AMD pulls plug on PIC

[Ed]

AMD has stopped its work on the Personal Internet Communicator project
after nearly two years of planning and development. The PIC was
announced in late 2004 as a $250 headless computer, sporting a Geode x86
processor, 128MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive. PIC was designed for
"emerging markets" where the cost of computer hardware is seen as
prohibitively high.

In its third quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
AMD reported that "revenue from sales of PIC products has not been
material and in the third quarter of 2006, we decided to stop
manufacturing PIC products." AMD's filing indicates that the company
took a loss on unsold PIC inventory.

The rest of the story...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061112-8201.html

 

[YKhan]

AMD has stopped its work on the Personal Internet Communicator project
after nearly two years of planning and development. The PIC was
announced in late 2004 as a $250 headless computer, sporting a Geode x86
processor, 128MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive. PIC was designed for
"emerging markets" where the cost of computer hardware is seen as
prohibitively high.

Sounds as if the OLPC has killed it. Still AMD can't be too sad about
it, OLPC uses the same processor as the PIC.

Yousuf Khan

 

[nobody]

Sounds as if the OLPC has killed it. Still AMD can't be too sad about
it, OLPC uses the same processor as the PIC.

Yousuf Khan

Remember what Rick Wagoner once said? The best new car for 1st time
buyer is a used Buick (can't guarantee the quote word for word, but
you've got the idea.) The best computer for 3rd world is today's
Western corporate discard (these days it's something like P3 around
1GHz or early P4, anywhere from 128 to 512MB RAM, 10 to 40GB HDD,
17"CRT etc.) These obsolete things will beat the sh!t out of either
PIC or OLPC in both performance and useability, and you can't beat the
price - FREE!!! Most companies even pay for removal and recycling, so
they'd be happy if someone just collected the stuff and shipped it to
some God forsaken place beyond that proverbial "digital divide" to
bridge the said divide. Well, not as cute as OLPC, but 3rd world
isn't rich enough to pay extra for some cute thing.

NNN

 

[Ed]

Remember what Rick Wagoner once said? The best new car for 1st time
buyer is a used Buick (can't guarantee the quote word for word, but
you've got the idea.) The best computer for 3rd world is today's
Western corporate discard (these days it's something like P3 around
1GHz or early P4, anywhere from 128 to 512MB RAM, 10 to 40GB HDD,
17"CRT etc.) These obsolete things will beat the sh!t out of either
PIC or OLPC in both performance and useability, and you can't beat the
price - FREE!!! Most companies even pay for removal and recycling, so
they'd be happy if someone just collected the stuff and shipped it to
some God forsaken place beyond that proverbial "digital divide" to
bridge the said divide. Well, not as cute as OLPC, but 3rd world
isn't rich enough to pay extra for some cute thing.

NNN

Some of the places don't even have electricity, one reason why the
original OPLC had a hand crank on it to charge up the battery, but last
I read (been awhile) they wanted to move that off the note and into a
separate generator box to charge it up.