Submitted by “Zonbu is a very simple system. It is geared for users who may not necessarily care what operating system they are using, but someone who just wants a functional system. Zonbu does exactly that. The software is very straightforward to use. Zonbu is very environmentally friendly. Not only does it not require a lot of power to run, it also does not contribute to noise pollution.”
It’d be perfect for the parents except that they want to host the storage…which (a) my parents wouldn’t go for, and (b) costs more…throw a hard drive in and I’d toss it to them quite quickly. It’d certainly fit most peoples needs.
Five USB ports. I can’t imagine the OS won’t permit you to save to USB devices like HDs and pendrives.
Exactly. External hard drives are really cheap now, thus this computer makes for an interesting proposition for a dirty cheap computer.
Check out the picture of the rear side of the computer from the link. It has a built in CF reader too. Perfect for a Microdrive, cheaper than comparable CF cards and more write cycles than flash memory.
Does that CF card slot support UDMA CF cards? That would speed things considerably.
If there is source available, there would be no reason why you couldn’t ‘adjust’ it to be on your own server or not at all.
Don’t advertise something as a $100 PC, then tell them in the small print that it’ll cost another $300 up front – that’s a great way to chase people away.
Zonbu: Be stupid, get ripped off, would be a better tag line.
Wouldn’t the Linutop be more cost effective, or at least better, than the Zonbu? Sure it’s around 300 euros upfront, but at least you know it’s yours since storage is USB and there is nothing billing you monthly. Or even better, wait out for the ASUS EEEPC which in its low end verson should be 199 US dollars.
Not quite that cheap anymore. Still not a bad deal. I am still planning on grabbing one when they come out:
http://www.eeeuser.com/
I hope Newegg gets on the ball!
The EeePC is definitely my xmas present to myself. It looks to be ~£100 very well spent!
You can buy this without subscription for $249.
This looks just like the thin clients we use at work, except ours are made by HP. But instead of selling it as a thin-client network appliance, they are trying to hawk it as a PC that doesn’t come with a harddrive.
Who should be pleased by this? Zombies? 24/7 bloggers (but not vloggers?) CPAs?
Givvus 8GiB DDR2 (doubles power use) and I can forgive the remote drives thing a bit. Not counting DVD-R/W, which would soak up lots of power even in sleep as external devices. In brief; you could max a Mac Mini or iMac and save quite a bit.
If you are visually oriented, and not blind, perhaps nVidia and BFG will mint us something GeForce8800ish in a nice power-saving process?