The french internet provider Cegetel is trying to take the succession of the first french telematic revolution (the Minitel) with the offer of a simple computer, running a proprietary-linux, and apparently very easy to use :

“We wanted to create something as simple and cheap as the Minitel to reach technophobes and people without much money,” said Frédéric Charrier, manager of the Easy Neuf project, which started its first national advertising campaign last week. “For a slightly higher subscription, customers get a simplified computer with all services they might need.”

For €39.90, or $53.30 - a €10 premium over the price of most broadband subscriptions in France - customers get a white computer roughly the size and shape of a toaster. A one-time payment of €29 buys a keyboard, mouse and camera; for €99 more, the customer can get a 14-inch color monitor.

The minimum subscription is twelve months long, with a 150 euros deposit as guarantee. For this price, you get a simple computer with only 512 Kb of flash-memory (but you can use an external hard-drive) and an open-source software suite (Firefox, Abiword, Gnumeric, The Gimp, a multimedia player, etc.), an integrated modem, an ADSL (up to 8 Mb/s) connection, and a free phone line.

The Box is build aroung an Intel i852GM chipset with Intel M600 processor (and a Broadcom BCN6348 modem), 512 Mo of RAM, an ADSL port, two ethernet ports, six USB 2.0 ports, audio and VGA connection.

The operating system displays icons along the bottom of the screen, and offers several versions, depending on the needs of the user. At the simplest level, the computer offers menus based on a theme. The screen button “search,” for example, has a submenu offering a telephone (which links to a yellow pages Web site), an encyclopedia (which links to Wikipedia) and another option that links to search engines.

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If the quality of the offer is good enough (reliability of the Box and of the internet-connection), they may enjoy the very important success of the first state-Minitel.

Easy neuf
IHT

[tags]Neuf Cegetel, Easy Box, Easy Gate, internet, ADSL, Linux, simple, minitel