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July 17, 2007 5:34 AM PDT

A PC that uses less energy, but charges a monthly fee

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Subscription-based PCs are not a new idea--and never popular--but Grégoire Gentil and Alain Rossmann have devised a green twist.
The New York Times

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It will be popular
by Maclover1 July 17, 2007 6:19 AM PDT
with a few of the people that think humans and their carbon are causing global warming.

Other than that it will fail horribly. BR in a year.
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What a joke...
by Heebee Jeebies July 17, 2007 8:10 AM PDT
Linux, please how about an OS that acutally has software the vast majority of computers user's know about and would want to use.

$12.95 a month for a computer with a worthless OS, just because it uses less power. Dumb idea. What's next you only lease the computer. What happens to your $100 computer when you get tired of being held ransom with the subscription and what I am sure will be greed that keeps the monthly fees going up like cable.

This is a sit and spin idea. They should sit on it and spin.

Robert
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As popular as subscription based music downloads
by weegg July 17, 2007 8:24 AM PDT
Another one heading to the trash heap. Not one subscription based
service has generated a net profit yet.
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If all this greeness is making you wish fr horse power
by wildchild_plasma_gyro July 17, 2007 9:13 AM PDT
Where Next or the GUI

1) Power flipping
this is where you use morphic windows for praticale use.
a) For intelligent GUI environments to take switch out and hilight what your working with at the time
b) Another use would be for common users to press the flip button where say a DVD your playing but has some problems(like you only have 2 speakers and it thinks you have 4) so press flip button, select the problem your suffering and it is resolved.
c) To flip the project your working on down to background processes so that some one else can use the computer or you can do somthing else with it and get straight back to what your doing and such making better use of internal flash drives.
d) when accessing one web app and and you want to access another and are finished with the one your currently viewing.

An entertain me web button.
this is where you click it and your computer trys to please you with a new site or site of your interest that you havent visited recently improving itself by you telling it if and what your level of satisfaction is to its choices(some interesting ethical devates would need to be explorered here).

An all encombasing electronic book shelf would be cool where you get some free books with the OS.

The ice cube
This is where an ice cobe start to cracks relating to things like updates needed,defrag need,scan reccomended,intrusion level and such.

A unversal sign in and am open for chat or business button that communications software can patch in on allowing you to let people know your in.

This sort of stuff could allow a far wider ordance of coputer users and gadget users to be more functional and more bug free hence widening the interest groups in technlogy.
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Dell $339
by gggg sssss July 17, 2007 2:50 PM PDT
$99 up front, and monthly charges of $155 per year means that teh Dell will be cheaper if you keep it for mor than 18 months. Even of it is a second PC. And once they turn on that 22 inch LCD monitor, any thought of poer saving is gone. And teh Dell comes with a real, if crappy OS at that.

WTFWTT?
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Just moving energy consumption around
by wylbur July 18, 2007 10:04 AM PDT
Okay, so now you need to keep your network connection always
on-- that's more energy. Now your data is stored at a nice
refrigerated data center-- more energy. Now your data has to
travel hundreds of miles to be saved or accessed-- more energy. It
might lower your electric bills, but make no mistake, you are just
transfering energy use to Zonbu's data center. I suspect that the
"carbon footprint" is ultimately little different from a computer with
a hard drive.
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Read about real life with the Zonbu
by mrzonbu July 26, 2007 4:00 AM PDT
Opinions are great, we've all got them. I decided to put my money where my mouth was and order one of these to see if it was possible to replace a big desktop PC with this little box. I'm trying it for at least 30 days. You can read about my experience here: http://mrzonbu.wordpress.com
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