RE: Oracle buys Navio; Gateway debuts NetPC.

Joe Barrera (joebar@MICROSOFT.com)
Tue, 20 May 1997 16:15:18 -0700


> ELLISON SEES HIMSELF AS AN ENLIGHTENED EGOTIST
> Why has billionaire and Oracle founder Larry Ellison wanted to buy
> Apple Computer? Because he has a mission to put a computer on the
> desk of every American child.

Umm, I think someone else had that mission first, like about 27 years
ago (ref. http://www.microsoft.com/jobs/guide/mission.htm)... No matter.
I'm sure Larry's still capable of thinking he thought of it first.

>> GATEWAY 2000 DEBUTS NETPC
>> On May 21, Gateway 2000 will unveil the industry's first NetPC --
>> code-named Tomahawk -- priced at less than $1,000 without a monitor,
>> and sporting a 133-MHz Pentium chip, 16 MB of memory, a 1-gigabyte
>> hard disk and a speedy network connection.
>
> Yawn. My 166Mhz Pent 16MB 2-gig HP Pavilion cost less than this
> nine months ago.

Here's the network PC I put together this weekend:

1. My old XT, with Hercules mono graphics card, mono display, 20MB
Seagate ST-225... $0 (would you pay more?)
2. 386SX/25 motherboard... $10 at "Computer Renaissance" (recycled
computer store)
3. 4MB of 30 pin SIMMs... $32 (okay, so I got ripped off)
4. 8-bit 3Com Ethernet card... $5 at another recycled computer
store
5. DOS 6.22 + WfW 3.11... $0 (okay, so I'm an MS employee)
6. Internet Explorer for Windows 3.1... $0

Total cost... $47.

- Joe

Joseph S. Barrera III (joebar@microsoft.com)
http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar
Phone, Office: (415) 778-8227; Cellular: (415) 601-3719; Home: (415)
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