Unbox Too Restricted and Too Expensive?

abb_road writes "Businessweek takes a first look at Amazon's new video service and walks away unimpressed. Between the high cost of downloads, the sometimes-poor video quality and the restrictions required by movie studios, they're not predicting a huge hit. From the article: 'Amazon finally launched its long-awaited online video service on Sept. 7. But it's no sure thing that it will catch on with the masses. The service, called Amazon Unbox, offers downloads of movies and television shows, as well as digital movie rentals. But like all its rivals, it's shackled by a raft of viewing limitations imposed by movie studios.'"

And...?

What do you expect? The movie industry is full of greedy suits that will try and squeeze as much out of the consumer as possible before the consumer just flat out says no. It worked for the music industry, but I seriously doubt this will ever take off with the movie industry. It's far easier, and cheaper, to just torrent movies and get better quality videos from cams. That's right, I said it, cams.

Re:And...?

At the price they want its not providing me a unique or value added service to warrant it. The roll out sucks, they still lack a delivery mechanism that makes it gee-wiz as well. I basically want my money back from the one purchase I made.

If they had an itunes-like client I already used which could download at bittorrent or even segmented multi-part speeds. I would be all over it.

Re:And...?

"If they had an itunes-like client I already used which could download at bittorrent or even segmented multi-part speeds. I would be all over it"

Exactly. This sounds like iTunes all over again. For years there were sketchy mp3 downloading services charging outrageous prices for songs or free p2p programs battling with MPAA.

Then Apple came along and changed everything. They found a way to sell mp3s at a price people were willing to pay and with the power of the iPod became the 800-lbs gorilla of the whole internet music provider service.

I predict Apple will do the same thing again. It'd take very little effort for them to come out with a iTunes enabled DVD media player with hard drive for ~$199 that connects directly to your TV and has built-in wifi to connect to your existing broadband router that enables the downloading of full movies for a few bucks, or at least less than what Netflix and competitors charge (cheapest plan = $5.99/mo, 1 dvd at a time, limit of 2 a month). You can also transfer them to your iPod and watch them on the go.

Might even be DVR capable, or that could be the $299 model ;) and recorded TV or movies could be torrented to other such players so you could download shows from other iTunes DVRs saving Apple bandwidth.

This would be huge and carry Apple far beyond just a music provider, now they'd be in control of viewable media too, a new content provider, and with a direct broadband connection they could insert their own commericals at the beginning before playing movies, etc.

Apple would be unstoppable.

Re:And...?

I'd say that Apple would absolutely love to do that. But at the end of the day, they still need to deal with whatever contracts the studios want, or else they have no content. Apple would love a flat $9.99 per movie with fairly liberal DRM (that's to say, unobtrustive, but still locks you into Apple hardware and software, as Fairplay does now). But the latest word is that the MPAA absolutely refuses to do a pay-to-own model, and won't take less than $14.99 for the newest films, or so was my impression of the soon-to-come iTunes Movie Store. As much as I hate iTunes for the DRM (well, moreso the DMCA for making it a worse offense than assaulting an officer or possessing child porn to break it), it's really managed to handle the entire digital music distribution thing extremely well. Sure, I prefer AllOfMP3 for a number of reasons, but if I'm going to pay for my music, I want all of the profits to go to the artist, at least within reason (Steve gets his distribtion costs back plus a couple cents, everything else to the artist and not a dime to the f'ing RIAA).

In effect, my concern about mine and others' online rights as completely stopped me from getting my music legally. And, by and large, movies as well (and that's only because a 1080p projector and 50.1 surround is a bit out of my price range, not to mention how it's not too compatible with a college dorm). My father used Rhapsody some time ago (I think, one of those WMA ones), and the DRM made his player useless. He's not stupid when it comes to computers - he eventually found out that burning and reripping his songs would strip off the restrictions. And it was a massive pain in the ass. Guess what - he buys NO music online anymore. Mind you, this was before PlaysForSure, but everyone knows that device lock-in is bullshit, and the moment that you start to notice DRM, it's not working properly. I love my iPod and use it all the time for music, and almost always use iTunes when I'm at the computer. But I watched a 30-minute video on my iPod last night, and I came away with a sore wrist like never before.

At least with audio, I just need to have speakers nearby, and have a standard 3.5mm jack. iPod-quality video really looks crappy on any decent-sized screen, and the notion of being forced to use iTunes or my iPod for iTVS(?) content is insane, especially with the absolutely horrible video playback capabilities of iTunes (the windows are completely counter-intuitive, not to mention slow to respond). While I'm sure that a video store would bring about iTunes v7, that doesn't mean it'll handle video playback any better. I HAVE to use QuickTime to watch movies in my iTunes library, just because the playback is so messed up within iTunes. Then, just the limited resolution and audio quality, not to mention a possible rentals-only method. Only the MPAA could be dumb enough to think that we'd pay just as much for a time-limited rental (and no late fees, it'll just dissapear) that you have to spend quite a while downloading, with only stereo audio and resolution that's probably half of what DVD has to offer. It's almost as if they're trying to prove to themselves that people aren't interested in digital distribution. My DVD-quality files are generally 2-2.5GB in size, which will take an insane amount of time to download over most home broadband connections.

What's the point of all of this? Apple could easily pull off an extremely successful iTunes Video Store. They know how to do it, and have a pretty damn good idea of what people want. But they're being bound to restrictions forced upon them by the MPAA (no contract, no content, after all, so it's their way or the highway), which they probably know are going to really piss people off. Sure, Apple might strike a deal with Youtube that'll work with the parent's concept box (which wouldn't surprise me - Youtube has all rights over their content unless the uploader pulls it, and they of all companies know that people don't want to put up with stupid restrictions and just want cheap cont

Step 2, 3?

Looks like they have failed to successfully fill in the blank in Step 2, and will be unable to proceed to Step 3.

So is this what YouTube would be like if they decided to play along with the MPAA and charge subscription fees?

Bears repeating...

More expensive than other legal methods (just buying the dvd used), with more limitations (can't backup, can't play in normal dvd players). I can't understand why it won't do well!?

MPAA

We knew this was the case, to much drm and not worth the money. What I fear is MPAA spin saying "Oh, well we tried to sell downloadable movies, but no one wanted them. People would rather pirate instead." I think they could work, just not this way.

Re:MPAA

What I fear is MPAA spin saying "Oh, well we tried to sell downloadable movies, but no one wanted them. People would rather pirate instead."

Why? They've already bought draconian anti-fair-use laws that make the fines for "copyright violation" high enough to bankrupt most upper middle-class families, along with punishments for breaking DRM comparable to murder. Even if they go whining to the government, what more do you fear they'll get?

They really can't get any more, with current technology. We have effectively "lost" as badly as we can, with only a few freedom fighters such as DVD Jon as the last holdouts. And the media cartels have only our growing hatred to show for it.

Re:MPAA

I can seem to think of plenty that they might want:

• Broadcast Flag
• Analog Hole legislation
• Broadcaster's copyright
• Remote key revocation
• ???

Re:MPAA

It's really hard to compare the price of DVDs and CDs. On one hand, I listen to at least 1 song from each of my cd's at least once a week, some albums I listen to every week. So I get a lot out of them. DVDs on the other hand, I may watch once a month (for movies anyway), and often only once or twice a year. Some movies i've bought and only watched once or twice, but since it's cheaper than renting it 3 times, I've decided to buy it. So, although music is much cheaper for them to produce, it's worth a lot more to me, and yet they still charge less than DVDs. DVDs aren't really that expensive considering how much you pay for a theatre ticket, or how much you pay to rent them.

Re:MPAA

The funny thing about it is that you can be fined a (manageable enough) couple of hundred bucks for endangering ( or at least increasing the risk to ) lives by driving too fast, but endanger a massive corporation's profit margins, and you get fined tens of thousands of dollars- it just doesn't make any sense..... but then I'm preaching to the converted here.

Re:MPAA

I don't think the movie industry would be so disingenuous. At the end of the day, this is all about money. They live and breathe in fear of the faceless internet "pirate" and that fear is leading them to be their own worst enemies.

Consider that most average users want a fair price and ease of use. DRM solutions eliminate the second want and the industry's greed eliminates the first want. Everyday that passes is a day where a potential customer will turn to bittorrent and filesharing for their movie needs. "The price is that much? Fine, I'll get it for free from Pirate Bay" or "I have to download another player, can't move it to my laptop, and need to buy it again when I reinstall Windows for the fifth time this year? Fine, I'll figure out how Azureus works and get it from there" could be typical reactions to these crappy online offerings. In the long-run, they are losing more money by turning away customers by not making this cheap and easy.

All their bought-and-paid-for legislation and new DRM technologies won't change anything. They will never be able to win this war on the technological or litigious battlefields. They will only win this when they make it so easy that your grandma could use it and it wouldn't bankrupt her in the process.

Surprised?

Is anyone honesty surprised at this? I for one am not.

Market share

is this just another way for them to try to gain market snare or try to make the idea of movie downloads legal?

Unbox Link

The story should have linked to the Amazon Unbox.Anyway,here it is:
UNBOX [amazon.com]

Re:Unbox Link

That URL is so obvious and easy to remember there was little need to post it.

"Low Resolution" S-Video cable?

When your content is DVD-quality, S-Video cable is plenty sufficient for carrying the signal.

Unbox needs to reboxed and sent back...

Not Mac compatible. No good. I'll wait for Apple. It'll be a more elegant solution anyway.

This is a surprise how?

Pay DVD prices for downloaded movies (for which you pay the shipping while not getting the features of the DVD) which you can only use on two computers, which can taken away at any time without recourse, to which can be added ads and other "features" you don't want while giving features which you may want but can't keep? What a bargain.

Why do the movie studios think I actually want this? Why don't they realize that if they don't allow their customers to use their product as they wish (without redistributing it or publically displaying it - you know, like fair use allowed before the b%$&*rds neutered it), then customers will find ways to get their product for which they will not be paid at all nor over which they will have any control? And why did Amazon think their customers would actually want this?

Dumb@$$es.

It sucks already?

Jeez, slashdot doesn't even wait for the launch story to leave the front page before proclaiming it dead.

So I can buy a movie...

...but I can't watch it on my TV.

I get to watch it on my monitor, which is fairly small.
In my office, where there's room for one, maybe two people.
On an uncomfortable chair instead of my couch.
And I get to pay more than an excellent condition DVD off of ebay, often as much or more than the DVD from Amazon, and probably more than the WalMart B&M down the road.

In return I get to avoid waiting the 2 days for shipping (which I get "free" from Amazon Prime), or driving the 4 miles to a local store.

I'm sorry, was there something I was supposed to enjoy about this transaction?

Re:So I can buy a movie...

That's about right. I think they also want you to buy a more comfortable office chair [amazon.com].

No Subtitles?

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this. As a hearing impaired person, I rely on subtitles extensively. Basically, you don't even get the basic "features" of the DVD, or even regular cable show.

I'll stick with my Tivo and Giganews subscription, thank you very much.

I don't like to have my private parts managed

...so I'll pass on this one. Just like I'll pass on Blu-ray and HD-DVD (unless pirated). Dignity > watching the latest movie.

If they offered files for purchase, I'd happily buy them. But I don't like streaming crap, digital restrictions management crap, propietary codecs and formats crap, etc. If I buy something, I must be getting a simple [b]octet-stream[/b]. No magic, no "final format", no "copy protections", no crap. That's the only format I accept.

Maybe this is what they want

It seems to me that they would do this sort of thing on purpose just to get people to go out and buy dvds instead. I can also see them using this to promote whatever HD formate the studio chooses to put disks out on.

Free 1.99$ tv ep now to test, thanks to slickdeals

http://www.slickdeals.net/#p8050 [slickdeals.net] has a little blurp outlining that you can download a free tv episode (worth 1.99$) to try out the service for free. There isn't much selection, and the application you have to download doesn't work very well if you're behind a work proxy, so I have not been able to test to see if it even works. Does anyone actually have something good to say about this test?

Why does Amazon copy failure instead of success?

I don't get at all. Why are companies so bent on copying failure instead of success?

DIVX disks played on ordinary DVD players, were time-limited, and cost less than straight DVDs. And failed.

FlexPlay disks played on ordinary DVD players, were time-limited, cost less than straight DVDs, and failed.

Amazon Unbox WON'T play on ordinary DVD player, won't play on my almost-spiffy almost-new Mac Mini, won't play on my wife's PC (Windows 98), wouldn't have played on the Hewlett-Packard PC my daughter's family uses (WIndows 2000 Home Edition) before it crapped out a few months ago, won't play on the spiffy new Mac Mini she replaced it with, apparently won't play on any portable video device... ...is time-limited, and costs about the same as straight DVDs.

And up to now I thought Jeff Bezos was a smart guy.

Anyone else notice?

Anyone else notice that Business Week just called DRM by its more appropriate name:

Digital Rights Restrictions

I don't go in for what most of the whiney slashbot crowd does, but this one brings some glee to my cold little heart that a fairly popular magazine is helping to relabel DRM appropriately. I don't care what movie studios do to their products, but it offends me as a consumer when they try to lock my purchases up and tell me what to do with them after I own them.

I don't support the dirty theives that are too cheap to pay for music and movies, but it's also not my problem and if you're going to make me suffer because they're scumballs, I'm not going to buy your stuff either. Not only will the jobless wonders keep stealing from you, I'll just stop buying on top of it.

question is....

Will it be interesting enough for some enterprising Dvd-Jon type person come up with a crack for their DRM.

Once cracked, THEN you could burn DVD's, and move the media to use as you see fit...

Then it would be a worthwhile way to purchase media IMHO. Which of course the media producing companies will have no part it.

Hmmm...

I have enough technology at work that I don't need much of it at home, so maybe I'm out of touch with what "the masses" have.

But are there really a significant number of people with the computer-large screen integration to make this program useful? The article brings that point in at the end, but I wonder how much overlap there is between the Media Center crowd and the non-P2P'ing-everything-anyway crowd.

What were they thinking?

I got worked up enough to write up a rant about Unbox's pricing and lack of features [fakerake.com] (come on, who wants to watch V For Vendetta without 5.1 sound?) before seeing that I was late to the bash-Unbox party. Oops.

If it's not just me, and everyone's first reaction is "oh my god, how much does this idea suck?" you really have to wonder about their motivation, and you start putting more weight into the theories that this is so the studios and MPAA can say "see, people just don't want to pay for movie downloads."

But I don't think that's the case. I think Amazon is expecting that my reaction and the typical technologically informed person's reaction aren't going to be universally shared. The average consumer who is thrilled to be paying for DRM music downloads is another issue. Of course, you'd still think that that person would much rather have a DVD they could watch on their TV without having to figure out how to hook their computer up to their television...

I still keep coming back to "what the hell were they thinking" on this one.

Moo

The nice thing is, they did it. Even if it fails, someone else will try again. Eventually it will work.

It's simple. People want to download movies. Paying for it is not the issue, as many people will say. It's just plain old availibility.

The companies would love it if noone could watch a movie outside of a theatre, and would only sell long dead movies. The people think theatre's are a nice experience, but that is added on top of viewing the movie itself. And, if you don't like the theatre, or going to a theatre is cumbersome or not feasable, or even watching the entire movie in one shot is not desirable, the movie needs to be availible elsewhere. Also, people are willing to pay a premium to watch it the first time, but not the second, third, or more. Being many people who download movies have already seen it in the theatre, charging a premium at home would alienate that subset of potential buyers.

That's where this service comes in. They set up a mini-theatre in your house with some control (although, they own the process and restrict its use). This is what people don't like. But, it also means its happening. For Amazon to get this far, means that the industry recognizes the need. It's a large step, though perhaps not large enough for the consumers. The point is, it will happen. Eventually. And the more the industry holds back, the more piracy will pound them on the side.

So be happy. The child has taken his first step.

This needs accompanying hardware!

Arguments about price and DRM limitations aside for a moment, it occurs to me that Internet-based movie downloads won't really take off unless there's a piece of hardware accompanying the thing. Tivo, for example, should have partnered up with Amazon or someone else doing this and said "Ok - we'll send down a free firmware upgrade to all of our users, and then our boxes will be able to browse your movie catalog and order up content on-screen, saving it to the hard drive in the unit. Meanwhile, the user will be free to watch existing content while it downloads in the background."

The overall business model works a lot better for music downloads, because A) They're smaller and take a lot less time to download, B) Every single user of a portable digital music player has to learn to sync it with a PC in order to load it up with music, so a PC is a logical "starting point" for receiving that type of content, and C) Many more people are comfortable burning a standards-compliant audio CD from a PC for use in their home or car stereo than are comfortable burning DVD movie content that plays properly on their stand-alone players.

If it was really commonplace for people to use their computer as a media center attached to a TV and surround sound stereo receiver, then this might go over a little bit better. But it's not! Half the people buying new computers with "Windows Media Center edition" preloaded on them don't even use the TV playback and recording capabilities of it. They just went with it because the whole bundle was on sale....

Unbox again?

Can we get this discussion over with and just copy and paste all of the comments from the Unbox post from yesterday? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/07/233223 9 [slashdot.org]

Not enough news out there?

Are we really running out of articles so bad that slashdot has to repost yesterday's news? Ok, so some Businessweek first looks says it is bad, sheeeeeesh we already knew that! Look at the comments yesterday! Are we going to start posting slashdot comments as articles now?

I'm telling ya....

$5 for 700mb Xvid movie. $1 per TV show. That's the magic number/size/encoding/price. Now do THAT.

Why is it...

that studio executives impose restrictions on their products that
I strongly doubt THEY would accept if they were buying those products?

Standards for DRM?

I'll never use Unbox because I own a Mac and an iPod. I'm assuming Apple's version of buying movies online will work on Macs and Windows PCs running iTunes/QuickTime, which makes it more compatible than Unbox but leaves out "Plays for Sure" devices (and other non-Apple portables) and Linux boxes.

Why do Microsoft and Apple both insist on force-feeding customers their proprietary DRM solutions? If the recording, motion picture, and television industries insist on DRM for digital content, the very least these companies can do is settle on a standard format. But it looks like no one learned anything from the VHS vs Betamax years, so we have Windows Protected Media from MS and FairPlay from Apple, and we have the option of sinking thousands of dollars into HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Such a waste of time.

Use the negotiating power of the masses

Here's your chance to let Amazon know you don't appreciate the draconian DRM they have included in their video service. If you log in to your Amazon account, you can send email to customer service. Since you'd be sending an email directly from your account, they will know that you are indeed a loyal customer that has purchased content from them in the past. Let's let them know what we think about this new DRM service. Here's my email to them:

To Whom It May Concern:

I have been a loyal customer of yours for many years. You can verify this since I am sending this from my customer account. Now I see you are offering this new Unbox video service. I am deeply frustrated by the fact that the service is so limited by DRM technology. I am a tech-savvy person. I have built my own media computer attached to my TV to manage all of my media. This computer runs Linux. With your video service, there is absolutely no way I can watch my videos the way I would like to.

I can't even express to you how upset and frustrated I am by you offering this crippled service. I refuse to buy videos from your new download service. At least buying a DVD I can control my own content and play it where I like. I don't have to worry about always being issued a license everytime I want to watch my movies.

I know your contracts with movie companies probably compel you to put these draconian protection measures in. However, are you aware how upsetting it is to your loyal customers that you don't trust us to be able to handle our own content? Many of us feel that the pirates will find a way around these measures anyway. Please don't insult us by taking away our privileges because of the few.

Perhaps you could compromise in the way Apple has with their Itunes service. It contains DRM, yet we can still burn the music to a CD, thus freeing us to be able to do with the content as we please.

Thank you for your time.

Wanted: Fair downloadable commercial movies

It'll be a while - I'm with Ben Affleck on this one... ;)

How can anyone say it is too expensive

Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow for $13.99 is a positive bargain!

Re:How can anyone say it is too expensive

I know you were being funny, but I just had to show how cheap this really is [musicimport.biz].

What's the Newspeak for 'Amazon'?

Unbox? Ungood.

Doubleplus ungood.

Xbox 360 Connectivity?

Does anyone know if the rented videos from Amazon Unbox can be watched on an Xbox 360 using a Windows XP Media Center PC?

Fastinating....

Tried ST TOS. The Man Trap
Audio is 48khz 6 channel.

Hardly surprising...

The movie studios still haven't been as severely hit by illegal downloads/copies as what forced the record companies into iTunes. I guess that explains why they out-price their digital offerings.

I trust most people believe in fairness and deals accordingly. $19.99 is stupid money for a digital copy, I mean, come on it's more than the studios make on a DVD! Why is it that every time a new distribution format is out, the studios have to make more? It appears that pricing is reversely proportional to the cost of production. I.e. the cheaper it get for the studios to manufacture, the higher the retail price ends up for the consumer. Now why is that?

Perhaps we need to get further down the line and have a higher percentage of movies downloaded on the 'black market' before they wake up?

Don't get me wrong here I buy premium priced DVD's from Amazon and even HMV, and I'm happy to pay when I feel value is being offered. But I'm getting a bit fed up with paying premium prices for my favorite movies every time a new media format is out. First VHS, then DVD, BlueRay around the corner and now a digital version costing the studios 0 cents per copy. They are charging $19.99 and for that price I can't be allowed to burn it on a DVD so I can play it in the living room TV? Get real!

Call me an anarchist, but as long studios are behaving like this, I support bittorrent downloads. The market forces will eventually give us fair prices.

My first download experience was pretty good...

I tried the first tv episode free offer, picked an episode of Star Trek TOS, and downloaded the Amazon client. After it installed I was working on some other stuff so wasn't paying attention when it initially run. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was automatically downloading the episode I had "purchased" (free) and I, unlike the author of the article, was quite impressed with the video quality. The only negative thing I noticed was the volume level seemed quite low... The potential to rent videos through this service seems quite enticing to me as well.

Studio behavior...

Just a note that download to computer is old news in a lot of markets.

I have a friend who has been doing various VoD offerings for the last 7 years or so in Taiwan. The Chinese/Taiwanese distribution companies have an implicit understanding that when they release product, it will be pirated, and there is not much they can do about that. They go on to focus on boring stuff like maximizing revenue from their product.

When my friend pitches the idea of offering movies to Chinese stuidos using VoD over the Internet and/or over a building wide LAN, their main concern is with channel overlap. i.e. "If we let you do this, we'll get paid, and that's fine, but will this cut into our DVD sales, and do we need to assuage our video distribution channels that we're not taking money out of their pocket by going to VoD?"

He says American studios are obsessed with DRM, and that conversations with them are hopeless. Evidently the studio execs he's having these conversations with need to hit the local night market and see how well their piracy prevention programs are working out so far.

Let them know what you think:

email [mailto] them.

I won't buy

I certainly won't be buying any video that I can't store on a DVD (whether with or without additional processing) and play on my DVD player. That would be like buying music that I can't write to a CD and play in my car.

Horrible, stay away

I broke down and decided to try Amazon's unbox service out. Season five of 24 was just too tempting condidering the DVD set is months away from shipping. I began my wonderful journey at 3PM today. It is now 10PM and I have not been able to download a complete espisode. After purchasing the entire season and downloading amazon's software all the episodes were queued and began downloading automatically. This would have been great except unbox started with episode 2 first. I didn't think much of this since episode 1 was next in line to be downloaded. I then went out for a few hours. Four hours later I get home to find episode 2 at 47% and episode 1 frozen at 7%. I check my DSL connection and it is up. I restart amazon's software and the download still doesn't budge. I restart my computer with no luck. Eventually, I delete episode 1 and that fixes the problem. But now I have episode 2 downloading with episodes 3-24 in the queue. I'm a die hard 24 fan and there is no way I'm going to miss an episode! I need to get episode 1 damnit! So add episode 1 to the top of the queue and it freezes again. This time it doesn't even start downloading. It stops at "allocating space 100%" and then does nothing.

ohoh: Terms of use

From Terms of use [amazon.com]:

Removal of Software. If you uninstall or otherwise remove the Software, your ability to view all Digital Content you have downloaded to the Authorized Device will immediately and automatically terminate and we reserve the right to delete all Digital Content from that Authorized Device without notice to you.

So why would I buy this?

Re:Have you guys even checked it out?

How can I try it?

It won't work on my computer (Mac Mini), my wife's computer (Windows 98), my son's computer (Windows XP... over dialup), my daughter's old computer (WIndows 2000 Home Edition), or my daughter's new computer (Mac Mini).

Will Amazon also give me a free trial of a brand-new PC (with 2.4 gigahertz processor, and a gig of RAM, and a "DirectX 9.0 complaint Video" [sic]?

Re:Have you guys even checked it out?

I appreciate the comments, because they tell me that I CANNOT try it out (don't have any box dumbed-down enough) and would not bother if I could, since I do not watch TV or movies on a computer. The big screen is for video (and a "fishtank" screen saver on a Mac Mini). The iBook is for when, at home, something piques my interest enough to get on the 'net without disturbing my partners' viewing.