CHARLES ANGELICH wrote in a message to TOM WALKER:

TW> Interstingly on the Linspire Web site theri listing of Compatable 
TW> Hardware is fairly small. OF course that is why their push is in 
TW> Pre Assembled Machines.

Just because a listing of compatible hardware is short doesn't mean that
it's all the compatible hardware there is,  it just means that's all
they've tested enough to stand behind so far.  I can see where that could
get to be an expensive and time-consuming process.

CA> The push for pre-installed Linspire is identical to Windows or
CA> Linux. The typical home computer user hasn't a clue (or a vowel or
CA> the ambition to use them if they had them). 

TW> And in reality that is where the most money will be made. 

CA> No, not really. That was IBM's original mistake in thinking the
CA> money was in PC hardware not software so they gave Bill Gates carte
CA> blanche to sell MSDOS.

IBM has always sold services and support.  This wasn't ever gonna fly in
the home pc market,  and I don't think that when they did that,  or when
they were advertising OS/2 on tv toward the home market,  that they really
had any kind of a clue as to what it was they were getting into,  nor were
they prepared to deal with support on that kind of a level.  But they're
big enough to try stuff,  and walk away from it afterwards.

CA>> I really never did feel that UNIX or any clone thereof was going 
CA>> to be a great OS for newbies or the 'home market'. A glorified 
CA>> XBox or PlaysStation would be better for the 'home market' if they 
CA>> added some way to store all the pirated music, video, and pr0n 
CA>> they would sell faster than ice cubes in Hell. 

TW> They are working on that one. There are Hacks already out there to 
TW> use one of those boxes as a computer as I recall.

CA> Could be a conflict of interest or some such but if SONY ever wakes
CA> up to what a silly computer most home users really want they could
CA> take over the home computer market in no time. ;-)  

There was a mention somewhere in a magazine some time back about somebody
taking a whole pile of those machines,  loading linux on them,  and using
them as a cheap "array" of computers for something or other.  Or
maybe that was playstations,  I don't recall.

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