Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote: > I guess the market would be those that can't afford > ?100 pocket computer phone.
There's one of the problems with the cartridges: you still need the same Ben. The hardware of a Ben that is constrained to only run tetris costs exactly the same amount as that of a Ben that has hundreds of sophisticated applications installed. So one of the key cost benefits of single-function devices is already lost. Of course, assuming a revenue stream from cartridges, one could sell Bens at a loss and cross-finance via the cartridges. The problem with that is that those Bens would still be able to do a lot more and also people who don't care about the cartridges would buy Bens. And the cheaper you sell the Ben, the more attractive it gets for "unintended" uses. You could counter that by adding some "trusted computing" that only lets it run cartridges, but such a move would make it highly unpopular in the Free Culture. Another way would be to sell Ben and cartridges as a bundle, but then you may as well just preinstall all the goodies, or make them available for download, and dispense with the cartridges. So I don't quite see how this concept that fit in the late 1970es to early 1980es could be adapted to fit in today's world, with radically different technology (ubiquitous global networking, cheap large storage) and also with different cultural expectations (Free vs. corporate control). - Werner _______________________________________________ Qi Hardware Discussion List Mail to list (members only): [email protected] Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
