While Serendipity may yet decide to hack his IO, if his mother is anything like mine any new OS/email/surf setup is going to be *much* too complicated by comparison. That Netpliance came up with a package/software that our Moms could use was terrific; that they squandered the opportunity is regrettable.
In any case after many, many hours of surfing these boards, it is clear to me that the hacker community has yet to identify an alternate setup for the IO hardware that approaches Netpliance's for convenience, simplicity, and ease of use (not that I expected this from you guys--I too am more inclined to feature-itis than not). Where's the diskless, silent, instant-on solution that automatically retrieves emails, downloads weather/news/stocks etc. in the background for instant access, LEDs to indicate "you've got mail".
Maybe Earthlink will keep the iopener host software running indefinitely, or maybe they will come-up with new software on their own, but in the meantime someone could become a Star (no, you wouldn't get rich) by assembling a diskless replacement pkg for the Netpliance app(s) e.g. AOL Lite or MSN or whatever that can run all those Mom & Pop iopeners out there that are now totally reliant on Earthlink to keep them afloat.
For reference, since my mother took ill recently I re-inherited her v1 (I'd used it for a few weeks initially last yr so I could support her usage of it technically) and my mother-in-LAW has a v1 as well that we bought for her, and she loves it of course. I have, naturally, been looking for ways to migrate away from the netpliance-now-earthlink software/ISP wagon train and folks there just ain't nuthin' out there that comes close that I can see...
Somebody please tell me I'm wrong, but you better be diskless/no fan, you better be "instant on, there's the latest weather forecast", you just gotta light the LED (can't tell you how much this has thrilled our elders). Heck, maybe that's all--weather and "you've got email" as at least my Mom never used the browser. Ok, I'm done now. I feel better.
