
Are Consumers Worried Enough to Buy a Personal Computer Server? - ihsoj
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/are-consumers-worried-enough-to-buy-a-personal-computer-server?srnd=technology-vp
======
karmakaze
> The Helm device costs $499. That includes 128 gigabytes of local storage and
> the first year of email, calendar, contacts and a web domain for multiple
> users. It’s $99 a year after that.

I wouldn't run any such 'personal' hardware if it still depended on a
centralized service. What does that $99/year even used for that can't be run
on the device itself?

~~~
gsreenivas
Hi there - co-founder and CEO of Helm here. It covers domain registrations,
DNS records, the security gateway with a static IP that works around
residential ISP limitations and storage for offsite encrypted backups. None of
these would be able to run on the device itself.

------
tomatotomato37
What advantage does the Helm hardware have over an old Dell tower left over
after an office/school upgrade?

~~~
gsreenivas
Good question - tightly integrated hardware based security. To support secure
boot, full disk encryption and ensure keys are well protected, we utilize a
security chip in the SoC. This protects your data in the event of theft.

------
zeruch
The last few years I have suspected this idea would eventually take off...but
I'm not sure it's quite there yet (and still requires more transparency than
this is offering).

~~~
gsreenivas
Quite a bit more transparency is coming - we will be publishing a series of
posts going into more detail of how this works. In addition, we will be open
sourcing quite a bit.

