[ale] Just a thought and a question for everyone...

[Ned Williams]

Evening Ale'ers...
I just had a thought after seeing a local news reference to walmart's
200 dollar PC...aka the Linux machine that slashdot and everyone else
covered last week. So I wondered..could a group like Ale either (a)
find and recyle with a ale built linux image or (b) source parts and
design a ale built linux image for LESS than 200...Now this might be
pie in the sky and all, but since a group like ALE could do something
like this for no profit one has to wonder could the lack of profit
along with donated time equate to a PC producable and sellable for
whoever for less than 199?  Recycling would require developing a
minimum hardware requirement and parts sourcing might require finding
system requirement generic enough to survive unreliable vendors such
that if a particular part becomes unavailble or turns out to be a bad
part it can easily be replaced without effecting kernel and general OS
build performance and  feature list.

If it could be done it would only be have to done once enough to
publish (and or advertise) such a thing to local non profits or other
such suitable targets..If they wanted to aquire such a puter they
could be built per unit/order to prevent or at least mitigae any risk
etc etc?



just a thought for anyone to ponder..Think it could be done? realistically?

Ned