[geeks] Let say you wanted a small, small, PC...

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sat, Aug 04, 2007 at 05:19:27PM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> I'm not at all clear on who actually buys 1,000s of ready made PC  
> boards for embedded systems, except maybe ATM manufactures.  My  
> company certainly doesn't buy in that volume, and I would expect that  
> anyone actually buying 1,000s would having something custom made to  
> their application.
> 
> I have several ideas for embedded systems that I might use such a  
> board in, but if I were to make 1,000 of them, it would easily be  
> cheaper to switch to using a custom system including only what is  
> absolutely needed.

At that price, I can thing of many things I'd like to use the for 
proof of concept embeded devices. 

HOWEVER, if my experience with VIA still holds (it may not, I admit),
then the people selling a VIA based "Green PC" for $99, with no disk
(but 4gig of flash RAM) are going to find out their fanless systems will
all burn and crash next Summer. VIA when I worked with their "green"
chips claimed they would work fanless, but everyone we tried 
burnt out without a CPU fan and an external fan on the box itself.

If that is the case, they will sell for next to nothing from
surplus dealers. 

On the other hand, I'm still thinking about products that could
be built on recycled iPods. :-)

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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