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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.)
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.
(Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)
~Dr. Weird~
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
They already do and Newt Gingrich spearheaded the legislation to make it possible to write-off 100% of the purchase price of 2yo machines when donated.
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?
You've obviously never studied at a southern African univeristy (FYI: the largest library in the entire southern hemisphere is outside of Capetown). They don't need computers? Hello, U. Stellenbosch has a freaking an orbiting satellite, buddy! That's right, THE UNIVERSITY has its own satellite, not the government, not TelKom or Vodafone, but the university. It took a computer or two for that to happen. Still, this makes sense and is a great idea regarless, but come on, can we get past the Sally Struthers starving-children-in-Africa motif?
Just because there are other problems that remain to be solved doesn't mean this isn't a Good Thing(tm). What will you say when someone tries to end the corruption? "Screw that, they still haven't cured AIDS"?
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.
Every time a story like this appears, a comment like the parent appears too. The "they don't need computers, they need clean water" comment.
Learning new skills allows people to get jobs and earn money - yes, there is demand for people with computer skills even in Africa, more than you'd imagine.
This charity - The African Children's Educational Trust - trains over 200 young adults as computer operators in Northern Ethiopia. The skills they learn allow them to get jobs and support their families, and gives many of them a much better life.
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
Yes, there are mud-strune shanty towns aplenty here in South Africa, never mind the rest of Africa (where things are even worse). Mobile computer centers does feature now and then, but what you don't know are the teaching methods employed. Yes, a truckload full of computers won't make a difference in the case where a kiddy who can only speak Sepedi or Setswana, because Windows doesn't come in anything even close to their language. However, since Open Source has become a Big Thing (tm) in Africa as a whole, people now have the power to localize things for themselves.
So, it's not the government shunting busloads of computers at schools, trying to convice people of their bleeding hearts, far from it. It's actually the people from the shanty towns themselves that have decided to help themselves.
Yes, computers does cost vast amounts of money. However, with Open Source, even old "throwaways" are being refurbished and put to work. Another thing, accusing an Open Source programmer for not caring about multilingualism is a severe slap in the face, so I suggest you go out there and check your facts. Some of them obviously do not care, but please don't say that too loudly in the company of the KDE developers, they might just nail you to the wall...
How do you create an environment where you don't have crime, corruption, pollution and aids? This cannot happen overnight. You cannot make people stop believing in pagan gods overnight. You HAVE to educate, and you can also only effectively educate when they want to be educated in the first place. It's easy to point fingers at Africans and say "what a bunch of barbarians", because you do not live under the same circumstances. I do live here, and have to see these things for myself every single day. The way to change things is to educate. To educate, you need education methods other than slates with markers. To teach teachers, you need to educate communication, values and "having an open mind". Therefore we need computers and things like Internet access. Companies like HP are doing that for Africa in a constructive way.
Speaking of phones, it's possible for me to take my cellular phone, and drive from Cape Town (southernmost city in Africa) to Cairo (capital of Egypt for in case you don't know) and only lose signal in a couple of places. Can you do that in the US? 'Fraid not! Only under very special circumstances can you roam with your cellular phone outside your home-state borders. Also, there are more GSM cellular phones in Africa (as a whole) in active use (granted, some are stolen, but that can only attribute to about 5% of active phones) than there are people in Australia. Most are used by the typical "couple-of-dollars-a-month" people, because it makes economical sense for them. It liberates them in terms of communication. And with communication it's only a couple of steps to education.
So, yes, there are more important things in life than computers. There are also more important things in life than putting misguided, anonymous posts like these on Slashdot. It would have been better if you actually knew what you were talking about, but sadly you don't. So why don't you send your old computer gathering dust in your attic to Africa? Be progressive for a change and help the next generation build a better future for themselves. So how about it, eh?
The HP project is targetting South Africa specifically. South Africa is a developing country, not a third world hole in the ground. Yes, the majority of the country suffers from poverty, and AIDS is a serious problem, but as far as I know even the poorest areas have food and water (unless an unusual disaster occurs), and the people there know perfectly well how to farm. This isn't Sudan, and it isn't Zimbabwe.
What South Africa needs is better education and better resources in the poor areas - because this more than anything else is what is going to improve them. If we insist on basic aid only and reject offers of computers and telecommunications equipment, we will end up with a nation of ignorant people living in the stone age, and ripe for exploitation by the rest of the world, which has moved on.
I think it's debatable if the nation can ever reach anything that could be called prosperity if it doesn't keep up with technological advances. Not all new technology is frivolous luxury. I think that internet access is a valuable tool which can greatly improve people's lives.
Earlier posters have ridiculed the idea that access to the internet can be useful to people in rural areas, since they don't speak English. However, most people in South Africa have the opportunity to learn basic English, and nothing improves your command of a language like reading lots of it every day.
I have a concrete, practical example of how the internet can help a poor person improve his life: programming skills. A person with no resources other than the internet can learn how to program in a number of languages - and this skill is potentially worth money. It may not be suited to everyone, but the opportunity is there.
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.
This thing ran an Oracle database, mail/web servers, did nfs/nis, supported two dozen X-terminals and at least 50 text terminals. We would run out of memory only very occasionally, when people started doing stupid things like run their window manager on the server itself rather than use the one built-in the X terminals.
The machine was not fast, but it ran to the department needs and people weren't less intelligent because of this. Maybe quite the opposite in fact: since you didn't want to compile your progamming assignment every couple lines, people were more considerate about writing quality code in the first place and make use of the resources we had more efficiently. This produced a generation of programmers who were concerned about writing good code.
Today, any a 2GHz+ PC with 1GB+ of ram would put the machine we were using back then to shame in terms of raw computing power and even i/o, with the proper supporting hardware (fast scsi disks, cyclades serial ports board, etc.)
One last thing about Linux IIRC, part of the memory used by programs is actually shared if two or more users use the same application, so memory utilization is efficient in a multi-user setup.