RE: [TCLUG:1551] Anyone feeling entrepreneurial?

[Christopher Reid Palmer <jaymz@acm.cs.umn.edu>]

On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, Eric Hillman wrote:

> >4. New UI from the bottom up and apps to match
> 
> 	The Corel systems would fit all of the above -- although I've still yet to
> see an LCD screen that makes a good replacement for a CRT monitor (not that
> I've looked all that hard).

Not #4, afaik. But yeah, the Netwinders are pretty close to what I want.

> > Think in terms of long-term return on investment and total cost of
> > ownership. I think the low-ball, make-everything-as-cheap-as-possible
> > approach is ultimately the wrong one to make.
> 
> 	This is true.  From the looks of it, though, the Corel machines are not
> "cheap", though, merely inexpensive (www.corelcomputer.com -- check it
> out...  I actually wouldn't mind having one of these on *my* desk, anyways).

Yep. It's the UI and app development that would cost the most money, and 
I'm afraid most free software types aren't interested enough in UI to work on 
a real project (anything X-based doesn't count, categorically). Of course 
the GNOME and KDE developers are doing good work, but both projects are 
fundamentally doomed if they ever want to be *real* UIs.

> 	Personally, I'm already trying to persuade my boss to let me try one of
> these things out.  We've just heard that the terminal emulation software
> that gives our employees access to our account-processing system is now
> available in Java, which means that our employees could be doing most or all
> of their work in a Netscape window -- so why should we be buying our tellers
> $1800 computers *plus* NT licenses when they can do their job on a $700
> Linux NC?

Exactly. Your business stands to save thousands and thousands of dollars.

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