Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 22:00:00 -0700 (MST) From: "Chad R. Larson" <chad@DCFinc.com> To: dirkx@webweaving.org (Dirk-Willem van Gulik) Cc: dreamwvr@dreamwvr.com, chip@eboai.org, freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Netpliance Iopener Message-ID: <200004120500.WAA07692@freeway.dcfinc.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10004111908020.17117-100000@kim.ispra.webweaving.org> from Dirk-Willem van Gulik at "Apr 11, 0 07:15:21 pm"
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As I recall, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote: > In the last, April, EE electronics the company who, judgin by the > picture, makes them advertized on page 2. I saw Curcos Taiwan at the > SMAU in milano earlier this year and they are very willing to take > orders for this type of machine. The catch is of course that you'll > need to get a couple of hundred at the least. But then again, you get > to customize every detail. And pay 250-500 dollars per machine :-) Well, then. Sounds like a business opportunity. Get a loan, order the couple of hundred with the same feature-set (USB, 800x600 LCD, microphone, V.90 modem, Yamaha sound, etc.). Put a FreeBSD install floppy set into the flash memory, so it can do a network install via dial-up PPP or the parallel-port IP. Sell them here, or through the BSD Mall, or on the net, or via e-bay for whatever you have to pay for them plus, say, 10 percent. Seriously. Worse case investment is 200 units times $500 = a hunnert grand. If you can, indeed, sell them for cost + 10, you make 10 thousand bucks, which should surely cover a couple of weekends putting together the flash RAM image you'd need. Then, there's the service bureau. Make sure the image on the flash is always able to do another net install. Put a modem on a FreeBSD box at your house, offer up images with as many different feature sets as you can imagine (X terminal, web browser, etc.) and let folks fetch them for a fee. Or, see how much the manufacturer would nick you to replace the flash with a real hard drive and sell them as a pseudo-laptop for folks who only need a minimalist computer and don't have much room. College kids and the like. Current lap-tops are =too= capable (and consequently expensive) for the needs of a lot of folks. Get a quote, then check back here for your early market survey... -crl -- Chad R. Larson (CRL15) 602-953-1392 Brother, can you paradigm? chad@dcfinc.com chad@larsons.org larson1@home.net DCF, Inc. - 14623 North 49th Place, Scottsdale, Arizona 85254-2207 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message
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