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The $100 Computer? Been There, Done That

Saturday, 13 May 2006 by Michel Roth

In my ongoing travels to find a decent *cheap* Thin Client device, I found this article about a company that has already sold 80.000 computers, priced below under a hundred dollars. Now, where's that $80 Thin Client device? Granted, it's not your typical PC but I think that's just a matter of applying the proper manufacturing techniques.

"While Gates and Negroponte continue to debate the form and function of their respective plans for the $100 PC, a South Korean startup called nComputing has already beaten them to the punch."

"Why haven't you heard about nComputing? Could be because it's been flying too far below the (American) radar for most people to notice. But in the last 18 months, nComputing has shipped about 80,000 units to customers in the Asia Pacific and Latin American regions at prices, in some cases, below the magic $100 mark. I've seen the systems up close. They run structured applications, such as spreadsheets or word processors, without apparent problem. Each system on the network operates as if it were an independent terminal. You might run into performance issues with transaction-intensive computer games. But that's not the market these guys want to target--and if we're talking about reaching the untethered and underprivileged billions, the story becomes quite interesting."

Read on here.