Just before the holidays a few messages were submitted with regards to
affordable home computers.
The Los Angeles Times published a january 1st article on technology and
media predictions in 2006:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-predict1jan01,0,3503327.story
One of those preictions follows:

January 1, 2006 latimes.com  
MEDIA: THE YEAR AHEAD
Industry Feeling Presence of the 800-Pound Google
By Sallie Hofmeister, Times Staff Writer 

Here are some predictions for the media industry for 2006, based on
interviews with industry analysts, executives and investors, along with a
little intuition.
Cheap PCs, anyone?

Google will unveil its own low-price personal computer or other device that
connects to the Internet.

Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc.,
among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an
operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one
reason it would be so cheap — perhaps as little as a couple of hundred
dollars.

Bear Stearns analysts speculated in a research report last month that
consumers would soon see something called "Google Cubes" — a small hardware
box that could allow users to move songs, videos and other digital files
between their computers and TV sets.

Larry Page, Google's co-founder and president of products, will give a
keynote address Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Analysts suspect that Page will use the opportunity either to show off a
Google computing device or announce a partnership with a big retailer to
sell such a machine.

And that's not the only Google theory out there. Content producers wonder
whether Google's push into video search will unravel the economics that
make Hollywood hum. If viewers can find and legally download an episode of
"Seinfeld" through Google, will that cut into cable and network
television's profits?

And what if Google, after equipping cities, starting with San Francisco,
with Wi-Fi wireless technology, starts to offer pay-TV service for free?

Still, to date, the company's $123-billion stock market value is based
almost entirely on its dominance of one business: global text searches on
the Web. Some investors worry that Page and co-founder Sergey Brin could be
done in by their penchant for seeing themselves as do-gooders rather than
profiteers. But those naysayers are in the minority. Most industry
executives and Wall Street analysts believe that Google's search engine
business is robust enough to give the young billionaires two or three years
of wiggle room to build nifty services first and worry about making money
on them later.





Mariann Fedele
Coordinator of Professional Development, 
Literacy Assistance Center
Moderator,
NIFL Technology and Literacy Discussion List
32 Broadway 10th Floor
New York, New York 10004
212-803-3325
mariannf at lacnyc.org
www.lacnyc.org