{"id":1808,"date":"2007-10-17T14:00:30","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T18:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/10\/17\/zonbu-network-pc-bait-and-switch\/"},"modified":"2007-10-17T14:00:30","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T18:00:30","slug":"zonbu-network-pc-bait-and-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/10\/17\/zonbu-network-pc-bait-and-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Zonbu network PC “bait-and-switch”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really wanted to like the Zonbu, a small, Mac Mini-style network PC that runs a modified version of Gentoo Linux and uses Amazon’s S3 (and a small built-in Flash drive) for storage — and best of all, costs just $99. It seemed like such a great idea, as Nick Carr describes here<\/a> and Daniel “Fake Steve Jobs” Lyons gushes here.<\/a> Okay, it has a really stupid name, but then who doesn’t in these Web 2.0 times.<\/p>\n

zonbu.jpgIn fact, the Zonbu might even be<\/em> a great idea — except for the fact that it doesn’t cost anywhere close to $99. Or rather, it costs $99 in the same sense that a computer from Bill’s PC Warehouse costs $200 because it doesn’t include a monitor, keyboard, mouse or any software (which I’ve always thought was a little like taking the wheels and the engine out of a car and then advertising it for sale at $50). As Zoli Erdos points out in his post<\/a> on Zonbu, the box actually costs about $250 when you go to buy one. In order to get the $99 deal, you have to sign up for two years worth of online data storage, which brings your total cost to about $400.<\/p>\n

Okay, $400 isn’t a bad price for a networked PC with automated backup and a small form factor — except that you still need a monitor and a keyboard and mouse. I can buy a fully-configured Acer or HP desktop with all kinds of bells and whistles for $400. It might not fit under the counter or look good tucked onto a bookshelf, but it comes with a 160-gig hard drive, and I don’t have to call it a stupid name.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really wanted to like the Zonbu, a small, Mac Mini-style network PC that runs a modified version of Gentoo Linux and uses Amazon’s S3 (and a small built-in Flash drive) for storage — and best of all, costs just $99. It seemed like such a great idea, as Nick Carr describes here and Daniel … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Zonbu network PC “bait-and-switch””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}