Mark Lanctot Wrote: > I don't necessarily think you're losing the argument. :-) It's just > that when "appliances" first came into being ~5 years ago and analysts > predicted the demise of the PC, technology was different. Appliances > back then were truly dumb devices. > > Today's "appliance" has almost as much computing power as a > conventional PC and could only be called an appliance due to its OS or > external connectivity. Take a look at the PocketPC. This is no > organizer of yesteryear. As the gumstix shows, you can run Linux off > that processor. > > Appliances as they were first pictured died off because their use was > too limited while their cost was too high. WebTV could only browse the > web and send/receive e-mail, yet it cost 1/2 (?) of what a computer did > at the time. Totally impractical. > > So an appliance today is really a PC.
I guess that's what I've been saying. I'm unencumbered by the historical definition of appliance you're referring to. Yes, today's and tomorrow's appliances have processing power similar to a PC from last year, and that's my point (heck, I remember when 64kB gave you an unimaginable amount of processing power!). Clever people have realized that they can sell a PC (Xbox) as an appliance, and even more specialized items like SB3 & BlackBerry are getting bigger chunks of the market. Which gets me back to where I started - when do we get a slim Slimserver? Speaking of PocketPCs, it can't be too much longer until it will be possible to run Slimserver on one of them (or is there one here already?) Perhaps 'SlimCD' on a memory card, with firewire to a HD? You never know what some genius is going to come up with.... I just know I'll be the first one in line to buy it when I can get a Slimserver that sits there innocuously like the modem & the router! -- nicketynick Wireless SB3, Denon DRA-F101, Mission M31 loudspeakers WinXP SP2 Slimserver, SMC WBR14g router ------------------------------------------------------------------------ nicketynick's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1511 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=23496 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
