Sony eVilla
Reporters who have spent their entire careers covering Sony’s products have a hard time remembering the Sony eVilla, and for good reason. The ill-fated internet appliance (an old term for barebones computers designed solely for internet-related tasks) took a year and a half to develop. It was released on June 14, 2001 and then pulled from shelves on Sept. 13, 2001, three months later.
Thanks to a sideways, portrait-style 15-inch CRT display, the eVilla had visual appeal, but a 266 MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, and no storage aside from a MemoryStick memory card slot made it hard for consumers to stomach its $500 price tag. Its limited capabilities, including email and web browsing, also required an additional $22/month fee, which Sony eventually fully refunded to the 150,000 consumers who actually purchased the eVilla.
