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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."
If this thing is only going to be sold to the government, you can bet it will get to a fraction of its intendend recepient and costs ten times as much. The reason the developing world is still developing is because of the government for god's sake. Who ever heard of a government, especially of a developing country, that wasn't up to its eyeballs in corruption and graft? The only people who stand to benefit from this are government cronies and the black market.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
This will go over big with the nearly 3 billion people (or about half the world's population) living on less than $2 a day.
I'm not putting down an honest effort here. I'm just suggesting there might be more important goals than trying to get everyone in the world a PC right now.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
However, the computer industry doesn't have anything else to sell other than computers. What they are trying to do is find new markets for existing products. Once the technology takes hold expansion can take place (where more powerful systems would be needed and larger profit margins can be found).
Ideally this should be an ARM based linux running machine, with maybe monochrome LCD with it, and minimum mechanical parts, meaning running off flash rather than harddrives.
It should have a power cable, not requiring a power adapter since that adds to the costs... a power-down IC with a power regulator IC should do the trick along with a fat capacitor. A modem or ethernet will certainly be a requirement, and will add to the costs. I wonder if in mass production 802.11b will be cheaper.
The GUI itself should be minimalistic, and I dont know if adding sound to it will be important. Remember this should be profitable at $99.
ARM SoC= $10
DRAM at 128MB = $20
flash at 128MB = $30
LCD = $30
everything else = $10
Last time I was checking the prices for such a computer, the LCD was the most expensive part, even in monochrome at 640x480. If they intend to bring that down to 320x200, the LCD cost wont drop significantly unless the size is also reduced. They could also reduce the flash, but thats removing alot, even though the kernel will be 2MB, glibc and busybox for a non-MMU machine will be 10mb. X, browsers etc will only take it to a maximum of 32MB, unless the browser has flash, real, quicktime etc. in which case its 64mb. Still having 128mb is reasonable for flash.
RAM is also very critical in running the system. 128mb is plenty of space but they can also live with 64mb. anything below that is choking the machine.
So with 64mb ram and 64mb flash, and 320x200 LCD, its still approaching $99 in BOM alone, which means the volume of production must be very high to make profits at $99...
To make it x86, add $30 extra, add more voltage, but that gives us much more applications, and the computer will sell in much greater numbers everywhere, and you dont have to lose money on hardware like the XBox.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
If the computer had a reverse-osmosis subsystem, capable of providing clean drinking water, would that sell over there?
$100 is well beyond an average third-world citizen's one year salary
I think you are missing the point entirely. Its not meant to be a personal computer for third-world / developing countries, but more as a public computer for the town / village centre. Give them a phone line for internet and decent educational software alongside a decent encyclopdia and its a boon to people for miles around.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
Yup, like vaccinations against the horrible diseases that keep so many kids in developing countries from being able to learn (including at schools where computers are so hard to come by).
Now, if only someone would pony up hundreds of millions of dollars... oh, wait. Bill Gates has been doing it for years.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Sounds about right. Speaking as someone who travelled through Madagascar for three months, all I can say is that you simply cannot understand it until you have been there and been there long enough to completely blow your prejudices, preconceptions and most of your hope out of the water.
Development needs to start with the basics. They don't need computers and they don't need college. They need roads, they need medical care, they need clean drinking water, they need immunizations, they need family planning, they need assistance with sustainable farming techniques and they need primary education. I'll concede that computers can be part of the overall strategy but they'd be pretty low on my list of priorities. And it's not going to be any use at all until you've got (a) power, (b) literacy, and (c) a phone line, and many places I saw lacked some or all of those things.
I think there might be things that the developing world needs a little more than $100 computers.
That is often the first response that projects like these elicit. The typical reaction is "aren't these people more concerned with surviving than surfing the web?"
Well, the intent of these devices is to help as much as possible with improving the basic qualities of life, rather than enabling typical "high-level" PC tasks most of us Slashdot readers are concerned with, like creating spreadsheets or writing code.
For example, a farmer in a developing country might be able to use such a device to determine whether his crop would fetch a higher price in a village to the North or the South. In the past, he might have had to walk 10-20 miles to find out what price he would get, so if he picked the wrong village, the mistake would be costly...and probably irreversible. Believe me, a device that could help him make that decision would make a very big difference in this fellow's life.
Information can improve people's lives regardless of their relative prosperity.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
There's a well-established thing in poor, developing countries called "technological leapfrogging". It's particular important in telecommunications, where people want phones, internet access, and other forms of communication, but don't have the copper infrastructure we take for granted. Nor can they afford to buy it. But they can afford to put up cell towers and satellite ground stations.
Several of the highest moderated comments are complaining about aspects of this project.
"$100 is more than a years salary for many third-worlders!"
"Selling to the governments only? But developing governments are especially corrupt!"
"Hmm... I'd like on of these for my car."
Okay. Well, here's the thing folks. This project isn't meant to be a personal computer to be installed in the hut of some starving family. This computer is something that developing governments can choose to buy cheaply and install in public locations or sell to third-party providers. Primary schools, libraries, vocational training centers--those kinds of things. Currently, many of these places need a completely out-of-reach IT budget of thousands of dollars (or else a patchwork of random donated PCs) to get set up at all. This project is a means to reduce that problem. It'll make it more likely that some 15 year old in rural Africa will at least have had access to a computer a couple times.
So quit complaining and pay attention.
Touch screens are far inferior to mice (think of the amount of movement you have to do).
Everyone's complaining that a $100 PC is not the most important thing for people in third-world countries. Why don't I see you going to Africa and building an industry and a large farm instead of posting on Slashdot?
These people are doing some good: they're creating a computer priced so low that local governments can afford to buy even large numbers without much of a decision. And they're also pushing the limit of a price of a full-featured computer. If they keep working at it, they'll help to modernize the developing countries by introducing the people to computers, and they'll push the price even lower.
Meanwhile, you're posting on Slashdot (as am I, I admit, but I didn't make any pretention of wanting good for third-world denizens). You can't very well argue that they're doing something to harm the third world, and they're considerably helping parts of it, so why're you complaining?
Oh, and I've seen the $2/day figure quoted around here. It's reasonable to say that a month's wages in America can buy a high-quality computer. A month's wages at $2/day is about $60. Remember that this is the first wave of cheap computers for developing nations. They're already close to the same price point with respect to purchasing power, and they'll get to it very quickly.
Given that most customers use PCs almost exclusively for word processing, e-mail, and web surfing,
But, that's not what most people use their computers for! Read up on the The 80/20 Myth to get some idea what I mean.
True, 80% of computer use is what you specify - but what about the other 20%?
It's ALL OVER THE PLACE. CAD/CAM. Web design. Graphic arts. Video games. Taxes and book-keeping. Software engineering. Encoding MP3s. Playing DVDs, MP3s, DivX, MPG content. Building quilt patterns. Serving database content.
Just because you can satisfy 80% of the uses of a computer doesn't mean that you can satisfy 80% of the users out there with 80% of the applications. If they were to be sold, your 80% computers would leave 100% of its users 20% dis-satisfied.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
That's true, but would you want Nicholas Negroponte really determining how the world gets its vital necessities?
All kidding aside, though, while the point you make is a good one, one problem with this line of thinking is that it 'forces' or leads people to believe that they shouldn't do anything until the basics and only the basics are handled adequately for all.
Given the level of economic underdevelopment in the countries targeted by this campaign, I'd suggest just letting it go ('let anyone try to improve things if they see a way to do it') might prove to be a better approach in the long run.
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
With the number of perfectly good P3s and older P4s finding their way to thrift shops, why not spend the $100 on refurbishing machines that are still good but that we rich folks don't want, thus saving the landfill of toxic waste and providing poor people with real machines?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You are a true visionary to ecological problems do to computer. Move our crap pile to some other place and put a great spin on it, wonderful, problem solved.
Ever see the clips showing mountains of computer parts in some of those countries with people just out there banging on them like something out of 2001 space odyssey?
They aint' going to do anything with a pile of parts. They are going to do about as much with that as all of use with the pile of parts we built up from out old stuff for that robot project thats never going to happen.
The better solution is to not make computers such a throw away item and have them be easily recycled when done with and such.
Think about it.
Even though they are only selling it to the governments of developing countries, it is more likely than not that a developed country would have already established an organization within the government (i.e. through outsourcing or something like that). Hence they will access to the government's buying power/options. And they will have the revenue to purchase these PCs [unlike the actual government].
This will cause an increase in demand, which will result in a price increase.
So a $100 PC may actually end up being a $150 or $200 PC.
Sadly, this will make it even more out of reach for those developing countries.
Then again, I could be wrong. I'm no economist.
Just because you can satisfy 80% of the uses of a computer doesn't mean that you can satisfy 80% of the users out there with 80% of the applications. If they were to be sold, your 80% computers would leave 100% of its users 20% dis-satisfied.
First of all, the article you reference is about software, and it's a mistake to try to transfer its argument to hardware.
Moreover, the logic doesn't apply when people are looking at a second (or third or fourth) computer. My high-compute needs are satisfied 100% by a 100% computer. However, most of the time (including now), I use a much less powerful machine for network apps like email, web, and of course ssh. I know many others like me, and they are not all computer geeks.
With one 100% computer and one 80% computer, I'm 100% satisfied at a cost significantly less than two 100% computers.
Of course you might ask "who would buy more than one computer," to which I would answer "the same people who buy more than one television."
Part of the problem, though, is that low-powered computers are available used in plentiful quantities. They might be worth buying new, however, if they consumed less electricity, made less noise, or were smaller than yesterday's 100% computers. Hence the Mac mini.
Funny, I was sure it was greedy, cynical outsiders trying to exploit them and steal their land and resources.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
But at $100 a pop, that would be cheaper than textbooks. Although you would still have to buy the text books, I would imagine Ebooks would be much cheaper
With modern Treacherous Computing techniques, electronic textbooks could be made pay-per-view. This would lead directly to the situation Richard Stallman described in a short story entitled "The Right to Read".
Of course, all of this assumes they mean laptop by portable PC.
Can't put a display into a $100 computer unless you're talking palmtop/GBA size. It might be something with TV output, like the $100 GameCube.
RTFA - its only going to sold to Gov't. They can afford it.
Riiight, and provided they WERE interested in this inferior, non standard product, what REALLY will happen is that the government will hand out these machines to select family members, party members, and local strongmen as an incentive or reward for services rendered. The PEOPLE probably won't see any of it.
I live in the 3rd world. That's how it works. Oh, but the US will feel all warm and cozy inside thinking that they did a "Good Thing", plus, as a lot of people say, it's a tax write off...
You want to REALLY help the 3rd world come and live here, start manufacturing stuff or building stuff or teaching stuff. But oh, then everyone will whine and complain about out-sourcing and stealing "American" jobs and unfair competition in the markets, etc.
It's a crappy world we live in and there will always be rich people, and poor people. And guess which ones are the ones that are always going to get screwed...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Farmers here in the West are surprisingly technical people, and treat farming as a science. One can't help but wonder how much better third world nations would be doing if they had access to some of that science and knowhow.
Send over 200-300 thousand old computers that people are throwing out
OK, so first you have to create local programs around the country to get the computers. You have to pay advertising costs to let the people know that the program exists. Chances are you have to pick the computers up because most peope won't bother to drop them off. You have to then store the units until it's worth moving them to a more central location. This has to be done year round, as people don't all upgrade at the same time, and most people would prolly just chuck it rather than hold onto it for 9 months until the yearly pickup. Space costs money. You have to arrange for some kind of centralized pickup/delivery system to regional centers. Which, incidentally, cost money to rent and operate. Then you have to somehow package them up (just chucking them into a shipping bin (ie what they go across the ocean on) almost guarantees that they'll arrive broken, which kind of makes the whole exercise moot). So to be practical, you have to box them up, except you can't use any kind of standardization, because the computers are in all kinds of different form factors. Then you have to get the large containers across the country to a port, on a ship, and across the ocean.
And you still haven't dealt with the issue that some software can't legally be transferred. Not to mention the fact that many people aren't savy enough to wipe their data, so you'd be handing over all kinds of personal data. (No, you can't just use a bulk demagnatizer, as pretty much any demag unit powerful enough to wipe a hard drive will physically destroy the drive.) It's not like the Nigerian-style scammers need any additional tools in fooling people.
So your costs have now added up to the point that you can pretty much make something new that you know works, you know has legal, properly installed software, etc., is designed for the target user, and is designed for the expected power supply. If your villiage only has DC power available, that 386 that takes 110/220AC doesn't do them a bit of good.
Why do we have to handhold them through setting up stuff we're giving to them for free?
Just like trying to derive water by eating snow, some things are a zero net gain (or even loss) even when it's free. Not everything that's free is worth it.
They don't need computers and they don't need college.
I might agree that they don't need computers, but they don't need college?
They need roads,
Who's going to plan the roads? Foreigners?
they need medical care,
Who's going to provide the medical care? Foreigners?
they need clean drinking water,
Who's going to plan the drinking water systems and make sure that the water is really clean?
they need immunizations,
Where are the vaccines going to come from?
they need family planning,
Who's going to set this up? Where will medicines and prophylatics come from?
they need assistance with sustainable farming techniques
Who's going to teach these?
they need primary education.
Who will be the teachers?
You seem to advocate that the 1st world should treat these countries like dependents and poor benighted savages who need saving. They will be best off if they save themselves and a large part of that will be handled by having people educated at all levels of the spectrum, not just primary education. Having vast numbers of foreign aid workers along with vast amounts of foreign aid just means that they will be dependent in the future. And someday, politics or fashion will cause the aid and aid workers to disappear and then where will they be?
You know, this may sound like a funny statement, but it brings up a really good question about existing hardware.
For example - how many people here have old hardware that would still work fine, but they personally dont have any use for it.
I worked for intel, I have had systems of every single processor model since the inception of the pentium.
All of my models were engineering samples, but in many cases I have had up to 20 machines of a particular model.
How many of you have a P3 800? or a p2 450?
I have had tons, built and sold and built and donated plenty of machines...
Why not try to build a "100 Dollar Box" *not* on NEW hardware, (which will cause even more lead and mercury pollution in areas where they may be deployed) - but to establish a standard build, a set of known components that are beyond commodity now, and then build and ship these boxes to the areas where you are looking to add value.
If they sought to get all processors/motherboards/video cards within a particular spec from everyone that has purchased them in the past, and establish a donation tracking process for future hardware - I think it would do more good - for the people receiving and the environment as well.
I would be happy to purchase something and then check a "Donors" box at time of receipt which will allow me to easily agree to donate that particular peice of equipment when I am done using it personally...
Did any of you actually read the article? It says "Mr. Negroponte's idea is to develop educational software and have the portable personal computer replace textbooks in schools" The computers aren't meant to surf the web. They're meant to be used for EDUCATION. I'm sure you all know how much textbooks cost. Then figure having to have a separate textbook for each subject. Now figure that in order for those to be useful they have to be replaced every few years. For the (approximate) cost of two regular textbooks you can provide a computer that can replace many, many textbooks for years to come. Is education one of the many things these countries need? Absolutely. Is this $100 computer a viable and more sensible replacement? Of course. These computers are aimed at a specific problem, and by helping with that problem you'll have access to working on -many- other problems that these countries face.
What a great guy, wanting to offload our garbage problems upon others.
The type of places these machines go people cannot RTFM and go search on google, they have no computer skills, these are people that live in small rural villages in many cases. Ever been to Laos, Burma, etc? Obviously not, your just another damn yankee that thinks America is the center of the universe and cares little for the problems in other regions of the world.
I knew a guy in Mercy Corp that went over to help with the tsunami relief and in one village he was in they had one roughly 100mhz machine they were using to use for searching for missing people, all the while your on your 3ghz machine wanking off to porn.
In fact what you describe of "keeping all that old shit out of our landfills" happens all too often, computer "recycling" operations merely dump the equipment in other countries and have poor villagers in most cases without adequate protection (nor are they aware of the dangers) against many of the toxins disasemble the equipment.
In the e-society session, everyone except me and a bright Intel VP thought politicians would solve all the problems, we thought engineers would. Then a man from Nigeria stood up. It took him 2 days to get to Kyoto. He said he appreciated everyone's enthusiam, but you know there are problems like where to get firewood. A major problem is smart people leaving the villages. In the Cambodian projects I know, political problems and human, ground level problems are like an axe taken to bright slashdotesque suggestions (I have offered plenty believe me), and the number of people working full time with insight into what it takes are very few.
I have been a volunteer helping a website that asks people to buy mosquito nets for Cambodia. It is very cheap to buy a net that can keep malaria away when you sleep. A couple days ago Sharon Stone raised a million dollars for these nets and that was a stunner. Wow. I think she said something like, "People are dying in your country now and that is not okay with me now" and started with a 10,000 bucks donation.
The ex-Newsweek journalist I have worked with on Cambodia (Bernard Krisher) has gotten companies and individuals to donate 10,000 dollars each to build a school with their name on it (matched by the World Bank). A little more for solar panels that could drive a computer. Negroponte's media lab has been involved in these projects too - in fact maybe it is all connected.
I think computing definitely is useful. But I think we need more people who know what is going on there. I feel that there are lots more technological solutions out there but not enough knowledgeable people networked together to converge on solving specific problems. For example you may remember the story about LAN on a motorcycle that drives through Cambodian villages to exchange email and maybe take someone to a hospital (Krisher's Motoman project). I have wondered if ham radio or satellite radio might not be better but am not trained in it, and the reality is it takes someone who is really tough to get things done. If it is done at a primitive level with minimal technology and a lot of stubbornness, people on the ground and some sponsorship, it has a chance at working it seems.
But I wonder about the physicist in Rhode Island (mentioned on slashdot?) I heard of who developed a new kind of antenna that could provide the same output as a massive tower. I know there is packet ham radio which can go around the world. Satellites are passing overhead all the time probably. But where is the discussion by the physicists, ham fanatics, solar power geeks, and satellite geeks? How to plug it in to participation by the people who know the ground and what works?
As it happens I think one issue that used to be a big worry (maybe no more) in Cambodia when I started 10 years ago was that radio use would draw fire from the military. Oh well. Is that still true? I doubt it.
So my conclusion. I think Sharon Stone is wonderful and anything that can have similar effects is good, provided the money is used well. So an English documentary on the conditions on the ground might be good, anything that makes it more transparent to the media-saturated world and gets visible to the people with resources and heart. Certainly open source, technology, and ad hoc networking is useful there. I also think more attention and support needs to be given to the people who are actually doing things, to help them, learn lessons, and accelerate aid. Networking might be useful to get people who have left the town to talk to peop
I've bought a PII-350/92Mb/3.5Gb/CDx24 for 25 euro's, and use it as a small linux server.
The stuff I have still lying around doesn't seem to interest anyone anymore, like a P-75, 486DX-33, 486DX4-100, 286-20, 386-40. These all work, but I only used the 486DX4-100 last year, the others haven't seen use in years, and nobody wants them anymore.
The problem with the 200-800 Mhz range stuff that is still in use is support if something breaks. The owners tend not to be the most technologically savvy. A reinstall of windows after the latest mess is often beyond their capacity. A friend of mine bought a cheap printer, after which I had to tell him that his PC doesn't have USB, so he'll have to buy a PCI USB card to get it to work.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Ehh, you haven't been over there have you ? The problem is that when ever one of the locals get's his hands on power thye start siphoning money out of the country to their personal bank accounts on tax heavens. They in general don't give a f**k about the people. I really hope that you are beeing sarcastic, otherways you are just one of the CNN following dummies who don't have a clue what's really happening over there.
They certainly don't need education when 99% of their futures and full-time jobs will be along the lines of 'farmer'.
And that is possibly the most biased, arrogant, ego-centric thing I have ever heard out of slashdot.
Something along the lines of "teach a man to fish" - they dont need computers, but they do need education.
(Grew up in an LDC - 12 years - for the record.)
Why aren't such cheap machines being sold to people in developed countries? I'd buy one.