Slashdot Mirror
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."
as long as it was low power, and had a decent video output of some sort, even if it was just s-video. sounds like it would be ideal for a carputer. presumably any computers for the developing world will be low power, because of the problems with actually getting electricity... you want to be able to run it off a exercise bike or what have you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I hate to say this, but with the exchange rates, $100 is well beyond an average third-world citizen's one year salary.
With a cost that low, the PC itself becomes a commodity item. Heck, the whole system costs less than most kids' video cards. At that price point, it becomes impossible to justify hundreds (or thousnads) of dollars in OS and application licenses. Linux on the desktop will be driven more by this project than any other, if it is successful.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who refuses to listen to reason"
But would it not be even better to work a way to use our vast supply of old computers, many of which are being thrown out and face a recycling problem?
Take all the best linux hardware detection and auto-configuration software from the various distros -- kudzu and the like -- and make an installer that takes an old PC, and first tells you if the hardware in it can run linux decently, and if so, automatically installs it, otherwise redirects the PC to be recycled or sold for low power windows.
People would happily donate these PCs, possibly even running the linuxizing CD themselves, since perhaps they don't qualify for the donation tax deduction of the PC doesn't pass the test on the CD.
Yes, these machines might not be as fast as the bottom end AMD chip (Sempron 2000?) that will go into them, but not only are they semi-free, they solve a recycling problem at the same time.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Sell it for $150-200 e.g. in the US & Europe as well (thus even further increasing the economies of scale), and use the extra proceeds to cross-subsidize massive, direct sales to the people in even higher numbers and well below $100 in the developing countries. Hopefully a sufficiently large part of the value chain will also take place in these countries, so as not to overwhelm local manufacturers etc. there...
Hey, this is the slashdot crowd. If and when this product comes out, we'll have it disected and running as a media box in a few minutes. As for the intended purpose of it providing low cost computing power to the masses, they are missing the entire point. Aside from the fact that the poorest areas of the world lacking any type of consistant electricity, let alone bandwidth, what use is a computer when you are hungry? Sure, the ubergeeks out there consider bandwidth more of a necessity than hygiene (and it freaking show sometimes), but we need to remember it is still a luxury to people working on other issues, such as nutrition and shelter.
This effort joing some other projects targeting cheap PCs at users in developing countries. For example, the PCtvt was recently proposed by Raj Reddy at CMU (an academic rivalry?).
But both efforts are predated by the Simputer, a low cost device that was designed to be shared by Indian villagers. Each user stores their data on a Smart Card, which is plugged into a single Simputer as it is shared by various members of the community.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
Today's, over-powered (not just in terms of wattage) PCs are overkill for the typical consumer. The bottleneck in downloading pornography is not the rendering done by the processor; the bottleneck is the network. Depending on the size of the pornographic file, 384K DSL line is slow; a 56K line is a pain in the you know where.
The cynical side of me says that Dell, Samsung, and the other major PC makers will keep the $100 PC out of the developed markets like the USA in order to maintain the $600 price point that they are currently stealing from the consumers.
I wonder if they will choose to go with the more obvious x86 based Geode or the very deserving MIPS solution, the Alchemy. Personally I would really love to see the Alchemy used.
I'm surprised a $100 computer even includes a mouse!
A new Logitech mx1000 costs almost that much by itself, though I'm sure it won't be making the sub-$100 PC parts list.
486s go for around $2.50 at the Goodwill around here (granted, this is in a college town, where I literally couldn't give away an ~150 MHz Pentium with monitor this past spring). It's great to say that we should just send all of our old PCs overseas, except that the cost of the logistics of testing each machine (many systems of that era will have a bad part or two), installing the software on a diverse set of hardware, and shipping them gets to be greater than the cost of just making millions of $SOMETHINGNEW such as this proposal.
Even if you simply ship bulk old PCs with no testing to where the labour is cheaper, the cost of collecting and packing the systems is substantial, not to mention the legal issues of shipping systems whose hard drives haven't been wiped of software.
Although this is obviously a troll, I need to comment on one point:
"even the NexT computer by steve jobs had two buttons but BOTH were set to the same action by default for intuitive simplicity."
It is NOT intuitive for two buttons right next to each other to serve the same purpose.
That is all.
"MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte has a plan to build a $100 PC [...] which is supposedly going to have a 14-inch color screen and run on Linux"
It turns out that Steve Ballmer was right. A $100 PC will indeed reduce Windows piracy, by running Linux. I'm sure Ballmer is very happy about this new project fulfilling his prophecy. This is a very good news for the developing developing developing world.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Forget the monitor, plug the thing to a TV. Like many computers from the 1980s.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Unsupported by a commercial interest this will fail. It may make good copy but will, if it gets anywhere at all, develop into an unsupported technological deadend.
The 3rd world is a place where webtv would actually work. Stick a 200mhz ARM, 64mb, a modem and video out into a small box and build a service around it... then you're getting somewhere.
The other day I passed a rubbish skip at my local college filled to the top with Desktop computer units & VDUs, all identical - dozens of units. When I asked what was wrong with them I was told - nothing! They were just old machines, the college was buying new machines. From what I could gather these were units in the P100-250Mhz range, all usable by someone out there..
Having said that, ok $100 PCs are good - but again with the environment/pollution pressures, how far do we go? Remember each machine eats 200W+ of power - nice when we are trying to get everyone to cut back..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I think that the average /.er underestimates the value of information. While solid infrastructure like roads and power plants and pipelines is of great use to an economy that needs to move goods, a lot of the miserably poor economies have no market in the first place. How can these things, expensive as they are, help them in that case?
Information, OTOH, is vital in almost all situations, war or peace, economic or social, and it has the potential to grow brand new markets in the poorest countries.
Mandatory abortions and mandatory euthanization would be an unpalatable solution for many, and thus it is not a politically viable solution.
It is also impractical: EVERY time a woman got pregnant, she would have to undergo a surgical procedure, which takes up a doctor's time (and time is money) and incures risk (more chances of infection, scars on the body, etc). Furthermore, it is unreliable, since females undergo biological hormonal changes when they become pregnant, and for some this translates into an emotional fondness for their unborn which turns into reluctance to terminate the pregnancy. Thus the failure of "morning after pills", such as RU 48, since the woman has the option of letting it continue to term.
On the other hand a reversible vasectomy would be more politically acceptable and more economical. The male only has to undergo the surgical procedure ONCE, and then to reverse it, undergo one more procedure. It's more predictable, and reliable. No second guessing on the male's part whether or not an accidental pregnancy occurred, and no fear of submarine alimony lawsuits (where the father didn't realize the mother was pregnant).
True. In an idealized world, in Fantasy Country, it would be mandatory or automatic (sort of like circumcision), and then at a certain age (say, roughly 24), you could then be given the right to decide when you want your vasectomy reversed. Let's be truthful -- we're talking about guys here, and many guys DON'T want to have kids, or at least want to procrastinate as long as possible! My guess is that a large number would prefer to remain sterile and hold off as long as possible; the mandatory vasectomy would provide a great excuse. Can you imagine the conversation:
Wife: "Honey, I wanna have kids."
Husband: "I'm too tired to schedule the surgery. Let's go to the bedroom and practice. Several times."
If you are a Rich Country providing aid to the Impoverished Country, you could tie the aid with certain strings attached, eg the mandatory reversible vasectomy.
The "weird" thing about society today is that you have to take a test, get a license, and show proof of auto insurance to drive a car, but if you want to have a kid, BAZOOM!, you can do it without taking a test or attending a class or showing proof of anything. The smartest Einstein and the dumbest moron (such as myself) are on equal footing regarding the process of reproduction. Raising the child in a responsible environment is another story altogether.
..and this is the same observations and therefore advice I had for the lack of any credible warning system for the Tsunami, despite the fact it hit asia, the home of cheap labor, and even cheaper electronics. Most of these "developing nations" seem to have no problem supporting a military/industrial/politician/ generic fatcat class with all the latest expensive toys. One less jet fighter plane per nation would pay for a lot of simple basic computers and dedicated tsunami and earthquake warning radios, probably more than one per poor village. A few less tanks pays for some decent electrical generational facilities of the small scale and distributed nature. One less high muckety muck mercedes limo buys a lot of DC solar panels and simple DC charge controllers. One less governmental fatcat palace = a few radio station/cell/net setups. And so on and so forth.
It's not so much a technological problem or even an economic problem, it's a political problem, and the problem is that the global *two* class society is being pushed (from the top down obviously, from the folks with the guns and money and power) instead of the global *three* class heavy on the middle society like it should be.
Actually, it can and is being done. I worked on a project a few years back called "Computers for Africa - Bridging the Digital Divide". We basically took all these donated PCs (~400MHz or so), installed ghost images of Win 95 (don't ask me why), set them up for networking, and loaded them up. They were sent in bulk by donations. It was pretty cool knowing that what little I was doing had the potential to churn out some hackers in remote parts of Africa, where even electricity is hard to come by.
Look who's involved: Google and Linux. This looks like a back-door plan to make network computing finally happen in big numbers. These devices really don't need to do much more than boot into Firefox, and the apps will all run on Google's massive server network.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Actually when you get right down to it, you don't need computers to manage anything. Need clean water? Simply divert the river/dig a well(s)/or create an aquaduct if you need water over a large area. Vaccinations? Setup a few shops in the most populated areas and work your way out, quit trying to save everyone at the same time (since you obviously won't succeed). They certainly don't need education when 99% of their futures and full-time jobs will be along the lines of 'farmer'.
At an early stage of development you don't need huge storage rooms full of paperwork, you don't need 'accountability' either. What good is a government if the people aren't going to follow it? People aren't going to follow you either unless you do things down on the ground that they can see, understand and trust. Giving them computers and tell them that a demographic will let them dig a well for a region 6 months later, assuming things go 'according to plan', does not win trust.
Personally, I think thats a hell of a great idea.
Like you, and being both a typical geek (even at my age of 70) I have a collection of older hardware that I'm sure someone, somewhere, could put to productive use.
Maybe it wouldn't keep them at my current 99.32% in the seti rankings, or even run windows cause lots of my stuff isn't your basic wintel box. But it was productive, and usefull in its time, not to mention very educational. But its sitting in the basement in boxes, high and dry, along with lots of documentation, and could find a usefull home someplace for not a heck of a lot more than the shipping to get it there.
Yup, I like that idea. Much as I'd like to claim I'm a packrat, its not doing me that much good sitting there in a box. TI-99/4a anybody? Atari ST with a small hard drive, 12" color monitor and at least a hundred pounds of docs, much of it musicly oriented? Packing and Shipping is all I want back for those.
No, no CoCo's or amigas included, I have plans for them yet, like any good packrat.
--
Cheers, Gene
Ah, the fresh smell of ignorance in the morning. What you're failing to see is that over a century, lots of white men came in the enslave and rule people in Africa. When then finally decided to leave, they left the borders drawn the way they had kept them for administrative purposes. Now all these people in large swaths of land who had never interacted with each other on friendly terms are supposed to govern with each other? How exactly do you see that working? Read a history book.
Plus, it might be better for older hardware (which IIRC contains more nasties) to be disposed of in countries where there'll at least be an effort to remove the toxic parts, than for them to be (eventualy) chucked in a ditch somewhere.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's a great idea, but, I think some factory in the far east could chuck out conservatively-specced ARM-based Linux systems with 14" color screens at a unit cost lower than you can collect and get the old hardware up to merchantable quality. We are talking about millions of units here, and I doubt it will scale that far. We are a throwaway society I'm afraid.