Submitted 01-Sep-00 by Vadim Plessky:
> Tim,
> HDDs are growing in size, that's right, but keep mimimum price. Say, $70 or
> $80, something like this.
> I believe Linux has great future on variety of <$300 devices.
Certainly you cannot purchase a PC for that, but I can _build_ one for less
than that.
> There is no way HDDs will drop in price.
But they are dropping in price. The manufacturers are dumping units as
large as 10GB onto the market at prices within the range you discuss. I
personally purchased a 6.4 GB drive last summer for $59.
> Memory is reasonable in price.
Not really. Of the components required to build a system, generally the two
most expensive are processor and memory. With DIMM prices hovering at just
over $1/MB, a 64MB stick costs as much as a cheap drive, and 128MB costs
more than a moderate (13 GB) sized drive.
> don't know how to eliminate HDD :-)
If the proposed device has a cd drive, you could put /, /boot, and /usr on a
cd with /dev loaded on a ramdisc at boot time. For that matter /var can be
done similarly on systems that don't have bulky things like RPM databases on
them. With some judicious planning, you can setup a usable, if not readily
upgradeable system with a tiny hard drive (20MB and smaller) and most of the
services that you could possible want.
> Cable modems/xDSL is still very expensive, and it's not possible to store
> data on server or download from server whole system every time.
This is true, and the reason why those getting into the ASP game now are
fooling themselves if they think that it's a viable venture.
But it seems to me that you are looking at a thin client model, and there is
commercially available distribution tailored to that kind of platform. If
that is indeed your goal, then you should probably be looking at some of the
tools designed to help you assemble a distribution as opposed to trying to
cut a full distro to fit the model.
> Possible solution for storage, to my mind, is Compact Flash or SmartMedia.
> Taking into consideration number of digital cameras and MP3 players shipped
> with these modules, price for them will go down dramatically.
But their price is governed by the same technologies that keep RAM prices
up. Additionally, the inherrent limits of the technology will prevent them
from being more than a high capacity alternative to floppy disks. There
isn't a single smartmedia module capable of approaching a significant
fraction of the capacity of a modern hard drive.
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