AMD's Personal Internet Communicator, or PIC, is set to go on sale at Radio Shack outlets in the US beginning this Sunday at a price of $299. Aimed at low income areas around the world, the PIC is part of AMD CEO Hector Ruiz's 50-15 plan, which hopes to get 50 percent of the worlds population connected to the internet by 2015. Already available in other parts of the world, the PIC a basic, no-frills machine that consists of a 366MHz Geode GX processor, 10GB HDD, and internal modem, all running Windows CE 5.0.
The PIC has already been released in places such as Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean and India and will soon be available in China and Russia. In many cases, telephone companies lease the machines to their customers on a monthly basis. AMD estimates that about 3.8 billion people in the world currently can't afford a standard personal computer.
View: Full Article @ Yahoo! News
The PIC has already been released in places such as Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean and India and will soon be available in China and Russia. In many cases, telephone companies lease the machines to their customers on a monthly basis. AMD estimates that about 3.8 billion people in the world currently can't afford a standard personal computer.
View: Full Article @ Yahoo! News
Changelog for version 2.5:
- Added: you can now specify program categories for the Hot Launch Menu. Each category is displayed in the Hot Launch Menu as a separate submenu
- Now you can specify the "Stay On Top" property dynamically from the Advanced Task Switcher for all currently running programs
- Each program can be started from the Hot Launch Menu with the set property "Stay On Top"
- Added: a capability to shut down or restart the PC from the program's tray menu icon and from the Advanced Task Switcher
Looks like they changed it to 399...
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/cto_dimen2400?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
I don't think that majority of those 3.8 billion people in the world is really interested in buying a computer right now. They may be more interested in finding how they can survive till the next paycheck, and/or what they can eat the following day.
Poland, for example, has an average annual income of US $4,200 ($350/month). Not much when you want to buy a $300 computer (and still have to pay for rent, electricity, food, gas (which is still much more expensive in Europe than it is in the US), etc)
Not even mentioning India, where average ANNUAL income is US $460.
Good luck seling computers to them!
Last edited by 20887 on 30 Sep 2005 - 17:07
People who cannot afford a PC these days have other things on their mind then Internet!
Where is the keyboard and mouse and monitor?
Maybe even governments could get things like this for cheap public internet access at like libraries.
i could see people here in north america buying them and using them as the computers in internet cafes.
I wonder if it comes bundled with any kind of AV, Firewall, and Spyware apps?
Any kind of Tech Support?
If these things actually do sell, which I have huge doubts about, I think it is pretty safe to say the people using them would not be computer savvy whatsoever. Without any protection, their "Personal Internet Communicator," since it's main goal is to bring them online, would become a useless piece of Spyware, Virus, and Trojan infested hardware.
I really hope someone has thought about this piece of the puzzle, or else I feel sorry for the people who do actually by them, as I have seen just Spyware alone cripple a 2 Ghz processor, never mind a 366 Mhz one.
AMD PIC web site
ooohhh... a whole 366 Mhz. Wow. My northbridge has more computing power than this cheap peice of crap.
What a waste of money.
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