The internet boomed and tech companies tried to capitalize by building machines whos only purpose was to access the internet. Unfortunately they were normaly setup for dial-up service with a certain provider and came with a price tag of $599 little over half the price of a decent machine at the time (1999-2000). Its been nearly four years and people have found ways to hack the machines and how to add hard drives, net cards, and new software. If you look in the right places you can find one of these machines from $20.00 - $179.
The most popular of the devices is the 3com Audrey. Audrey can be found on ebay at around $50, but it will take some modification to get them to work on a broadband network.
I myself have just purchased a Compaq Ipaq IA-1, still a farely rare item it origionally sold for $599 and i picked it up for $24.50 on ebay. It features no hard drive, USB 1.0, 266mhz processor, and uses MSN Companion 2.0 to dial-up, but will dial MSN numbers only. So what am i gonna do? I found a way to add an ide channel to the board so that i can add a hard drive, then using an external USB CD-ROM im gonna load Windows 98 SE. Put the machine in the kitchen so that when im gaming my girlfriend wont kick me off to just check her email.
There were plenty of others including the rare Sony evilla network entertainment machine. Shortly after it was debuted Sony recalled it offering a full refund on the sticker price and net services that customers had to buy (Earthlink).
So if your looking for something to setup in house to just access the net, and if you are technically inclined then one of these machines just might be for you.
[b]Resources:[/b] General [url=www.iapplianceweb.com]iapplianceweb.com[/url] [url=http://www.linux-hacker.net/c...] Internet Appliance boards @ Linux-hacker.net [/url]
