $13 per month.
If these guys are able to do what they say they're going to do, at a fraction of the cost of most people's laptops and PCs, why wouldn't every non-computer-expert household in the country buy at least one, if not one per person?
It's a really interesting, and inevitable really, business model. They're just applying the 'adding value by removing hassles and offering only what most people need from a central location' principle - it's almost the same aesthetic as 'access not ownership,' as it frees people who just want to buy songs for their iPod, cruise the net, and upload some photos from worrying about security subscriptions, maintaining bulky hard-drives, etc.
I forgot where I read it, but someone made the point that in spite of all our advances, we've had to become expert in so many more things than we ever had to before. The example listed things like pumping one's own gas, not that it's hard to master that, but it was one more thing that had been shifted from a company's shoulders onto ours (more recently, automated checkout at the grocery). Personal computers are rife with this same problem. Decidedly un-technical people have had to learn too many things just to keep them working. Couple that with the fact that many companies have recently cashed in on reducing that kind of clutter for their customers, and I see a huge market in simpler 'hosted' computing.
Oh, and did I mention they're pretty green, too?
If these guys are able to do what they say they're going to do, at a fraction of the cost of most people's laptops and PCs, why wouldn't every non-computer-expert household in the country buy at least one, if not one per person?
It's a really interesting, and inevitable really, business model. They're just applying the 'adding value by removing hassles and offering only what most people need from a central location' principle - it's almost the same aesthetic as 'access not ownership,' as it frees people who just want to buy songs for their iPod, cruise the net, and upload some photos from worrying about security subscriptions, maintaining bulky hard-drives, etc.
I forgot where I read it, but someone made the point that in spite of all our advances, we've had to become expert in so many more things than we ever had to before. The example listed things like pumping one's own gas, not that it's hard to master that, but it was one more thing that had been shifted from a company's shoulders onto ours (more recently, automated checkout at the grocery). Personal computers are rife with this same problem. Decidedly un-technical people have had to learn too many things just to keep them working. Couple that with the fact that many companies have recently cashed in on reducing that kind of clutter for their customers, and I see a huge market in simpler 'hosted' computing.
Oh, and did I mention they're pretty green, too?
posted by jim at 11/02/2007 11:29:00 PM
2 Comments:
Did I tell you I bought one of these to replace my old server? Well, I bought one of these to replace my old server. For years I'd been running a full sized desk top 24/7 as a file/music/web server. In an atempt to be a little more green, I just paid $300 outright for a Zonbu to replace it, rather than go the suscription route. Unfortunately I don't have much to report on the software or storage services though, since I wiped out the default OS in favor of Ubuntu Linux. The hardware is great though. Not only does it consume a tenth of the power of my old server, but it's completely silent and actually faster too. Long live Zonbu!
Hey, very cool - I saw that 'unfortunately' and momentarily thought, 'rats, blew another analysis out my ass.'
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