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HP Markets Cheap 4-User PCs To African Schools
Kracs writes "HP are supplying their low-cost multi-user 441 desktops to African schools. Running Mandrake Linux, and sporting four screens (1xTNT2 AGP, 3xTNT2 PCI), keyboards and mice (1 PS2 set, 3 USB sets) they provide relatively cheap computer access for up to four users (of particular interest to schools in low economic zones).
However, according to this article on New Zealand's Xtra news page they've only manufactured enough to outfit schools in South Africa. HP has commented that they're talking to several organisations and are hoping to bring the PC to market in other regions but have stated they will only be marketed to developing countries." (Remember, there are also home-grown methods to achieve similar results.)
Great to see that HP is joining in with building up computers in countries
Have you metaroderated recently?
Each PC had to serve 256 users! And the monitors were black and white... and our keyboards had only 7 keys... and our mice were dead! And we LIKED IT.
Something on the common desktop that could tax a 2 Ghz PC.
It always amuses me when people think that a fast computer is going to help them type better.
These should be standard issue in school labs where office apps are the main focus.
(Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)
~Dr. Weird~
dupe?
4 /0 7/03/1923255&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=137&tid=185&t id=189
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0
username:oldwarez password:oldwarez
No, not the car... the computer. The fact that a system like this (while not exactly thin-client X-term material, nor a WYSE text box) would get produced indicates that when the going gets tough, the thin(er) client model makes sense. How soon until someone expands this to 8 terminals? (All you'd need is a PCI-expansion slot and a higher bus speed.)
With this, you can still have the decently-performing graphics of a direct VGA connection, while enjoying to cost benefits of reduced CPU-boxes. w00t.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Guybrush Threepwood: "Look! A four-headed computer!"
(Cannibal turns around)
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
This is not a dupe post beacuse if you read they are a reseach group from UFPR university in Brazil. This post is about HP giving these computer setups to African schools. Great to see this happening (as I said in my other post)
Have you metaroderated recently?
XD it would be nice if this sort of thing was introduced in the states, but alas MS has a strangle hold it seems on pcs loaded with an OS. I for one would welcome the day you could walk into best buy and get a this. Of course maybe i should go to best buy... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/06/014423 6&mode=thread&tid=187&tid=98&tid=9 9
this is the sort of thing that "restores your faith in the world" so to speak.
if hp are genuine in their efforts in helping developing/poor nations by providing them with low cost computers then this is great news.
and in answer to the question on everyone here's lips, yes, it runs linux!
I think that 1. it is really great that SOMEONE is doing something to help children in developing countries, people in the US get so much more exposure to technology (in general) than developing countries and it is really great to see a company try to help out the children and 2. I think it is great that they are using Linux, I personally think that for education and stuff like that Linux is way better, the only time I really need windows is for high performance games that neither WineX / Wine support, but in a school enviroment you dont need those kind of things so Linux is a great solution, stable, cheap, and lots of great free software
Now these kids will grow up appreciating the value of computers, the internet, and all these other wonderful things that they would never have been able to use before. Well done HP!
oh right, profits
what use are PCs in African schools? They've been no use where I am. They just plonk them there so parents think the school is good.
And I've seen South Africa's attempts at computer literacy.
Imagine a mud-strune shanty town. They bring in a mobile bus full of computers. There is hardly anything in computing in the particular group's language. Then someone steals the power cord.
These people don't need computers. They need an environment safe from crime, corruption & pollution. They need clean water. They need to stop getting aids.
Computers cost vast amounts of money. Multi-lingual efforts are negligable because programmers couldn't care a stuff about supporting multilingualism. What is an African living on a couple of dollars a day meant to do with his taxes being spent on thousands of dollars computer equipment? When he doesn't have a phone? Doesn't speak the language 100% of the software is in? Is he going to gain some magic from browsing all several dozen webpages in his language?
There're far more important things in life than computers.
Every time I read about some computer company offering to save poor people by offering them technology, I get so dismayed at how the geek community falls in line and agrees how great it will be for these kids. Southern Africa **does not** need computers, it needs to end corruption in the various governments so that education can be given a budgetary priority.
Jason Conrad
Follow the troll bread-crumbs to the dirty truth behind slashdot
So now when they set a million monkeys typing away to reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare, they'll only need 250,000 computers!
This is a win-win-win-win-etc situation!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
HP and low price are incompatible terms.
Now they invented a new way - make a 4 head single CPU computer and sell it to developing countries... instead of knives and mirrors... for the price of 4 non-brand computers.
AFAIK, South Africa is not the poorest African Country.
If you really really want to do something good, make a cheap monitor, compliant to all health standards, harmless to children. It is easy to do nowadays, since nobody wants CRT monitors anymore (except for special cases).
As for everything else - many companies would gladly pay to you for taking away their outdated equipment, which is still good for schools and is definitely more powerful than 1/4 of cheap HP.
Old monitors are bad for eyes, it's the only thing that needed. And no HP, please.
four screens (1xTNT2 AGP, 3xTNT2 PCI), keyboards and mice (1 PS2 set, 3 USB sets)
(Remember, there are also home-grown methods to achieve similar results.)
That sounds pretty home-grown to me. I understand there is time to be saved in just buying it from HP, but this seems like a fairly obvious solution to the problem at hand.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
a couple of years ago.
Some very good people were running that booth. They hadn't decided exactly where it was going to be sold, but they knew who they wanted to buy it.
It was running Mandrake there, but certainly an older version. The way it came off, was that Mandrake had been chosen due to its popularity in Europe, and that the original solution was coming from the labs in France.
When it was explained to me, they were talking about giving an option to poor families in developing countries. Looks like they took a different direction.
This is the perfect use for the idea. Schools are so important, to give a less expensive option that isn't just our throw away Pentium systems is a wonderful idea.
My mom says I'm cool.
I don't know why they are targetting this at Africa. There are plenty of other countries where schools don't have enough computers. The UK for instance - many schools in the UK struggle with very low IT budgets. This would be great of them.
Perhaps they are targeting Africa so they don't tread on Microsoft's toes too much?
At the time my opinion was that Free Software was better than donating money, as it can help third world economies become sustainable, in line with teaching someone to fish rather than just giving them a fish. I couldn't back up my opinion with hard examples though. I think I will be using this story as one of my examples in the future. Does anyone else have similar examples?
If this were being sold to Nigeria I'd call it the 'HP 419'...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
- Linux Operating System:
- increased reliability and enhanced security (emphasis mine) minimises maintenance of the computer in the classroom.
Now...Am I the only one who still gets a grin out of stuff like that?** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
I had a computer lab in my classroom when home computers were rare. Some of the students spent many hours in that lab after school. They all ended up in different places after they graduated but some have really prospered. It is a small number but I am certain that some of my students are where they are because they had access to a computer that they could use any way they wanted.
Never mind that there are few web pages in Bantu or Swahili, Get the kids going and soon you will have many.
Never mind that only a few students' lives will really be changed by having a computer. Those few students will have a big effect on society.
The important thing is that the computers should be available outside of school hours and not just to the students. Check out the 'computer in a wall' project in India. Check out how the students in Iceland are using computers to preserve their language and culture. As long as the teachers don't get in the way, good things will happen.
Not that I am a huge fan of windows, but I thought it was at least worthwhile to mention that a similar solution is available for Windows computers and/or Windows labs. I have been thinking of investigating something like this in leiu of thin clients for data people at work that are very low-impact on their computers.
This sounds great for classrooms etc, but how do you deal with peripherals such as USB-memory sticks, CD-ROM drives etc. What happens if I pop my USB stick into the computer when three other users are also working on it? Is everything shared? Or is it possible to have a USB-hub per "workstation"?
@______________@;;
Your comment looks too much like ascii art. T_T;;;;
Isn't it possible to save money by running half as many video cards, each running 2 X servers? I often run both VGA ports off a single card but both on a single X server with Xinerama, but maybe there's some X limitation that prevents 2 X servers for the 2 ports on the same card. Is this possible?
Please bear in mind that about a year ago, Micro$oft offered a plethora of Software to the schools for *FREE*. This was part of their schools project. The result is that schools were not interested in running alternate OS's, as they didn't have the price factor for software.
With this type of installation/solution, it addresses the issue of Hardware. Funds are needed for PC's, and the less you have to spend on hardware the better. This solution *DOES NOT* run Windows - period. So this is the type of footholding we in SA like to see. Once the kids leave school - Linux will be a comfortable OS for them to use - unlike people numbed by the MS "Experience" .
surely that shuld be 419 Desktops?
in parts of Africa, anyway...
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
"The Linux desktop is quite different from what students are used to in (Microsoft's) Windows. For that reason, I can't see a quick changeover," he said.
I didn't know that pointing and clicking was quite different in either system.
Moreover, users with elaborate computing needs would probably shy away from a multi-user machine like HP 441, said Nikos Drakos, an analyst with tech consultancy Gartner.
"Elaborate" is a bit of a vague word here. I don't know any software that is so elaborate that Linux couldn't handle it.
Nothing that uncommon that WINE couldn't handle anyway... and if it's elaborate enough to be clustering or scientific programs, Linux is vastly superior to Windows on that front.
Whose paying Gartner these days anyway?
"That's why South African schools make sense. But it would not work for the general knowledge worker who needs to run software programs written for Windows," he said.
Well I grew up using an Apple ][e, and somehow that never affected my ability to use Windows in the office today.... but it did make me good at the command line in Unix/Linux.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
South Africa is probably the richest nation in Africa. If not, it certainly has advantages over the hopelessly poor nations in other areas in Africa.
Imagine a Beowolf clu... er, hrm, nevermind.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Mandrake Linux? OK, can some slashdotter inform us whether this computer setup is running some form of LTSP? Or is it running a NoMachine found here ? But I do not think so again ,because I see these 3 NVIDIA TNT2 32MB PCI VGA Cards probably hooked onto the System Unit
I am assuming that one of the reasons that HP intends to market these in developing countries is that the prices they will ask will be lower than what they could expect to get in developed countries. So, even with a discount from the purchase price after a year of use, there is a possibility that the computers could be resold to purchasers in developed countries (hobbyists, user groups, etc.) at a price point close to what was originally paid for the machines or sold at a point below the purchase price to neighboring countries even less well off. The money earned from the sale of the "old" computers goes to buying newer computers (perhaps from HP if they do their marketing right and don't stifle the resale market). In the meantime, the computers help to establish an educated populace (possibly with world access via the Internet) and the business processes involved in the export work in a small way to help establish a middle class. It has been argued that both of these factors, an educated populace and a middle class, are instrumental in the development and preservation of constitutional liberal democracy.
Bureaucracy loves company.
Yes, one box. Not horribly expensive. Four keyboards and four mice. Again, not horribly expensive (unless you go Apple, where a nice mechanical keyswitch board will cost you 100$).
:-O
Monitors. You can get pantsed a couple of ways here.
Small CRTs are cheapish, but heavyish. Big CRTs are expensivish and heavy. LCDs are massively NOT cheap and expensive. Yes, you're saving on the silicon, but you still have to consider cost and shipping for monitors.
Depending on what you'd get, the box suddenly ends up being the cheaper part of the system.
I'm the tech lead on the HP 441 development team in South Africa. Here is some background info on what has gone into it and where HP is going with this.
Firstly, it's extremely similar to the Brazilian effort (which is totally based on Backstreet Ruby, which is a multi-headed solution that has been around for more than 2 years now), and has been designed with the same basic ideas in mind. Both South Africa and Brazil can be termed "developing countries", and both countries are most definitely not the poorest in their respective regions. Linux , and Open Source in general, has had quite some time to bed down and influence the local market, so it would make sense that things like these would develop and happen at around the same time.
Why South Africa? Simple answer: HP has one of only two of their iCommunity centers here (url for the SA iCommunity site is http://www.hpicommunity.org.za/), the other one being in India. At the iCommunity they have intensive training programmes for the local residents ranging from job creation, culture preservation right through to computer refurbishment and even computer programming. So, the 441 system has been a logical "extention" to the ideas that they were working on at the time. Needless to say, the HP 441 system are being tested in India as well, although India has it's own challenges for such a project (over 200 official languages, go figure...).
One major item that puts the HP 441 system apart from similar efforts is work that has been done in the USB device department. As you know, the system consists of 1X AGP (using PS/2 k/b and mouse) and 3X PCI (each with it's own USB k/b and mouse). With the 441 system we have added the capability for each user having their individual sound card as well, so that they can listen to their own audio. Each user also have access to their own USB Disk-On-Key devices, ensuring privacy of personal files and so forth. Apart from this it is pretty much the same thing as done by the Uni in Brazil.
A last comment, this time on HP's commitment to Linux and Open Source in general: I'm not an HP employee, so this is not a "shameless plug". I'm employed by another company who has been contracted to help develop the HP 441 system. So far, it has been an absolute blast to work on this project, and under no circumstances can I say that HP was not committed. This product is actually on a massive "tangent" to what they normally do, so they are also in uncharted waters here. However, the commitment that HP employees have shown to us, both from the local HP offices in South Africa as well as from head office in Palo Alto, is nothing short of "absolutely bloody amazing". Let's hope that other large companies like Big Blue and others take notice of how HP pushes Open Source, sometimes at their own expense with no return at all, but doing so to invest in the developing markets. Now that's a "Way To Go" if there ever was one. One may critisize HP on a lot of things, but one thing that you cannot accuse them of is a lack of balls! :-)
Personal thanks to HP for giving me and my team the opportunity to work on this project. If you are interested in more technical info and product propaganda, here is the product page again: http://h40058.www4.hp.com/products/desktops/441/pr od_info.html
This question might seem stupid for the seasoned geek but how exactly is the setup? OK, can some slashdotter inform us whether this computer setup is running some form of ltsp? Or is it running a NoMachine found here NoMahine.com ? But I do not think so again ,because I see these 3 NVIDIA TNT2 32MB PCI VGA Cards probably hooked onto the System Unit. As slashdotters, I think we should be interested in knowing how the display gets its stuff and how exactly the OS gets shared. What about these cables to the monitors and keyboards or other peripherals? The standard ones seem to be short, i.e, users would have to be cramped very close together. I just do not get it!
It certainly sounds good at first glance to bring computers to classrooms in Africa. But take a look at what's happened in the States.
Companies donate (usually old) machines to schools. The schools then get caught in the software upgrade cycle and end up spending more than they would if they didn't have the computers at all.
In a lot of countries a computer isn't what the schools really need anyway. Textbooks would be a lot more useful in most cases.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Since it is an infinite amount of monkeys that are needed. So you need infinite / 4 amount of computers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Now put those books on computers and suddenly each student can access their own book (perhaps even make notations in the book) and have it up-to-date each year.
The cost of books is a very real problem. There have been plenty of reports of poor schools in developing region where students had to share books that had been donated decades ago from the west. While you might think that a book on math from 30 yrs ago is as good as as one printed today many teachers would disagree. Especially when the old one was printed in a foreign language.
There are two ways to use computers in teaching. One is the old "computerlab" most of us will have seen wich are mainly used to teach computer skills. But a far more usefull way of using computers is to replace books and paper and their high cost and non-updateableness. Over here we can "afford" to require new text books each year. Other countries are not so lucky.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wonder what happens if one user presses
ctrl-alt-del.
South Africa is no "low economic zone" compared to almost every other country in Africa. I like SA but, hey there are other options that make more sense.
D'OHH!!
I have an observation: most of Africa is based on subsistance agriculture. Most Africans don't have a bank account, electricity, running water or even access telephone (let alone a telephone in the house). In short, most Africans have no need for a computer.
It is the height of arrogance for western cultures to think they can "fix the world" by applying western technology and values.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
... that will be eclipsed when someone installs Wolfestein: Enemy Territory on that box.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
Just because ppl like to stereotype the victims of white-collar corruption by pretending it's their own fault, everybody has the same chance, etc.Or whatever.
The basic computer tasks of "web browsing, word processing, e-mail, and instant messaging" do not require 3 GHz machines. I mean, they haven't requires the latest-and-greatest hardware for a long time, but the hardware is growing MUCH MUCH faster than the baseline requirements for these tasks are.
So, it makes sense for a single PC to serve multiple users simultaneously.
People have pointed out that old UNIX machines did just this, but the ironic thing is that these uses are for the exact opposite reasons. Used to be that CPU time was so costly that it was necessary. Now, CPU time is so cheap that one can't help but buy more than they need, and splitting it up across users is ideal.
Does a bully always get the AGP head? :)
would be great to the this stuff in the office as well, you really don't need a 2+Ghz machine each. Sharing one would be fine - home dirs on a fileserver etc etc.
Would dramatically reduce TCO for deploying a new technology on the desktop..
I can imagine businesses that could be interested as well. A lot of offices where I have worked in Belgium, people sit in blocks of 4 and each has its own PC. They use this mainly for browsing, email, excel, word and one or two specific programs.
Almost never at the same time. It makes sense to share the PC with 3 other people. A lot is already either calculated on the server anyway and stored there, or requires less then the full attention of the PC to process.
In callcenter there are a lot of people working who do not even have their own PC, yet each workplace has its own box.
I understand that it will not be usefull for each and everybody. I however think that what most people do in an office sharing 1 PC should be enough. Perhaps HP rather wants to sell 4 then 1 box. The question is will businesses rather have 4 DELLs or 1 HP?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
To make this really cheap, what would be useful is a 4 (or even 8) way video chip. Schools apps don't usually need 3d graphics; the same silicon should be spent on multiple framebuffers. Unfortunatly there probably isn't a commercial market for such a chip. I've thought about trying to design one in my spare time, but most of the problem is analog; free fpga design tools don't cut it.
The HP 411 multi-user desktop solution seems to have only one sound device. This seriously limits its usability in e.g. language studies.
from foo import signature
Please bear in mind that about a year ago, Micro$oft offered a plethora of Software to the schools for *FREE*. This was part of their schools project. The result is that schools were not interested in running alternate OS's, as they didn't have the price factor for software.
Except that the TCO becomes an issue here. The phrase "it's only free if your time is free" becomes rather relevent. Especially relevent is that Microsoft produces personal computer software. Which simply dosn't tally well with the way computers are used in education.
What - are you people normally this grouchy in the morning? Why the hell ISN'T this on topic? Because it's Windows?
Give this guy a break. I thought his link was fairly helpful as I was looking for this very solution the other day (thanks GoRK).
I can see a real application for this in our labs at the school. I don't think the major point of this article is that it's Linux - although that is a bonus. And it's not completely about thin clients either. After all, this is not a new idea (thin clients have been around forever); but the concept here is interesting both in ThinSoft's link and HP's 441 system because the individual client monitors are being served directly from host video cards.
So tell me again - why is this OT? Pardon me, but your bias is showing. GROW UP!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The second OOo user is up and running in a fraction of a second, 'coz practically everything they need is already in RAM.
The thing which kills a setup like this is high-bandwidth 3D, movie decodes and other heavily CPU- or buss-intensive work.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Almost the same solution was developed 4 years ago at Moscow State Industrial Institute. It was 3-headed machine with three Matrox PCI video cards, one PS/2 keyboard/mouse pair and two USB keyboard/mouse pairs. This solution is already installed in multiple schools in Moscow city (don't know if it was installed outside Moscow), and it was called Gorynych after the Russian Mythological "Zmey Gorynych" - dragon with three heads. Link in Russian: http://www.ctc.msiu.ru/zg/
An'it harms none, do what thou wilt.
You need to start using KDE. First language on that long list (87 languages, not - for some odd reason - including English) is Africaans, second-last is Xhosa.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I guessing that it's OT because the cost of MS-Windows-XP-Pro plus the seat licences would exceed that of the computer, and you'd need to pay for more RAM as well, and the reliability-and-security gets somewhat diluted... and so on.
I personally would have rated it informative, but I ain't everybody.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
How is about developing & using this kind of device instead of pci/agp cards? That might be able to support more "terminals"...
Radeon 9200SE on Mandrake 10.0, one screen on each port. OTToMH, I had to fudge with some permissions etc. The kids play with a lower-quality monitor on the second port.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If not, and you have raw text, send it. I'll try it to make sure IW4M, and turn it into one chop-chop toot-sweet.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I have something like this setup at home.
:)
A 2 console setup with 1 athlon 2000+, 512 MBs of RAM, 2 soundcards and 2 nvidia graphic cards. I use USB keyboards and mices. I am using the 2.6.0-test9-ruby kernel, and afaik this ruby patch is going in to the official linux tree. (makes it possible to have separate USB keyboards for separate X servers). The stability is great and it really feels like 2 separate computers. I have had this setup since last December.
Multiconsole is great because when my computer was fast and fairly expensive it suddenly became 2 computers using only an used monitor, old pci TNT2 card and a cheap USB keyboard+mouse. Hardware movie acceleration and openGL works on both consoles, however the TNT2 PCI card is not directly überfast - it works fine with older games like opengl doom tough. (local pingtimes are nice
This can also have potential in the office world, I believe, where cheap computer setups is something very attractive (at least at those places I have worked at so far). In the office environment people also tend to use "low requirement" office applications anyways - that often only requires lots of CPU power at peak times. I think an office worker would not notice if he was the only one using that computer or if he was sharing it with 3 others.
A standard motherboard with 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP port, onboard graphics and audio could theoretically house 7 consoles if everyone shares soundcard - and 4 if every console has its own soundcard.
What I am really looking forward to is VIAs new northbridge which makes it possible for motherboard manufacturers to have one AGP and one PCIe port at the same motherboard, or maybe that the manufacturers started to make motherboards with multiple PCIe 16x ports, alternatively graphicards with PCIe 1x interface.
This could make it possible to have a setup with several good openGL consoles, which would be nice to have for the families, etc..
Ah, anyways, great stuff! Nice to see a company using it in its products.
Everyone wants to think of the children. What about the poor hardware manufacturers. This will cause them shrinking profits: they will now only be selling 1/4 the systems they would be!
And think of Microsoft! Poor Microsoft! They aren't getting any money from this! Western economy will collapse!
Just say no, my friends. One user, one CPU, one licensed OS!
Bill Gates
Thank god HP is doing this - it would suck if the next generation of Nigerian scammers were to grow up being computer illiterate.
XFree-Local-multi-user-HOWTO
I have a P3-866MHz in my company with some 20+ users running Oracle. Some of them use VNC. It does a lot of nuber crunching, and runs any assorted software that people need which cannot run in Windows. I have never seen that computer using more than 3% CPU.
Our biggest problem in maintaining that machine is disk space. People are reluctant to trust their windoze machines after getting used to the reliability of a Linux server, so they start uploading a lot of stuff that should be kept in their own personal computers.
Those kids had a chance to actually learn something. Now that they have computers, they'll do nothing but practice Powerpoint like american students do.
Probably the primary reason they are using us as a pilot region is the relatively high cost of computing resources in South Africa. An entry level computer is about the same as the monthly wage of well educated people, and about 6 months salary at minimum wage.
Thus, the motivations for maximum ROI on technology resources are much more apparent here than in the UK (where I gather minumum wage would easily pay for a new computer in under a month).
But there's an alternative out there for windows boxes, so the free Windows coupled with that hardware, provides exactly the same functionality as the setup from the article, and at a similar price... your point? :)
Just checked, and I've been 93% idle since I started work this morning. Then again, I have been reading Slashdot...
If these are government schools, we're going to have a lot of stupid Linux users on our hands in the end.
It's curious to notice that when something like this is done for a social cause (like HP is doing for Africa), it gets a lot of positive input (i.e slashdotters posts).
On the other hand if it's done only as a research showing only that it can be done, with no direct social goal, people tend to be more critical about it. Just compare the posts:
Four headed linux
HP in africa
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
There are plenty of poor people here in the United States that need computers. Oh yeah, I forgot, Carly hates Americans.
& fi le=article&sid=17
t gage01_18_04/Mortgage9A_Refinancing.htm
http://www.cgff.net/nuke1/modules.php?name=News
"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore," HP chief Carly Fiorina said. "We have to compete for jobs." http://www.home-mortgage-loan-refinancing.com/Mor
Now instead of one cry for help in transferring millions of dollars from Africa you'll get 4 per IP adress.
Do not look into the laser with remaining eye.
you didn't provide an informatative link to go with your opinion of the Ruby kernal patch.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
I feel so spoiled with my four PC's; one keyboard, monitor, and mouse.
Reports of Nigerian 411 scams have quadrupled.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Really?
Nigeria's GDP: 110.8 billion
41.2% agriculture, 15.7% industry, 43.1% services
source
South Africa's GDP: 456.7 billion
source
This would be a much better option if it shipped with something else besides CRT monitors.
I know, I know, LCDs aren't cheap. But there are hidden costs here. CRTs give off more heat, which is not welcome when you need to have air-conditionning, something a lot of third-world countries do.
So you need extra power for the CRT and extra power for the air-conditionning. This in places that are not known for the most reliable power grids. Not only that, the cost of producing power can be very high, and the capital devoted to this could be put to better use in more labour-intensive areas.
Add to this the environmental implications. Power plants -especially if they don't have expensive scrubbers- degrade air quality, with all the health-care costs that that implies. And dare I mention the fact that disposing of all those monitors is going to be a toxic waste hazard?
This may seem like trivial points, but considering the number of screens we are talking about, it isn't. We have to consider the total cost to a country of any given solution before we proclaim it a cheap deal.
This is not to detract from HP's efforts. When we have better screens such efforts are going to pay off.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
1979, Amdahl V7. 32Megabytes of RAM, running MTS (Michigan Terminal System) ran at a bit less than 2MIPS. Maxed out at about 700 simultaneous logins, but it was slow as molases at that point. It could handle about 500 users with good response time.
Granted, it wasn't quite a PC. That monster cost a few million dollars (cheap in it's day for what it could do). Along with it's hard disks, and other peripherals, it took up about 1/3 of a floor of the General Services Building at the University of Alberta.
Then there was the Xerox 9700 laser printer that could print 2 pages per second (as long as you paid attention to complexity limits). Proportional fonts and all sorts of other things... Ooh, what a toy!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
** You always get the AGP video card, I want the AGP video card..
* No I called it! I get the AGP video card! Besides they're the same card it's just shaped different.
** Nuh uh! if they're the same then why does it matter? Huh?
* Cause I like the shape better, besides you get the USB keyboard and mouse!
*bell rings*
** I call it next time :P
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I agree with what you have said; but you forgot something: these can't run windows!
Windows can't (currently, anyway) run this type of quad-user setup. It has no way to control the hardware. If the schools/gov'mint purchase these, they will always be running linux. They will most likely never purchase software for these boxes as GCompris and a plethora of kids/edu software now exists for linux.
A couple years back, when i was the sole administrator and technical advisor for a school district here in the states, I setup a couple new computer labs with old hardware and LTSP. I was trying to set it up as dual-headed boxes, but ran into too many problems to roll it out. Can you imagine doing a quad-headed LTSP roll-out with this type of setup?
put the what in the where?
Can you imagine the confusion ? Almost as good as taping up a mouse ball.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Like Project Athena? Sure, it was breakthrough. It's amazing how people prefer inferior solutions to free ones.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
441 Desktops? That's like, er, 22 too many isn't it; surely these should be *419* desktops? :-)
Moscow Industrial University since 2001.
It is called
Zmey Gorynych after three-headed dragon from Russian folklore.
both links are in Russian, of course
Since it is evident than ten years later Russia, India and China would have life conditions good enough and average salaries big enough to prohibit use of their people as cheap offshore programmers,
HP takes care of creating new potential pools of inexpensive intellectual labour force.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
South Africa is by far the most developed country in Africa. That part of that is a legacy of Apartheid is true, but it hasn't exactly fallen apart since then, and its economy is doing very well.
The problems in South Africa have mainly to do with lack of educational material, HIV, crime und unemployment, four things that can arguably be tackled by better access to information and an indigenous IT industry (which does exist but lacks R &D funds to really take off) which would help both employment and knowledge about issues.
As in most of the world, the vast majority of PC's are running Windows, most often an OEM version, but piracy is rampant as running around checking on Windows versions is not a priority. While English is the Lingua Franca of SA, there is of course almost no Windows software that is written in one of the other 10 official languages, and the cost of supporting Windows makes it unlikely that that will ever happen.
This is where Linux really shines. The fact that computers are really good for other things than just Word, Powerpoint and Excell may not be apparent, but imagine the effect of a simple school computer, such as this HP one, in a poor school in a rural area, which will have a simple dial-up modem, but four monitors, keyboards and mice, running Linux:
I think this is a wonderful solution.
I want to see this XF86Config-4 file. I hope they didn't try to take advantage of the TV-OUT.
make a 4 head single CPU computer and sell it to developing countries... instead of knives and mirrors... for the price of 4 non-brand computers.
References please? I didn't see anything there that mentioned pricing.
Contrary to your assertion, HP stuff is _NOT_ expensive. Dollar-for-dollar, HP provides much more value that you will get from any 'non-brand', in terms of reliability, performance, and other features (HP desktops are virtually silent - something you have to pay extra for in a 'non-brand'. Deskpros 'just work' - no screwing around in the BIOS; HP BIOS figures it out for you. And if you've ever worked on one, they're so easy to get into, it's unbelievable.)
Just because you like comparing apples to oranges doesn't mean that everybody else is that stupid.
I built my computer a couple years ago, but I decided I wanted to do dual head, so I went for a special dual-head AGP card. I think I spent about $100 on it. (It's a 16 MB card; it wasn't nearly the fastest thing out there even when I built it.)
Anyway, it now seems like it'd be significantly cheaper to have put a pair of mid-range PCI cards in, rather than a single card. A single dual card might have performance advantages, but I feel like I paid through the nose for it.
Granted, this was a bit ago. It could be that it's actually cheaper to go for a dual card now. But I'd intuitively doubt it.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
How much savings is it really? One PC could have 4 users all running different applications with 256 megs of RAM? Yeah, it works, but how slow is that? Wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy 4 older computers? They'll probably be just as slow as having 4 users on one box with 256 megs of RAM! They still have to buy 4 monitors. Also, if one PC breaks down, then 4 users are SOL.
They're not really saving on seat licenses either because they are using a free OS... if these things were running Windows, I could see this setup as a savings in that regard (but I'm sure MS would find a way to charge for the extra users; heck, it's probably already in their EULA.)
I understand there are savings from less maintenance and less parts inside the actual box like HDs and RAM, but if you really balance out the pros vs. the cons I don't think there is really that much savings.
The most common hack will be swapping the USB connectors without moving the keyboards. This will never cease to amuse middle school and high school students, no matter how tiresome it may already sound to the rest of us.
This is OT, I know, but I just wanted to say (even with the fear that this might enourage the trollers to begin again), but Slashdot without all the GNAA propaganda and racist posts is a Slashdot I almost don't recognize. The conversation seems very civilized, the posts thoughtful, and . . . I don't know . . . more grownup, more professional.
I've been breathing sighs of relief about this for maybe a month or so. Maybe it's because all the kids are out of the dorms for summer vacation.
While selling these to developing countries is nice I could see businesses wanting some to. In some ways this could really dig into HP's bottom line. Imagine if you bought a new car and got free use of up to three rentals cars anytime you wanted, would you buy a second car? Most likely not.
Home use would also be a big plus. Many parents would love to be able to have two or more kids use one computer at the same time.
While the concept has serious flaws (imagine someone trying to render a Xvid video while the other three are in openoffice(1)) it definitely has it's place in the classroom, office or home.
(1. Yes, I know that you can automaticly nice out any user's job, but you see my point.)
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Seems Africa has other priorities right now.
It would be neat to assign individual video cards and usb ports to each of several virtual machines.
Then each user could run their own OS, reboot at will, and crash without affecting others.
You're ahead by one. You're no longer harbouring so many illusions. (-:
I still have yet to see the news item on a cheap, reliable multi-headed multi-user XP box.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...they didn't have to do so much work to make this happen, may or may not have been able to start with a Mandrake kernel instead of a vanilla one, may or may not have had to acquire various of the utilities outside the normal RPM tree... I'd like to see that documented as well.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Perhaps I should have this discussion with you when you got school going kids and you get the first bill for their school books.
As for books being carried home you obviously are a dreamer. In poor areas they are lucky if they got enough books for a full class let alone each student that takes the class. These books stay at school. Hell in some places they use slates to learn to write on and do sums to save on paper.
Electricity indeed costs money but not as much as you think. Again go back to the price of a kids schoolbooks in the west and your own electricity bill. Further more the cost of elec can be "donated" by simply not charging schools. Donating books requires that same goverment to actually spend money that they don't have.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.