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Linux Software

Free Linux Based Web-Appliances (From Spanish Bank) 63

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lot-better-then-getting-a-toaster dept.
El Blasphemouso Padre writes "According to this Reuters story Intel is building 250,000 AOL-Branded Web-Appliances to be given away by a Spanish bank. It runs Linux and soon many people in Spain with no computer will say hola to Tux!" Gotta wonder what the actual cost is on a box like that if they can give away a quarter million of them.
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Free Linux Based Web-Appliances (From Spanish Bank) More

Free Linux Based Web-Appliances (From Spanish Bank)

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  • Where does the article say "FREE"? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It doesn't say free.

  • They call it "Paquito" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The plan was initially to sell 500.000 cheap computers to the bank's best clients for around $700.

    The computer was to be like a toaster, just switch on and that's it, you have Internet. Nothing else.

    The actual system, Intel Dot.Station, based on Red Hat Linux and a quite modified Mozilla is as close as it can be. You can't get a plugging and install it. You can't run new applications. You can't get into it. It has that Mozilla clone running atop Linux and that's all a user get to see. You don't even know its running Linux. They call it "Paquito" - a stupid name, really.

    About the clone of Mozilla, it is quite difficult to have a website working on it, its all quirks and strange behaviour.

    To complete the Idea, a big family portal was designed and built up: it is the hard-wired home page for Paquito. The portal's name was Prodigios, the bank, BSCH, a big travel agency and some others were behind it. The plan is as old as 2 years. Some months ago, AOL bought a big piece of it, and it was renamed AOL avant.

    But it's been delayed and delayed, even with most of it already working. And now, they plan to give - as a subscription actually - only 250.000 Paquitos.

    I suspect AOL is just experimenting in Europe - but at what price! 40.000 million pesetas - more than $200 million. Guess that's peanuts to AOL.
  • In the context of secure banking, I can see where a copyright-control mechanism could actually be considered a *GOOD* thing : it could result in decentralized banking systems. Admittedly, initially on a very small scale, but later over time, it'd be quite unique.

    A non-copyable file is pretty much the same as a lump of gold in a vault. Given enough crypto tech applied, you could have your savings account figure of $54,000 encoded in a non-copyable file, which you can store on your own Secure PC.

    Nobody can access it, nobody can steal it (presumably), and nobody can copy it. It's a resource (a 'currency' file) that sits there, on your own system, ad infinitum.

    And thus, you can establish means of trade into and out of this 'currency' file, bypassing prohibitively large and expensive banking systems.

    From a banking perspective, this SecurePC/FreeAOLTerminal concept is a way of Beowulf'ing things out to the people ... it'll be interesting to see if things pan out, either way.
  • From Intels site, a list of supported media formats:

    Most web pages in html format
    Virtually all web pages using Java** and Javascript 1.5
    Websites and presentations that use Macromedia Flash*
    Streaming audio and video in RealPlayer* format
    Streaming audio in M3U and PLS formats
    Audio in MP3, WAV, MIDI, AU, RAM, RA, and RMP formats
    Video in MP1 (MPE, MPG, MPEG), MP2, and AVI formats (there is also limited support for MOV)
    Graphics Images in GIF, JPG, JPEG, JPE, TIFF, BMP, PNG, PPM, and XPM formats
    Text and other documents in PDF, ASCII, and HTML formats

    Notice some things missing?

    1. MS Word .DOC file format.
    2. MS streaming media.
    3. Apple Quicktime (.MOV/.QT).

    To say nothing of the countless codecs that are only available under MS/Apple realms ...

    So, AOL/Intel is now going up against MS/Apple. There is no way in hell MS is going to give MS streaming to any other platform, and the same goes for Apple (though that may change in their case).

    Admittedly, MS Word .DOC files are a piece of cake under Linux, but that could change at a drop of a version from MS ...
  • I assume that it is using Mozilla but can't see anywhere on the page that confirms it.

    As for your comments, think about it this way, they're not going to use hardware that is gonna make mozilla crawl are they? Also a lot of performance work is going into mozilla ready for version 1.0

  • Good for Web Standards (Score:3)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Sunday March 25, 2001 @02:30PM (#341111)
    I assume that this web appliance will be using the Mozilla rendering engine and if a lot of these web appliances get out on the market it'll do a great job to increase Mozilla's market share meaning that people will finally have to develop web sites that conform to web standards.

    I come across a lot of crappy sites that use some IE specific HTML or JavaScript that break under moz but with very little effort this page could be modified to work under Mozilla (and Netscape 6) and IE. But most refuse as they're too ignorant to realise that not everyone can or wants to use IE.
  • But does it run Linux?
  • My current bank gives away nice crypto tokens ("calculators") with every electronic banking account.
    Cost? about $150/account.


    But with the 'calculator' thingie (my bank does not use this kind of authentication, BTW), people still need a way to get online, and this terminal is clearly intended to lure over all those people that won't get a computer for themselves.

    /Janne

  • The cost is almost irrelevant (Score:4)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Sunday March 25, 2001 @10:54AM (#341114) Homepage
    Actually, for a bank, the cost of giving away terminals like that should be a fairly good deal. The cost of staffing the banks with tellers, security and other costs make it a huge win for every customer that chooses to do their routine businness via the web rather than in person. An estimate I've seen is that every bill paid in person will cost the bank about $2. With five bills a month ($10), the perminal will probably have paid for itself after 2-3 years. Considering that somebody who has switched to internetbanking probably will continue to use it, a one time cost per customer of $300 or so is probably a good bargain.

    /Janne
  • One important thing is that this puts a number of users at a "standard user" level. People with these stations will not be able to use ActiveX controls, not be able to view Microsft word documents and in general not be able to access non-open standard material.

    The more users in the world who do not have the ability to access closed format information the more pressure on information providers to provide open standard information.

  • >> at what cost to the true fundamentals of what the system set out to be?

    At risk of misrepresenting the great man himself, will this Spanish initiative prevent Linus from playing with his pet OS? Nope. So, zero cost there then..

    ~Cederic
  • I'm sure Bank Santander will make money from this endeavor, but why shouldn't they? They'll be helping to get an inexpensive Internet device into homes that may not otherwise have a computer. How is it a fraud?
  • it is not free

    they seem to say that they will sit in the bank and you may look @ your balance and such as well as browse through the banks portle/AOL and buy things this makes pubishing documents about intrest rates easy and so forth because you get rid of paper that cost a bit and when you change the info you need to change the paper and blurb with the web you just change the webpage

    just think about it ATMs are a pain the bum to produce and QA and most people use them to check their balance you can do that on the web so less Auto tellers which are expensive

    lots of banks are thinking about this because of the paper Issue

    regards

    john jones
  • My current bank gives away nice crypto tokens ("calculators") with every electronic banking account.
    Cost? about $150/account.

    My *other* bank just prints out 100 challenge/response thingies (password 1: G3DSG3323SD, password 2: F$5yDFG32 etc.) and sends you a new sheet (in a tamper-evident envelope) every time you run out..
    Cost? I'd say about $1 per 100 transactions

    So a $300 device (is that the cost?) sound a bit steep..
    --

  • Troll with that low a UID? Oh well... I'm biting, just in case.

    It was _used_ as a toy by many, but it was extremely powerful. That OS was way in advance of MS-DOS/Windows and MacOS in most ways when it was a possible player, the standard hardware was entirely sufficent for domestic and small-office users. For more than that, there were always the big box systems.

    But, it got a toy perception because it was games that drove it at first. Which was a real problem and almost totally unjustified. Oh well.

    Anyway. The _tech_ press might know Linux is a proper OS - but we're talking about the general public here. Who don't and don't read the tech press. This is a very real risk which Linux fans _must_ watch out for and counter. Carefully, again speaking as an Amigan :)

  • Re:A MS nightmare (Score:3)

    by GregWebb ( 26123 ) on Sunday March 25, 2001 @11:38AM (#341121)
    The other possibility is less attractive.

    This is rather likely to be extremely limited in what you can do with it. If you can do more than surf the web and send e-mail I'd be surprised. I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find that limited to AOL and the bank's site, either.

    Now. Imagine a whispering campaign here. Nothing official, just MS and others - sadly, schoolkids will be a pretty potent force here - putting the word around. This thing isn't good for much. You want a proper computer. This runs Linux. My proper computer runs Windows. Hopeless logic, no thoughts on causality, but the link is in people's minds.

    Rather rapidly, without any real effort, Linux is into people's minds and as a toy. Far worse for it than people simply not knowing about it at all, as the toy perception can be really difficult to shift. Trust the British Amigan here.

    Could go either way for MS. Could help AOL quite a bit. Can't do much positive for Linux from what I can see...
  • So the bank can still give out toasters. But now by having an IR or USB port they can be Internet-interfaced toasters. [OK, so there's a secondary silliness about most toasters having two infrared ports...]
  • Apply this to what's left of the U.S. market. 45% of 300 million people = 135 million people x $200 per terminal = $27 billion dollars. What is that number of eyeballs worth anyway?
  • Depending on their costs, this owuld be a classic loss leader trick. They take a light loss on this but make it back in other fees and services they charge for.

    If you can control costs this is a very smart thing to do.
  • Word2x [alcom.co.uk] might be a good choice for doing this.
  • If these things are AOL-branded, then presumably, the users will have to sign up for AOL service for some specified amount of time. That's where they'll be making the money; let's say they sign up for three years of 'net access at $20 a month. That's $720 right there - enough to make a low-end computer.

  • Open source isn't culture imperialism, or, to acknowledge those who speak of the "GNU virus", at least not the kind I'm referring to. I was referring generally to the practice of buying a country's media infrastructure or overwhelming its native culture by flooding distribution channels with US memes (that are usually materialistic in nature). Specifically in this case, AOL/TW is getting a leg up on local competition and establishing itself as the dominant Internet player, thus being in a position to impose its hypercommercialized vision of the internet on another society.

    I should have been a bit more clear to drop something like that on the discussion. Here's an
    article [thenation.com] from The Nation [thenation.com] by Robert McChesney [robertmcchesney.com]. Choice quote from an analyst at PaineWebber :

    "What you are seeing," says Christopher Dixon, media analyst for the investment firm PaineWebber, "is the creation of a global oligopoly. It happened to the oil and automotive industries earlier this century; now it is happening to the entertainment industry."

    So, I'm glad that they aren't running CE, but as rgmoore points out elsewhere in this thread, its an appliance so it doesn't really matter. I guess one of the goals of free software is to make software a commodity, so I guess this is a sign of success in that area, which is great and that I don't want to detract from. AOL/TW could turn out to be a bigger fish to fry than M$.

  • scary ... (Score:3)

    by akb ( 39826 ) on Sunday March 25, 2001 @11:14AM (#341128)
    Intel isn't the big player in this deal, its AOL/TW. AOL did the deal with the bank for distribution, Intel was just selected to provide the hardware. Definitely a score for Intel but seeding the open market for AOL subscribers is what this deal is about.

    Only 1 in 10 homes worldwide currently has a PC and room for growth in this new market is now best found not in the U.S. market, Welch said.

    This is a general trend of the media giants, the US market is "mature" so there's not as much room to grow, so they go abroad. This is what's referred to when you here the phrase "US cultural imperialism".

    This is particularly disturbing because its the Internet, AOL/TW is trying to corner the Internet market in a whole country. The markets that they are going to push into aren't going to have an Internet that developed in the noncommercial way that it did in the US, they are going to be commercial from the get go.
  • Nobody can access it, nobody can steal it (presumably), and nobody can copy it. It's a resource (a 'currency' file) that sits there, on your own system, ad infinitum

    Ugh... barf. And if my hard drive goes bad, or my memory goes bad, or my processor goes bad, etc. I've lot.. what was it? $54,000. And because these "secure PCs" cannot be backed up, it is simply gone forever. Trust, me, if I was forced to use this thing, and it lost $54,000 irretrievably, or even inconveniently, I would load the thing up with explosives and hand-deliver it through the front window at Microsoft.

    Secure PC is a bad idea, no matter how you cut it. They are offering to sell you less freedom. For the low, low price of $bondage!

    - - - - -

  • AOL and Users (Score:4)

    by ScumBiker ( 64143 ) <scumbiker.jwenger@org> on Sunday March 25, 2001 @11:12AM (#341130) Homepage Journal
    Basically, anybody with a pulse can use AOL. My 14 year old daughter refuses to use it anymore, stating "All it's good for is chatting and I can get that for free everywhere else! I think AOL is for people that are to stupid to understand how to surf the real internet.". Smart kid... Anyway, I think it's pretty cool that they chose Linux for the base OS. Does this mean we're about to get bombarded with AOL for Linux CD's, offering 5,000,000 hours (useable only in the first month, of course)?



    Dive Gear [divingdeals.com]
  • Let's think about this one step further...

    Now the bank has lots of cuctomers using their terminals. Sure, it runs Linux. Sure, it can access the web. Sure, you can install your applications on it. but will you?

    The next logical step is for the bank to open a server farm to allow it's customers to access all types of applications with X Window servers localy.
    "But it's not MS Word, I need MS Word!" OK, for a slightly(?) higher fee, you can have access to out Citrix Server farm, and have access to a full suite of Microsoft applications.
    Selling points for this could include the fact that your data is "In a secure enviorment that gets backed up daily" and "You will always have the latest version of the application" and all the other reasons that thin clients are deployed.

    Once they have you "locked" into their hardware, and software, they can offer you all sorts of "services" that just might look pretty attractive to some folks out there. Thse folks are the same folks that would not mind AOL as an internet service provider.

    Heck, maybe the Bank isn't going to provide the server farm, maybe it'll be AOL/TW...

    I'm not saying that this is really a bad thing. It's just a thing.

    -Joe

  • It's really pretty surprising what banks will give away in an attempt go grab a few customers. I got a Palm IIIe from Citibank for signing up for a checking account. They promptly fucked me over by closing my account without warning (seems that I had to return a new signature card that they didn't send me). Turns out that landlords get pretty pissed off when you write checks against a closed account.
    _____________

  • cost? (Score:1)

    by mach-5 ( 73873 )
    Gotta wonder what the actual cost is on a box like that if they can give away a quarter million of them.

    Nothing for the OS ;-)

  • Admittedly, MS Word .DOC files are a piece of cake under Linux, but that could change at a drop of a version from MS

    I agree... to a point.

    I've used Sun/StarOffice (bloated and slow as hell), I've used AbiWord, and was rather impressed. But I haven't done the pre-requisite research - can word .DOCs be interpreted by something that can be run on the command-line? At least to show text-only, or even add some limited formatting, á là lynx...

    That would be truly impressive

  • Me pregunto si estos ordenadores utilizan "GNOME: El Tablero del escritorio Mejicano"? Diseñado por un mejicano, la voluntad de GNOME hace la sensación española en el país. La dimensión de una variable de su "taskbar" y "start menu" a la configuración española, y usar al mismo "window manager" que el Senorita Robin Malda dará la gente española a una sensación de la superioridad unrivaled desde entonces cuando él primero envió a su ejército a Méjico, para perseguir y para esclavizar a los indígenas. Quizás Miguel "Yo Quiero GNOME Desktop" de Icazza que la voluntad incluso se corone el rey de España!

    --

  • What? Maybe Babelfish lost something in the translation...

    --

  • I wonder if these 250000 units count in IDC's OS shipment survey. Is so, this, combined with the tivo and other embedded devices, will surely give a boost to Linux' 2001 numbers.
  • Looks better than the Audrey.
  • i don't see where is say "free". this is an AOL/Intel/spanish bank deal.

    there is also a service involved called "avant" that AOL recently puchased....

    somehow, i seriously don't all of this is free.

  • HTH is open source cultural imperialism? the only possible way i can see is that if the boxes can't run your onw s/w and dev tools.

    i don't see how that could be if it's basically a celeron-based imac (more or less).

    one thing that's really good is that spaniards tend to be well educated...meaning quality bug reports from sophisticated, non-emotional people, which AOL probably has trouble getting in the USA.

    plus, the users haven't been polluted by previous desktops...that's worth a lot in and of itself.

    this box looks extremely hackable...

  • it's tough for me to call this an applicance w/o knowing more about it...really, it looks like a fairly capable PC made from mainstream components -- i've always considered net appliances to have no hard drive, etc.

    this has decent mem, cpu, harddrive...all the makings for kids to start ripping out open source code.

    spain has a sizable open source/linux community...they're going to go wild on this machine, I bet.

    I couldn't go to the link you mention, but I imagine the english dominance in programming languages has already polluted the memes of the entire freaking planet!

  • What IMO is even worse in the long run is that opening up new markets with internet appliances rather than PCs threatens the openness of the PC. One of the things that's really driven things like the OpenDVD process and Napster is the ability to add new features to your computer that may not be approved of by a centralized authority. The move to closed hardware in appliances also locks out the ability to add unapproved software. Open Source only matters if you can actually install modified software on the device. By selling people appliances that the producers still control, companies like AOL/TW can lock out technologies like Napster that threaten their core businesses like movies and music. If most of the world gets weaned on stripped down, single purpose devices, AOL/TW can strangle developments they don't want in their infancy.

  • Intel's page. (Score:3)

    by jedwards ( 135260 ) on Sunday March 25, 2001 @10:51AM (#341143) Homepage Journal
    Intel's page [intel.com]

    It's an ugly looking thing.

  • Would we care if it didn't?

    ---
    I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
    They're still in, aren't they?
  • This maybe the start of something that could turn into an AOL/OS. (much rumored for many years) Even though based on Linux, it would be sure to give MS the cold sweats

    Interesting. Now that AOL and TW have merged into one huge fscking corporation, they may actually have the resources with which to compete with Microsoft. Maybe the AOL-TW merger was a good thing after all (hint of sarcasm).

    ---
    The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:
  • I assume that it is using Mozilla but can't see anywhere on the page that confirms it.

    "The Dot.Station, which is a blue color similar to the one Intel uses in its logo, runs the Linux operating system and uses a Mozilla Web browser."

    RTFA ;-)

    --

  • A MS nightmare (Score:4)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Sunday March 25, 2001 @11:02AM (#341147) Journal
    This maybe the start of something that could turn into an AOL/OS. (much rumored for many years) Even though based on Linux, it would be sure to give MS the cold sweats. Most people do not care what the brand name is beyond simple functionality.
  • Interesting that they call it a "major design win"...
  • Wow! Wouldn't it be great if a whole community of users could grow up around these simple, easy-to-use devices, using them to chat, order simple services, summon a doctor...

    Oh, wait a second. That was the Minitel in France.
  • Why do you say this like AOL is some little company trying to take on the big guys (MS/Apple)? Compared to MS and Apple, AOL is a monster. They are part of Time Warner. They own magazines and television channels and cable networks and major chat protocols and a premier web browser. They have a much larger influence than MS will ever have. MS is, so far, a flash in the pan. They've only recently achieved anything resembling dominance in the office applications and OS markets. If AOL decided they needed a QuickTime player for their Linux-based internet appliance, I'm guessing the money they could pony up for this would outweigh any qualms at Apple in a darn hurry. If not, they are certainly in a position to develop one and position it as the next standard.

    AOL is huge in terms of subscriber numbers and has a long history of providing connections, chats, email, and online content. They predate the popular web and email movement. If AOL produced a version of Linux designed to integrate Netscape and AOL connections, the only thing they'd need to do to completely swamp Microsoft would be to figure out a way of appeasing the demand for MS Office (vmware? wine?). The beauty of getting this type of software linked with fairly closed hardware is that no one is going to hack this box to try and load Windows on it.

  • Wait for it...It's coming soon [slashdot.org] to an internet applicance near you.

  • But I haven't done the pre-requisite research - can word .DOCs be interpreted by something that can be run on the command-line? At least to show text-only, or even add some limited formatting, á là lynx...

    How about wvware [wvware.com]?
  • On a different note this is a good thing: if you have enough ordinary consumers running around using Mozilla, more mainstream webdesigners will have to design for browsers other than IE; an increasing trend in corporate (but occasionally useful) websites these days.

    Matthew

  • I wonder if we can hack this thing to make it run Linux... oh it does already.

    Oh well, I wonder if it'll run WinME instead? That would be perverse.
    --

  • Betcha theres service fees for it. Probably like the Buck a day company.
  • forget AOL for Linux CD's... What about tons of AOL distro linux cds period. everybody will get linux sent to them in the mail...

  • It si not free, they sell it (Score:3)

    by svampa ( 259663 ) on Sunday March 25, 2001 @02:34PM (#341157)
    They sell the terminal for a low price.

    A lot of adult people in Spain doesn't have a PC or doesn't know how to use it, selling this terminal the bank says "With this device it's easy, and it is not an expensive PC". And some times they will forget to say that the customer could do it with a PC, as easy as with the terminal, and with the PC they can do a lot of things more. Computers illiterate bussiness managers will buy it because it is more safe.

    The bank will earn a lot of money selling this. Trust in me, it's more than a fair deal, it is a wonderful fraud.

    Excuse my bad English, I'm from Spain
  • There are some reasonable uses for a secure BIOS boot facility. I would like a scheme that would allow me to lock down a PC so it would only load the O/S after first checking the signature on it.

    The copyright protection stuff strikes me as ludicrous overreach however. What the business model is for the schemes escapes me. Unless the RIAA is going to subsidize tricked up PCs there is no incentive for the customer to buy a PC whose feature set has been choosen by a third party to limit what they can do.

    Look at the sales of the Sony SDMI compatible MP3 player, they only started to sell after they disabled the SDMI pars.

    The part of the copy protection scheme I can't quite work out is how they hope to stop people ripping CDs in the first place. Even if they have a 100% secure means of 'protecting' SDMI labelled content they will have no means of controlling unlablled content.

    All in all I suspect that it turns out to be a solution looking for a market willing to pay for it.

  • sigh

    Why is it that any time there is an attempt to improve the abysmal level of computer security we always have someone come round decrying it as grossly deficient and not secure at all?

    I don't quite see the point in the original article where I said that a secure BIOS bootstrap would solve all security problems, cure all known diseases and end world hunger and wars. Oh thats right, I didn't, I said it would help.

    I don't see why a secure BIOS would let itself be overwritten.

    Security is risk control, if you want risk elimination then tough.

    You don't need absolute physical security to benefit from a secure boot sequence, anything to reduce the spread of viruses is worthwhile.

    But then again it is much easier to demonstrate your credentials as a crypto-weenie by criticising others than to actually do things that are useful and help improve security.

    And yes, signed kernel and all executables is exactly what I am suggesting.

  • OK so we are all saying how copy protection sucks and is a collosal failure. So then we have folk saying 'great lets use the technology for banking...'

    Electronic data can be duplicated, nobody has a viable means of preventing that. After all there is nothing that is said behind closed doors that will not be shouted from the rooftops

    Banking systems are register/account based for good reason. They also work pretty well.

    Trying to make electronic systems ape material systems is a mistake.

  • You fail to recognize this as security through obscurity.

    That is because it isn't. Security through obscurity depends only on concealing the design of the system. BIOS verification of the boot sequence does not depend on obscurity to ad security.

    The ability to mouth slogans like 'security through obscurity' does not make them applicable. You clearly don't know what you are talking about.

    Systems have had secure console modes for years. Checking the system executable is a sensible and viable precaution. It has zero to do with physical security, it is a logical security measure.

  • People don't understand to an International government and an International chip monopoly the hardware is pennies. It's the software that costs $$$$. AOL, Intel, & Spain must have learned what the l33t kids have: Linux is a car with its doors unlocked, just waiting to be taken for a joy ride.

    Unless we can actually turn it into a buisness model which doesn't involve restructing the world economy, it's going to be nothing more than a corporate scapegoat for those who don't want to pay the great MS monarcy's tax.

    Great way to take over, but at what cost to the true fundamentals of what the system set out to be?

    Linux has been reduced to a happy meal toy. I wish more people would understand the difference between open source and free...

  • Even if these only cost 200 bucks to make, that's still a 50 million dollar investment. For a product genre with a very shaky history, and an unproven market, that's not the kind of investment you make unless you're sure you're getting it back. Maybe they've struck up a deal with local ISPs, or maybe AOL will be required.
  • Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those.

    AND

    All your Spain are belong to us!
    __________________

  • Maybe they are just givin away some wristwatches that run linux.
  • You know, really, this thing would be pretty cool, except for several key things. First of all, its made by Intel, and its service is probably going to have to be AOL. Now, all good children know that AOL is evil, and Intel chips suck :-) Go AMD! http://www.amdzone.com
  • If AOL had a Linux version, then (as much as I hate AOL) that would be a good thing, cause more people would switch over. Same with MSN, I have a lot of friends who would switch from Winblows to Linux but can't because of their ISP. Also, a lot of those people have 'contracts' with those ISP's that they got with their computer.

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