Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, indeed saw this whole netbook/nettop trend coming, 8 years too soon.  In 2000, Ellison thought the time was right for a PC replacement that could access the internet and do little else.  He imagined that all work would be done in the browser and data would be stored on servers somewhere [in the cloud].  Sound familiar?

Ellison’s vision is remarkably similar to what people are saying today about products like the Asus Eee Box or MSI Wind PC (or the even more recent Wind Box).  They are not super-powered computers, but rather portals to the internet.  Mr. Ellison’s proverbial idea ahead of its time was manifest in the form of the New Internet Computer (NIC).

The NIC was a $199 (not including monitor, keyboard, speakers or mouse) box with specs not unlike today’s nettops.  It had a 266MHz Cyrix CPU (slow, even back then), 64MB RAM, 4MB Flash, CD-ROM drive, Ethernet, 56K modem, and 2 USB 1.1 ports.  And yes, the 4MB of flash memory is not a typo.  For all intensive purposes, the NIC did not have local storage.  The Linux operating system (OS) and all the software came on a CD, off which the whole machine ran off.  While this made the system rather slow, OS upgrades were a snap.  Just change the CD!

The inclusion of Ethernet was a pretty big deal, especially on a system so cheap.  Most consumer desktops at this time did not have it.  This was evidence of how the NIC was aimed at two distinct audiences.  For computing neophytes, it served as an internet appliance, like the 3Com Audrey or Compaq iPaq.  For advanced computer users with a central storage location or access to a server, the NIC was a thin client.  It allowed to you edit data remotely, collaborate with others on the server, and all sorts of other things we today uses web services for.

In spite of its low price (even by today’s standards) and obvious utility (especially by today’s standards), the internet was not mature enough for the NIC, and the public was even less ready.  Very few of the systems were ever sold and the NIC faded into ignominy.  PC World even went so far as to place it number 9 on its 10 Worst PCs of All Time list in 2007.

Obviously, the NIC and Larry Ellison deserve more than that.  Looking back at it from our current perspective, things could have easily turned out differently those two.  They could have been a contender, and might have been as big as Google.

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