I’ve seen Iyonices, and I Want One, but yet again, the company making them (Castle) is offering a proprietary technology at a higher price than you can get a PC for; and the PC I got for £100 less than the price of the cheapest Iyonix (799, with email support only, no monitor) included a monitor, wireless networking, bluetooth, 1 years’ telephone support/equipment warranty, and OS (OK, Windows is next to useless unless you’re a virus-writer, gamer or need to run an ever-slowly-decreasing number of Windows-only apps, but it’s what passes for an OS on 95% of computers in this crazy world). Plus the RiscOS development kit is £199, the relevance of which will become apparent later.

And if you haven’t guessed already, this PC is a laptop, which as you rightly said is a configuration Castle don’t even offer.

In my opinion, this is what killed off the Amiga, Atari, etc., has nearly killed Apple off more than once, and may be in danger of killing off desktop Linux.

I understand all the arguments about economies of scale (and RiscOS clones might be an even greater danger to Castle’s profits than Mac clones were to Apple), but, people being people, they aren’t going to see that. They’re going to see: Whizz-bang industry-standard PC, powerful processor, £700; or nearly-identical looking non-industry standard PC, processor they’ve never heard of, funny OS (even though I love it, and the fact that it isn’t Windows goes a long way to explaining why it’s good, that’s the thing - it isn’t Windows, and neither is Linux).

On top of all that, whilst I can respect the £41 charge for installing and configuring Debian Linux, that’s *on top of* the price you pay either for an Iyonix w/o RiscOS (which, if you’ve never seen it, I remember as being quite a nice OS when we used them back in school), or along with it in a dual-boot configuration.

So let’s say you want an Iyonix with RiscOS, ROS SDK, monitor, and Debian Linux. Even though the “development kit” for Debian Linux will either be installed when you get the machine or can be downloaded+installed for free, the total package will still set you back a minimum of £1169. That’s a LOT of PC for your money, and Linux will run just as well (if not better) on your whizz-bang PC than it will on your low-power, slow-processor Iyonix. It’s better from an environmental perspective, (and I regard global-warming “opponents” with the same deserved contempt with which I regard Holocaust deniers and religious fundamentalists (of any persuasion)), but who even bothers to separate out their rubbish unless provided with separate bins and the threat of punishment for non-compliance from the council?

Plus, try running VMware or Firefox on your Iyonix. Sigh.

P.S. Sorry for the rant, and please add a preview mode.