Buzzed About Be

Friday, October 6, 1995 by Dave Winer.

This is totally spooky.

In the last few hours I've gotten three unsolicited reviews of Jean-Louis Gassee's BeBox personal computer.

I was in the loop for the early part of the development process of this computer, but I must admit that I lost patience for the product. As I watched Macintosh and then Windows advance, and then watched Be suffer major setbacks including the departure of the lead designer and a switch in processors from AT&T's Hobbit chip to the PowerPC chip, I gave them little chance of success.

I admired my friend Jean-Louis Gassee for sticking with it, even if I thought of his staying there as going down with the ship.

So, it surprised me to get the following unsolicited messages:

---

From Fred Davis, fred@weblust.com: ;

"Can you help me get a BeBox for eval?"

From Marc Andreessen, marca@netscape.com ;

"Did you see the BeBox demo at Agenda? If not, flag down Jean-Louis Gassee as quickly as you can and get a demo... it's great!"

From Dylan Northrup, northrup@pobox.com: ;

You don't know me, but I'm an avid reader of your columns and enjoy your straightforward manner and forthrightness. OK, enough kissing up, on to my question.

Have you seen the info on the BeBox? Or better yet, have you actually seen a BeBox? I've visited their web page, www.be.com, and must say that I'm at least impressed with the hype they've put up there. This machine looks like the blessed child of Macintosh and Amiga built on the carcass of PCs. Not having $1600 to spend on a basic system (when they actually *do* ship) I must say that I'll be waiting to see what other's initial reactions to the release of the machine is. It looks like it has promise, but who's to say.

Now if only they include a decent port of solitaire... ;-)

---

These comments were totally unsolicited. I have *not* written about Be Labs or the BeBox. It's really amazing. Congratulations Jean-Louis. Sounds like you got a hot one!

Coooool.

Dave