Hassle-Free PC

Personal computers were supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, these beasts have turned us all into part-time IT administrators, our lives given over to downloading upgrades, installing patches and updates and drivers and antispyware, decrypting error messages and screaming at stalled applications. Enough! The folks at Zonbu think they've produced the answer: a $99, 2-pound computer about the size of Apple's Mac mini. It comes preloaded with a modified version of the free Linux operating system and a set of basic applications, none of them from Microsoft. There's no power-gobbling microprocessor from Intel or AMD and no optical or hard drive, just 4 gigabytes of flash memory so you can store a few files locally. The bulk of your files are stashed on the Web, thanks to a deal Zonbu struck with Amazon's S3 online storage service. The catch, if you want to call it that, is that the $99 price requires you to pay a monthly fee for support and software updates. The fee is based on storage, ranging from $13 for 25 gigabytes to $20 for 100 gigabytes. Supposedly the lower-power chip can reduce your electricity bill enough to make up for the monthly fees to Zonbu. Remains to be seen. Zonbu is riding two of tech's hottest trends: open-source software and "cloud computing," which means running applications over the Web rather than locally on the PC. Most of our time on a computer is spent on the Internet anyway, and the Web browser has become our most important application. In this new wired world Zonbu is all you need--just add monitor and keyboard.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/free_forbes/2007/1015/056.html