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Written by Stew
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Monday, 03 September 2007 |
 I want to discuss the target audience of the Zonbu. What was the original thinking behind it? What prompted Mr Gentil and Mr Rossman to develop a product so radically different from current mainstream ideology?
For those of you wondering what on earth I'm talking about, the Zonbu is an ultra small, power-efficient, eco-friendly PC with a customized Linux distribution that utilizes an online storage system via a monthly subscription to store the users data. Thus the Zonbu has no hard drive, is very small and doesn't use Windows.
Wow! What prompted this departure from the accepted norms of modern computing? Are these people insane? No.
The Zonbu is perhaps the sanest PC around.
This brain child of Grégoire Gentil and Alain Rossmann has been on sale through the Zonbu website for a month or so now, and has been generally well received by press and consumers alike.
The emphasis is on service. The customer pays a monthly subscription fee for an online data storage facility but actually gets much more. For your subscription fee you get your storage space (100GB , 50GB or 25GB), remote access to your data from any online PC, upgrades for the operating system and applications, a 3 year 'overnight replacement' warranty and unlimited customer support.
The idea behind the Zonbu PC is simple. It's a PC that is absolutely fool-proof. Windows, as I'm sure most people will agree, has not always provided the easiest of experiences. The uninitiated user can quite often be overwhelmed by the task of keeping windows up-to-date and malware free, not to mention updating your applications and generally keeping the OS running smoothly.
It was the task of keeping Gregoire Gentil's parents computer running that prompted him to explore the idea of "concierge computing". Windows XP requires a fair bit of experience. I wouldn't want to give my father a crash course any time soon. Like the VCR all over again. AAHH!!!
This is where the Zonbu can help us. Windows is, generally speaking, a buggy piece of software, designed for every man and his dog, but unfortunately not his grandma.
The Zonbu can heal itself, we are told. When it boots up, it automatically checks to see if there's a new version of the OS and it's applications. I'm not sure if that means that it actually re-installs the OS each update or if the OS is essentially checked and patched to make sure it's working properly. The applications are pre-installed, which means it's ready to go out of the box. In fact the whole PC is supposed to 'just go' . Chris Pirillo -God bless 'im - literally pulled his out the box, plugged it in and yes! It just went. Take look at Chris doing his thing with the Zonbu here.
Zonbu is trying something different. The Zonbu is designed to operate in a way that even my old man can fathom. Trust me, that is asking a lot.
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