Very Computer

I'm considering picking up a Corel Netwinder, and was wondering what
others thought of them.

IE, how are they performance wise, ease of
configuration/troubleshooting.

What problems have you had, and what successes?

Thanks.

--
Blaine Lupulack
Quesnel, BC, Canada
---
And remember kids, Cheese is *!

: I'm considering picking up a Corel Netwinder, and was wondering what
: others thought of them.

: IE, how are they performance wise, ease of
: configuration/troubleshooting.

: What problems have you had, and what successes?

Okay, here's pure opinion based upon what I've gathered from looking
at Corel's Web page for them.  I do not have any personal experience
with these devices.

o)      The price is all wrong.  At least as listed on this page.

        http://www.corelcomputer.com/products/linux/netwinder_dm.htm

        $959 for a machine with 32M of RAM, a 2.1G hard drive and a CPU
        with no internal floating point?

        Maybe if it was half this cost, it would be worth considering.
        But for that price you can build or perhaps even buy a very
        nice Socket-7 Pentium class machine.

o)      After everyone that loves Linux as much as I do gets past
        the "Gee, a machine that doesn't use Intel chips that can run
        Linux" phase you have to look at what this is.  In esscense I
        think you're basically looking at a piece of highly
        proprietary hardware hiding underneath the glare of open
        software.  

o)      I may be somewhat mistaken on this, but it also seems that
        you'd be somewhat limited in what software is available for
        it.  As in the pool of people working on the ARM based support
        for this thing will be considerably smaller than the pool of
        people working on the Intel ports.  For those that want the
        ease of being able to install software via RPM I would think
        the choices would be much smaller than that for Intel.

Given the cost, you can not help but make a comparison of what you get
with the Netwinder vs. what kind of x86 based PC can be had for the same
money.  Unless the cost is reduced significantly, I can see no
advantage to using something like the NetWinder over a PC.

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