I don’t think TB fits in the Mozilla plans about the web (e-mail != the web), and it’s a pitty, because I know a lot of people that uses TB (in fact, about 90% of my workmates use TB in Gnome/KDE).

TB is a big win in any plan to migrate to FOSS, because the first step is to run FOSS software in windows and get rid of some “problems” (aka Outlook and IE). So I think TB must consinue roking, although it’s outside the Mozilla umbrella.

Evolution, buggy as it is, has had this for some large number of years.

I’m sure it’s a difficult problem to solve–I’m certainly not in a place to write code for it–but I am disappointed that other projects have managed it, but Mozilla has not.

Honestly, I think I do understand the target market for this. I just don’t agree that it’s hitting that target well. Stuff like backups, upgrades, data loss, viruses, etc. – these are costs people already bear using computers. If litl was just zero-maintenance, that would be a win: but it’s not. It’s zero-maintenance at the cost of cutting out vast swathes of functionality.

Now, as they upgrade it, I’m sure they’ll work out how to make the experience more featureful. But right now, you can’t plug in your camera and upload photos with it. You can’t plug in a printer and create documents. You can’t play non-web games on it. Watching movies on it is going to be hard. You can’t sync it with your phone. You can’t take it out and about with you because it doesn’t work without the internet.

There aren’t tech-head concerns; these are all real-life use cases for computers. litl doesn’t meet them. Being simple to use is tremendously easy when you don’t do very much, and honestly I don’t think people care enough about maintenance for them to look past the high price tag and low feature set.

Imagine being the kind of person that doesn’t know that the key with the down-and-left-facing arrow on their keyboard is called “enter” or “return”.

Now imagine how hard it is to maintain a PC or Mac.

What litl is selling is a zero-maintenance machine that will get people online and enable them to do a few basic things (browse the web, send email, watch videos, share photos) with the minimum of fuss and effort.

These are the kind of people that are already probably spending £500+ every time they buy a computer, not least because they’re completely unable to make good price/performance judgements and understand their real requirements.

So what price a computer that does everything such a person would need, but will never trouble them with upgrades, backups, data loss, viruses and virus checkers, installing and removing software, files and folders and general everyday ease of use?

At 50% above the price of the average netbook and with a bigger screen and no maintenance ever, this is a complete bargain for the market it’s aimed at. But that’s not you, nor me.

Thank you for getting that right!