[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox in the Chronicle of Higher Education

[Nick Daly]

Marc Manthey <marc at let.de> writes:

> On Sep 23, 2011, at 6:31 PM, Rick wrote:
>
>> It looks very much like a dreamplug, I have two.
>>
>> http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx
>
> This device costs about 249 $, the cheapest plug device i found was
> the sheeva plug  99 $ and a mesh potato for 119$
> http://store.villagetelco.com/mesh-potatoes/mesh-potato.html

Actually, no, the DreamPlugs are $149 (I bought one 5 days ago, I'm
sure).  How did you get to the $249 total?  Granted, the lower price
isn't a lot better, but still only 6x the price instead of 10x the goal.
Also, you have to factor in both production scale and related products.
The more units Globalscale produces at once, the cheaper it becomes.
The more producers competing to produce units, the cheaper it becomes.
Either of those will happen only with relatively large-scale purchasing.

> Its beeing far from eben moglens vision to have such a device for 25 $.

See above.  It's not there yet, but as it becomes more popular, it'll go
down in price.

> Woulnt it make more sense to have a mobile with android, because you
> have a display and a keyboard ? ... Most of the modern mobile phones
> have the same or more power then the Marvel 1.2 Ghz Chip.

A few counterpoints:

- Most mobile phones cost a lot more than a Dreamplug.

- Having a separate server allows you to run it as "just a server",
  allowing more uses for more people (because it can contain less
  personal information).

- Adding a screen and keyboard implies you're running X, a display
  manager, etc.  This effectively doubles or triples the system
  requirements of an Internet-access-only server.  While I could, I
  wouldn't want to run a display manager on a DreamPlug.

What would you want to run on it that would require a display and
keyboard?  This might make the tradeoff worthwhile.  Also, there's
nothing saying that different FBX configurations couldn't support
displays and keyboards...  I just wouldn't use it ;)

Nick
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