Tags: Information Appliance.
The New Internet Computer (NIC) was a Linux-based internet appliance released July 6 2000 by Larry Ellison’s New Internet Computer Company. The system (without a monitor) sold for US$199.The NIC boots from a CD-ROM with a custom Linux distribution developed by Wim Coekaerts. It has no hard drive and no way to install additional software. The system’s only nonvolatile storage is 4 MB of flash memory.Ellison planned to sell 5 million units the first year but fewer than 50000 units were sold.