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The Hundred-Buck PC
skreuzer writes "MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte has a plan to build a $100 PC for the developing world, which is supposedly going to have a 14-inch color screen and run on Linux, has the backing of AMD, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp. Apparently they're all getting mixed up in a joint-venture to produce the PC, which will be sold directly to governments only."
The hundred-buck PC
MIT's Nicholas Negroponte pushes a cheap PC for the rest of the world.
January 29, 2005
The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp.
The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution.
Mr. Negroponte and his supporters are planning to create a company that would manufacture and market the new portable PCs, with MIT as one of the stakeholders. It is unclear precisely what role the other four companies will play, although Mr. Negroponte hopes News Corp. will help with satellite capacity.
An engineering prototype is nearly ready, with alpha units expected by year's end and real production around 18 months from now, he said. The portable PCs will be shipped directly to education ministries, with China first on the list. Only orders of 1 million or more units will be accepted.
Mr. Negroponte's idea is to develop educational software and have the portable personal computer replace textbooks in schools in much the same way that France's Minitel videotext terminal, which was developed by France Telecom in the 1980s, became a substitute for phone books.
Mr. Negroponte has been interested in developing computing in the developing world for some time. He and his wife have funded three schools in rural Cambodia, helping outfit them with regular laptops and broadband connections.
Major companies from Hewlett-Packard to Microsoft to Dupont, facing saturated markets in the richest industrial countries, have shown an interest in developing less expensive products to sell in low-income countries in south Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
But, to reaffirm what others have said in this thread, this machine is being designed to be sold to governments, not to families.
And I wonder how LCD compares with CRT to power. Favourably, I'd guess.
Pretty favorably, a desktop LCD consumes maybe half to two thirds the power of CRT for the same size screen? Mind you, my primary displays are still CRT.
I was thinking exactly the same thing, and then I realised what the problem would be - standardisation. Too many machines, too many different combinations of hardware to troubleshoot effectively. And who would do that job? I suppose a country could get their high school geeks on the cheap to do some of the maintenance. However, I think this is one of the reasons why the recycling programmes already in place haven't been successful on an international basis -- in terms of the number of PCs that get turned into landfill, as opposed to the number that do get shipped abroad, the ratio must be ridiculously bad.
That being said, I wholeheartedly agree with you and think it should be done regardless. I guess in principle I object to just simply throwing things out and buying new stuff when older equipment could, with a bit of work, be perfectly serviceable. (I'm typing this on a crappy old 1998-vintage 633mhz Celery II as I'm broke too right now! But I do think it's fine for what I need at the moment)
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International pricing for the Amida Simputer is $300 USD for gray-scale, $480 USD for color, shipping extra. No modem. Amida Models and Pricing.
I guess that many of you seem to be ill informed and somewhat simplistic, as most Americans are when discussing "the rest of the world". That's the price you pay for being a big, continental country that also happens to be the world's only superpower.
Listen: developing countries are not the same. Not really. There are some countries in subsaarian Africa, where needs are really dire and basic.
I'm from Brazil. I'm in Brazil now, and I never intend to leave it. It is a developing country also, but very different than subsaarian Africa. About 20% of the population (me included) enjoy all conforts and advances some 40% of Americans do (you all included). Hey, I'm a longtime Mac user.
Other 60 to 65% would also laugh, as I heartily did, at your worry about power supply or Internet connection. For them, broadband would not be easy to get, but nearly all can have a phone line. Some of those have a car, nearly all have fridges, ovens, TV sets. Some indeed have a computer. But many of those do not, and could not afford to pay US$ 500 for a computer (and here, brand computers like Dell's start at more like US$ 700).
But a $100 computer to them, offered by the government (no it is no more corrupt than the US - Enron, Watergate, someone?) in installments, and with arrangements with phone companies to offer cheap internet access, would be A REAL BOON. You know, common people's familiarity with technology would improve a lot, and consequently their chances to get better jobs with better pays and productivity.
Actually, the government IS presently making a program like that, but fault of Negroponte the price is more around US$ 400 for the computer with Linux and a large suite of open software. A US$ 100 computer would sure be a great improvement to that program.
By the way: hunger, lack of proper lodging, sanitation, etc. do affect less than 10% of the population. This is HUGE, and that's why Brazil is still a developing country. But this is not to say we are in a no-man's land scenario.
Glad to enlighten you. Cheers all!
Having been born in a developing country or LDC in short, both governments and their people need computers and networking - badly. Not just ''toy'' PCs for ''games'', considering that massive government work is still executed in the ancient ''pen and paper style'' and actual document filing is so antiquated it involves actual file and cabinet and vaults for security. A building fire and..........
/.ers, Citizens in remote locations sometimes wait weeks if not months to ''get a document verified'' ;a birth certificate for example which if not faxed to some head office where computerized records are kept has to be sent by inter office mail and a response takes a similar channel and duration to get back.
There is a huge need to digitize government record keeping which would cut on ''labor'' costs for pushing paper thus reducing government budget spending on ridiculous tasks not to mention all the other benefits. FYI
There is a saying in my village that he who does not travel thinks his mother cooks best. This MIT thing is a top-down approach to address a conceived problem for which the designer and planners have little touch with. I wonder how many of those involved have visited a truely LDC country. It will only result in cheap and unworthy PC toys dumped all over LDCs without addresssing real needs. On one end are people looking at profits and at the other are ''carputers'' as the parent article puts it.
So for you slashdotters who think ''games and code'' when thinking of PC specs, let me point that in developing countries, its not a disaster waiting to happen but one in progress and there are no jokes here.
Governments in Developing countries need massive computing power to automate their operations and processes, they need huge networking to bring the systems together, training to run the systems and money to do it, before their citizens can surf the net. Think of that next time you surf for pr0n.
in india there is already a project under development called the simputer by picopeta solutions.. which is based on a standard 2.4 linux kernel and runs off a 3oo mhx strong arm cpu..with a touchscreen and battery . many state governments have started to use it on a trail basis for stuff like data capture and so on.
.. subsidy and mass production should maybe get it down to $100...
there are plans to subsidize it so that it can be widely used in rural areas.it even has a nice speech to text feature for the local languages.
though it costs around 160$ right now
regards
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Nicaragua is the poorest country in Latin America, but I think cheap computers could help there. Being an American who married a Nicaraguan I've visited Nicaragua three times, spending about three weeks there each time. It is very poor. For instance, someone in my mother-in-law's neighborhood was killed over a computer. But that doesn't really tell the story because in a lot of ways people are happier there than here.
.. these were modern machines. You'd pay something like a dollar an hour to rent one (you might imagine I spent a non-trivial amount of time in the internet shop--"then internet" as they called it). Two dollars a day is pretty much market wages there. But there were plenty of people using the machines. I'm thinking I could go there, have a beefy server box running linux and some pretty cheap client boxes running a full gnome or KDE environment and do it cheaper than the competition, thus opening up the market for the middle and lower class Nicaraguans. Maybe this kind of box would work for that.
The thing I really want to say is the last time I was there I was _stunned_ by how many internet shops were in town. There was one every three to five blocks! I mean it was something like 7-11s here. You could pretty much find one at will. People were using them a lot to call the states, surf the net, look at videos, you name it. And I'm not talking 486 machines
Hey it's not that bad a strategy. Here's what a company I worked for did.
* an IT developer gets a new computer. His/her computer is used to upgrade,,,,
* a QA or Tech Support Department computer. His/her computer is used to upgrade,,,,
* a manager's computer. His/her computer is used to upgrade,,,,
* a customer service's computer. His/her computer is used to upgrade,,,,
* a sales computer. His/her computer is used to upgrade,,,,
* an admin assistant's computer. His/her computer is used to upgrade,,,,
* actually at this point it's donated to a school as a tax write-off.
I do the same thing. Whenever I get a new computer, someone in my family gets a new computer.
I agree that computers should be more modular. Mainframes have done this for ages. If you need an upgrade, just plug in another "computer" into a slot.
But the point is, not all needs are equivalent. If we sent all of our excess items to 3rd world nations instead of throwing them to the dumpsters, 3rd world nations would no longer be 3rd world nations.