Off-Topic - Really Inexpensive Computer[was: linuxbios on geode gx1.....]

[Bari Ari]

ramesh bios wrote:

The villages lacking indoor
> plumbing are not the customer base that I think are
> being targeted for broadband+PIC. I believe the target
> base are the 50Million or so Indians who are in the
> lower middle class. They have a monthly disposable
> income of around USD$10 so they could pay off the cost
> of a PIC over a year or two. These are people who are
> teachers, farmers, artisans, barbers, sundry shop
> owners ( and if I might say so, are a lovely people
> whom I'd someday like to help by delivering a cheaper
> free and open sourced based Linux solution to their
> computing needs ). They already have indoor plumbing,
> thank you very much. They typically want to use a PIC
> to get things like current commodity grain prices, the
> price of gas, exchange email and photos of their
> family with their relatives in the city, figure out if
> their politicians are doing right by them, and get
> educational content for their children. 

Why even consider x86? ARM SOC + LinuxARM can support broadband and all 
the above mentioned apps. for far lower price and power consumption. For 
example Freescale has an ARM SOC for <$5 (quan 1M+) with MMX type 
instructions, VoIP, SVGA, MPEG-4 decode 30fps, USB + Sound.

-Bari