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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."
Sure, there are billions who can't afford to buy one of these. But somebody in their village or neighborhood will get a micro-loan and pay it back by selling access to their neighbors. This is already happening with other technology.
$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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...