Talk:Internet appliance

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So in principle, an Internet appliance is a portable, wireless dumb terminal? JIP | Talk 14:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

No, it simply means "a single purpose thingy for accessing the internet". Those kiosks in airports that let you browse the web are internet applicances, as are WebTVs. They can be, but certainly don't have to be, either wireless or portable, and even the walled-garden variety aren't really dumb enough to be dumb terminals like a Sun Ray. Indeed, most (all, really) internet applicances failed because they weren't dumb (and thus cheap) enough: you could get a cheap PC for the cost of an Audrey (or a small amount more), and do all the same stuff and much more (PCs having overwhelming economies of scale). Truly dumb terminals have never worked in the home, because the connection was (and probably still is, really) too poor. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:06, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge of Information appliance

• Oppose - connectivity may not necessarily imply internet. Some cell phones, an information appliance, doesn't have internet connectivity. Also POS devices, etc. that connect don't necessarily have internet.--Jondel 02:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - internet applicances are, I suppose, a subset of info appliances, but the important distinction is the intention of the device - internet applicances are specifically intended to present the internet to the user, in a way not dissimilar to that of a PC user (they should really be called WebMailChat applicances, but they aren't). Info appliances might have an internet connection, but that's a detail of how they function (a POS device could have an internet connection, a modem, an ISDN connection, or nothing - it'd still be an info applicance, but as its job isn't to deliver that webmailchat user experience, it's not an internet applicance). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:06, 18 June 2006 (UTC)