PC World's review of the Lotus Foundations Applicance

PCWorld wrote a good article in response to the IBM announcement of the Lotus Foundations appliance. A couple of the points they made could benefit from further clarification:

• The Foundations software runs on a 100-megabyte Linux kernel that starts from a solid-state chip - Yes, that's the way it works for the appliance, but the same OS is available as a software only solution for installation on third party hardware.
  
  
• Also, while IBM's announcement heavily stresses the appliance's reliability, it does depend on a high-speed Internet connection, Speyer said. "All the management and software downloading is happening remotely over the Internet." - Yes, you do need internet access for your initial software activation (a one-time, two minute exercise) and for downloading software patches from time to time but that only needs a standard connection speed, especially if you download the patches at night. Server management is done through a browser but that is normally routed across your internal network. You can also do server management across the internet if required but the bandwidth load is trivial.
  

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