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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.)
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 wonder what happens when those 4 people start browsing and using openoffice at the same time. Not to mention technical stuffs like matlab (which runs on java)
This would be what I call context-switching.
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?
Wouldn't be much of a problem with a halfway decent amount of RAM. A lot of perceived slowness is in load time, which is helped out by more file cache space. And shared libraries contribute some efficiency as well. Projects like Linux Terminal Server handle scores of simultaneous users with ~2GB of RAM. I'd think that, even in a low-cost market, this kind of machine would have enough RAM to handle 4 users.
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.
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.
You had monitors?
When I was a lad, we had mark sense cards -- like punchcards, but you had to use a pencil to mark each character. Only in 2nd year of university did we get to use a terminal, then it was ed -- 3rd year we were allowed to use vi in full screen.
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.