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."
How many mouse buttons does it have, dammit?
I hate to say this, but with the exchange rates, $100 is well beyond an average third-world citizen's one year salary.
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
Maybe, MIT should call the new computer the "VIC-10" and ask Shatner if he wants to do some ads for it. I wonder how the audience in Vietnam would feel if they see William Shatner being dubbed to speak Vietnamese?
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.
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 $600 price point that they are currently stealing from the consumers.
Sounds about right. Speaking as someone who travelled through Madagascar for three months, all I can say is that you simply cannot understand it until you have been there and been there long enough to completely blow your prejudices, preconceptions and most of your hope out of the water.
Development needs to start with the basics. They don't need computers and they don't need college. They need roads, they need medical care, they need clean drinking water, they need immunizations, they need family planning, they need assistance with sustainable farming techniques and they need primary education. I'll concede that computers can be part of the overall strategy but they'd be pretty low on my list of priorities. And it's not going to be any use at all until you've got (a) power, (b) literacy, and (c) a phone line, and many places I saw lacked some or all of those things.
Here is a great leaked picture of the new sub 100$ computer:
Here
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.
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.
..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.
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...