Computer Shopper builds a $250 Linux PC

Well, considering my recent ruminations on the low-end PC market (and the still high expense of an LCD monitor), it was timely to discover that over at Computer Shopper they’ve put together a complete PC, less monitor, for $250. Coincidentally the cost of the Zonbu unit when you don’t sign on for their subscription storage service.

Interestingly, their OS of choice is Ubuntu. More on this tomorrow…

-Mr. Zonbu

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Zonbu LiveCD & Business Model Questions

I’ve been thinking more today about the Zonbu business model.

I’m not sure that I can tell you what business they are in. The hardware is OEM’ed, the data storage is outsourced to Amazon S3 and the software is based on Gentoo Linux with broad community support. Sure its customized and optimized, but the core software suite is from Linux-land, not Zonbu.

So they don’t make hardware, they don’t make software and they don’t run a data center that provides storage. Either it’s the ultimate web 2.0 business model, or they lack what the VC’s like to call “barriers to entry”.