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Back From The Mountain
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Comments (29)
9 earlier comments in the full thread.
I think Ken makes a major assumption that may not prove true: The reason for the high rate of return to Walmart may have nothing to do with "user experience" and *everything* to do with the ever-present "technology gap."
IOW, the high rate of return to Walmart probably had more to do with their customers not being able to connect to their dial-up ISP.
Look at the larger, dial-up ISPs - how many of them had a pre-installed dial-up client on the Walmart PCs?
Believe it or not, a large portion of Walmart's customer-base is rural where broadband isn't that widely available.
And no amount of marketing, or support from the "big boys" will ever address this problem.
Dial-up sucks, but for the majority of residents in poor counties such as Pontotoc County, MS, it's all they've got.
IOW, the high rate of return to Walmart probably had more to do with their customers not being able to connect to their dial-up ISP.
Look at the larger, dial-up ISPs - how many of them had a pre-installed dial-up client on the Walmart PCs?
Believe it or not, a large portion of Walmart's customer-base is rural where broadband isn't that widely available.
And no amount of marketing, or support from the "big boys" will ever address this problem.
Dial-up sucks, but for the majority of residents in poor counties such as Pontotoc County, MS, it's all they've got.
WHOA!!
Pontotoc County? My fatherwas from Pontotoc.
Unless things have changed a LOT in the last 30 years or so, Pontotoc puts the small in small world.
Pontotoc County? My fatherwas from Pontotoc.
Unless things have changed a LOT in the last 30 years or so, Pontotoc puts the small in small world.
Quoting: WHOA!!
Pontotoc County? My fatherwas from Pontotoc.
Unless things have changed a LOT in the last 30 years or so, Pontotoc puts the small in small world.
Nope - things have not changed in the last 30 years. That's why I'm glad to be living in Olive Branch (it's in Desoto County just across the stateline south of Memphis.)
In most of Pontotoc County, if you want broadband, you have to spend $300 for a satellite modem, because not even DSL is available.
There are about 2,000,000 residents in MS and most of them live "out in the sticks." So the situation in Pontotoc is pretty typical of other counties such as Union County (where a co-worker of mine lives on the outskirts of New Albany and has to settle for dial-up.)
You want to see your dream of Linux desktops in every home realised, Ken? Then maybe instead of getting Tux painted on Indy cars, look at getting Tux on NASCAR cars and getting at least one of the major distributions with dial-up clients for the top 10 dial-up ISPs pre-installed.
Netzero had/has one for Linspire. Ken, maybe you're the one to talk to them about releasing their client to the world. You're in the perfect position to also see about getting AOL, Bellsouth, PeoplePC, and the other "big" names to release a Linux client. There was an unofficial one for AOL at one time - PengAOL.
My bet is that for the vast majority of the Walmart buyers, the reason for return was "I couldn't get on the internets. Darn thing don't work."
I know of more than one shop in MS that wipes Vista and replaces the OS with XP professional; pre-loading things like GIMP, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Sword. So I don't believe it's a question of "wanting something familiar" because those programs are definitely new to most MS users.
(it just dawned on me to explain - MS is the state/province abbreviation for the State of Mississippi in the U.S.)
>it just dawned on me to explain
And I thought hot, slow and bemused was the state of Mississippi.
And I thought hot, slow and bemused was the state of Mississippi.
I did think it was more than a bit strange that the Everex box at Wal-Mart didn't support dialup. Sure, you can't do all that Web 2.0 stuff on dialup without driving yourself crazy, but you can run a browser tolerably and use a few mail clients ...
I haven't had dialup access in so long, I have no idea how 56K dialup performs on today's systems, with today's apps and today's Web sites. I imagine it's a huge pain.
I'd be running Dillo when needed, Lynx otherwise, and Firefox without graphics turned on ... the latter being how I used to do it.
But it would be tough.
I haven't had dialup access in so long, I have no idea how 56K dialup performs on today's systems, with today's apps and today's Web sites. I imagine it's a huge pain.
I'd be running Dillo when needed, Lynx otherwise, and Firefox without graphics turned on ... the latter being how I used to do it.
But it would be tough.
Quoting:I haven't had dialup access in so long, I have no idea how 56K dialup performs on today's systems, with today's apps and today's Web sites. I imagine it's a huge pain.
Dialup is fairly common here. I have a few customers on dialup. I know at least one of them simply can't get anything else (well, maybe satellite) where they are. The few times I've had to use it on their silly windows comps, it's just as painful as I remember it being. heh.
> But it would be tough.
We just got broadband two years ago. It is tough. Lynx is the only way to make it work.
We just got broadband two years ago. It is tough. Lynx is the only way to make it work.
Darren makes a good point, and one I discovered personally 1 day after I published this opinion. A friend purchased one of the low end desktops from Zareason and not knowing a thing about Linux, I offered to set her machine up and show her the ropes. She can only afford dialup right now as she just moved into a new home and is watching her money until she can get a good idea of the ebb and flow of her cash with the new expense. In a default installation of Ubuntu 7.10 I did find a utility to set up the dialup manually but one must find and enter the dns server info et al. I got a bit frustrated by the fact that every time I entered the primary dns and clicked "add", it would disappear into the nether-regions of lost bits and bytes. After practicing a dozen rounds of insanity my suspicions grew as I realized there was no way to actually "build" a dialer. Mickey had already hooked the phone connection into the computer so I thought I'd take a look-see and sure enough, she had placed the phone jack into the slightly larger ethernet inlet. There wasn't a dialup modem in the machine at all.
And so seems the way of the future. A bit of research indicates that the dialup modem is largly a "requested addon" now, much like the floppy drive. The hw industry is moving us away from dialup and not including a modem is an indication of such. To be fair to Za, this IS a low-end machine and the specs clearly indicate there is no dialup modem included. Fortunately, yahoo-dsl is available at a decent up/down for 25 bucks a month and that includes a router/box with the install. That will happen Friday.
Darren is about 18 months late with his suggestion that I concentrate my efforts away from race car sponsorship. We have contacted AOL, Everyones Internet (now out of business), Cox Cable, Time Warner and a slew of smaller isps in the area; about getting Linux dialup abilities in their packages or at least releasing some code so we can do it. To a company, everyone said the same thing. If they release and support a dialup solution for Linux, then they will have to move to a fully supported Linux solution and not one of them is willing to do this. I worked with this project for months before I realized that none of them would budge on the issue.
So yeah Darren, we have moved on from race car sponsorship...thanks for your subtle and not-at-all-meant-to-be-catty suggestion. Actually, we've keyed on a project that is has already promised national attention and NPR feature coverage. It's a little project known as LINdependence 2008 and not surprisingly, it is getting more attention outside the Linux community than within. We could use a hand getting it organized to a higher degree...unless you don't care for this one either, then I'm fairly at a loss.
http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2008/03/lindependence_2...
As an aside, I may not care much for Ubuntu as a distro but I have to say their community is first-rate and probably the best that exists. A great tutorial resides on how to get dialup working with the "Buntus" at http://www.debianadmin.com/setting-up-dial-up-connection-in-...
h
And so seems the way of the future. A bit of research indicates that the dialup modem is largly a "requested addon" now, much like the floppy drive. The hw industry is moving us away from dialup and not including a modem is an indication of such. To be fair to Za, this IS a low-end machine and the specs clearly indicate there is no dialup modem included. Fortunately, yahoo-dsl is available at a decent up/down for 25 bucks a month and that includes a router/box with the install. That will happen Friday.
Darren is about 18 months late with his suggestion that I concentrate my efforts away from race car sponsorship. We have contacted AOL, Everyones Internet (now out of business), Cox Cable, Time Warner and a slew of smaller isps in the area; about getting Linux dialup abilities in their packages or at least releasing some code so we can do it. To a company, everyone said the same thing. If they release and support a dialup solution for Linux, then they will have to move to a fully supported Linux solution and not one of them is willing to do this. I worked with this project for months before I realized that none of them would budge on the issue.
So yeah Darren, we have moved on from race car sponsorship...thanks for your subtle and not-at-all-meant-to-be-catty suggestion. Actually, we've keyed on a project that is has already promised national attention and NPR feature coverage. It's a little project known as LINdependence 2008 and not surprisingly, it is getting more attention outside the Linux community than within. We could use a hand getting it organized to a higher degree...unless you don't care for this one either, then I'm fairly at a loss.
http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2008/03/lindependence_2...
As an aside, I may not care much for Ubuntu as a distro but I have to say their community is first-rate and probably the best that exists. A great tutorial resides on how to get dialup working with the "Buntus" at http://www.debianadmin.com/setting-up-dial-up-connection-in-...
h
helios,
Your friend is lucky nobody called while the phone line was plugged in to the Ethernet port. That would have spelled instant death for the port, and probably the whole system.
Your friend is lucky nobody called while the phone line was plugged in to the Ethernet port. That would have spelled instant death for the port, and probably the whole system.
LOL...I thought about that...I doubt Za would have honored the warranty.
Ken,
I was SERIOUS about sponsoring a NASCAR instead of the Indy ... much bigger market as far as race fans go.
This is especially true for the rural crowd I was referring to that only have access to dial-up or very expensive satellite modem.
(maybe there's a niche for Point-to-point long distance WiFi - county-wide WISPs.)
I was SERIOUS about sponsoring a NASCAR instead of the Indy ... much bigger market as far as race fans go.
This is especially true for the rural crowd I was referring to that only have access to dial-up or very expensive satellite modem.
(maybe there's a niche for Point-to-point long distance WiFi - county-wide WISPs.)
Quoting: much bigger market as far as race fans go.
Don't know how true that is overall, but in the US I think that's an easy call. It also takes an absolute fortune to get on one of those cars (living in North Carolina, my company is the IT vendor for one of these racing teams, and in my previous life as a catering chef we were the caterer to another). If you want to actually be seen, it's gonna cost.
Quoting: SPONSORSHIP $1.5 billion Companies sponsor teams, races, and NASCAR itself. Costs--and perks--vary.
Primary team sponsor Gets marquee branding on driver and car. Pay more, get more space. Cost: $8 million to $20 million
NASCAR sponsor Teams devote the front quarter-panels to special prize sponsors. Overall, NASCAR sponsors pay an average of $2 million apiece.
Associate team sponsor Smaller logos on driver and in a few designated car locations. Cost: $500,000 to $5 million
From http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/... it's pretty accurate, and even the little jobs (that no one is gonna notice) won't be cheap. There's no way the community can come up with that kind of cash. I think the sponsorship of a race car is a great idea, I gave a little toward the Tux500, I wish it had garnered more money, etc...but advertisement is expensive.
LINdependence, h, is a fabulous idea, I'll send a little bit in soon. It's hard to buy buzz, it really takes a great idea, I think you might just have one of those ideas.
EDIT:
From the LINdependence site:
Quoting: As of March 24, we have three distros which have responded positively and no FOSS programs.
Who are the three?
http://faq.fixedbylinux.com-a.googlepages.com/tuxteams
There are 4 listed here but two of the listees are mepis and Antix...so technically 4. Mandriva was added after this posting.
However, there may be some fairly exciting news about possible corporate sponsorship in the coming days...one can only hope. The sad thing about it is that the people who have refused to participate will be the ones to scream the loudest...prepare thy earplugs.
Darren...I did look into NASCAR...to be specific, I actually entered into negotiations with the Sterling Marlin Team. After calculating our community participation level from Tux500, my cyphering produced the estimated size of the sponsorship ad we would be able to afford and the location of said sponsorship. It would be prominently displayed on the bottom-side of the fourth lugnut on the back-left wheel.
Prime real estate for any sponsor in my book, LOI
h
There are 4 listed here but two of the listees are mepis and Antix...so technically 4. Mandriva was added after this posting.
However, there may be some fairly exciting news about possible corporate sponsorship in the coming days...one can only hope. The sad thing about it is that the people who have refused to participate will be the ones to scream the loudest...prepare thy earplugs.
Darren...I did look into NASCAR...to be specific, I actually entered into negotiations with the Sterling Marlin Team. After calculating our community participation level from Tux500, my cyphering produced the estimated size of the sponsorship ad we would be able to afford and the location of said sponsorship. It would be prominently displayed on the bottom-side of the fourth lugnut on the back-left wheel.
Prime real estate for any sponsor in my book, LOI
h
Too bad about the price of getting Tux on an actual NASCAR racecar.
There's got to be a cheaper way to reach the rural "redneck" market segment (and I'm not meaning that in a derogatory sense.) The many such ppl I've encountered are always looking to save a buck (which is probably why the Linux PCs sold so well at Walmart in the first place - before being returned.)
There's got to be a cheaper way to reach the rural "redneck" market segment (and I'm not meaning that in a derogatory sense.) The many such ppl I've encountered are always looking to save a buck (which is probably why the Linux PCs sold so well at Walmart in the first place - before being returned.)
Quoting:There's got to be a cheaper way to reach the rural "redneck" market segment (and I'm not meaning that in a derogatory sense.)
Tux branded hunting rifles? :P
>Tux branded hunting rifles?
Moon pies.
Moon pies.
> There's got to be a cheaper way to reach the rural "redneck" market segment...
Seriously? Try getting Linux CD's put in with six packs or larger of Budweiser and Miller. Use an ad something like, "Is your computer acting like it could use a long cold one?"
Seriously? Try getting Linux CD's put in with six packs or larger of Budweiser and Miller. Use an ad something like, "Is your computer acting like it could use a long cold one?"
quote]"Is your computer acting like it could use a long cold one?"[/quote]
Not bad, might actually work.
Not bad, might actually work.
Brilliant! :-D
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It's an easy choice for Apple, I think it'd be an easy choice for another company that wants to shoot for that.
MS profits from mass market acceptance by peddling their heroin known as Office, they make a pittance on OS sales compared to that. Mass market acceptance is useless without some other way to make money.