I was on the point of buying one of these, but while I was thinking about it and taking a shower I came up with a progression in mind...

1. Some geek buys one of these devices
2. That geek hacks the hardware and figures out how to install Linux on the machine
3. The geek shares his knowledge of how to do it with others over the internet
4. Someone submits the site to Slashdot's editors and it gets posted on the main page
5. Slashdot readers see the story and see that they can get a cool Linux box for $99
6. Slashdot users int the thousands go out and buy this device
7. The company sells thousands of these devices at a loss
8. The company assumes they will recover this loss when these thousands of people start paying for their internet service
9. These users don't sign up for the internet service and the company doesn't make their money back
10. The company goes belly-up, blaming malicious Linux hackers for destroying their business (ironically using the right term)

Now unless you're violating a license agreement by not using their internet service you aren't doing anything illegal by turning this machine into a Linux box. Sure, it seems very stupid to me that the company would sell these machines at what can only be a loss assuming they would make up their loss with the internet service -- but that's not the point here.

Whether or not the people buying this machine are doing anything wrong, think of the bad publicity this thing could cause, not to mention the potential moral guilt of destroying a dumb company. It would be different if this company were selling millions of units and only a small handfull of people hacked it and installed Linux, but Slashdot is a big site now, and our "Slashdot Effect" can do more than just take down a small web server.

Something to think about anyhow...