Slashdot Mirror
The Sub-$100 Laptop?
Vollernurd writes "The BBC is carrying this article detailing Nick Negroponte's plans to deveop and distribute a sub-$100 notebook computer. It would be very basic and stripped down and be used in developing countries as a way of distributing school books and such. Interesting to see how they will cut costs. Yes, it does run Linux." You can read another slashdot story about this machine when it was discussed on Red Herring awhile ago.
Of michael's seventh to last story!
I know the point of this is to be available in developing countries, but I can see this being very popular in "first-world" countries as well. (heck, I'd buy one) They may have to control how they're sold/distributed to keep the developed world from snapping them all up.
Or display.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
The question is what kind of quality will these machines be? As far as I know, $100 does not get you a lot of high quality computer components.
It takes a network of laptops to raise a child.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
wasnt this already reported last week? anyway, i wouldnt mind a sub 100$ laptop here. heck, schools should offer their students these laptops.
Isn't it more a matter of Linux running on it? Well, at least you worked a Linux reference into your submission, just as I did in my comment.
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
Will it have CRT or what?
I recently bought a laptop on eBay for $109, + $17 shipping.
Toshiba K6-2 350MHZ, 48MB RAM, 3.6GB HD, 12.1 TFT screen. Nice shape and it runs Damn Small Linux quite well. I actually loaded Slackware 9 on it for kicks and it ran pretty well using Fluxbox.
He said the child could use the laptop like a text book.
As in, fall asleep and drool on it?
A laptop keyboard isn't nearly as pillowesque as, say, the cushy, thick pages of a physics book.
The coolest voice ever.
From TFA:
"The second trick is to get rid of the fat , if you can skinny it down you can gain speed and the ability to use smaller processors and slower memory."
Um, why is using slower memory a GOOD thing? Esp. if these people are going to be using it like a textbook, it's going to be much more memory intensive than CPU intensive......
Monstar L
So it will be a day or two's delay until you can grab one off eBay.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I wonder if it is going to be something like the p-p-p-powerbook?
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Picture available here.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
So, is that 350 mhz Toshiba laptop on eBay for ~ $100 low quality? Of course not. It is old and slow, but the quality is not low.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
+keyboard.
bam - sub 100$ computer.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
would this include Florida?
Atleast they are introducing Linux to deveopling countries :P
Because a laptop is gonna fill a hungry stomach. For areas that are truly poor and need better education doesn't it seem a little over-the-top to give them laptops. How about sticking with regular old books (which are hard enough to teach without having to teach how to use a laptop on top of that) and using any extra money for things like oh... food, medicine, housing development, water treatment, agriculture, etc, etc, etc...
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
The technical details are a littel to sketchy. Slower processor and memory? Gotcha. But who supplies them? Rear-projection screen. Check. But can you make it thin enough so a child can carry it? And who will do the R&D? An earlier poster mentioned first-world appeal. Amen. Sell a sexier version in developed nations for, say, $200US and then see where this thing can go in the third world.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Windows would be better
I don't understand why these hyper-cheap hardware soloutions are only planned for the developing world. There are still huge price-limited markets in the developed world for hardware, which could potentially create still lower costs for the developing world.
£47 is still a lot of money in China, but in the US and Europe people routinely spend more than that on keyboards and mice. There are untold applications for $100 laptops here still.
Launch the $100 laptop here too, and then by 2010, you can be launching the $50 laptop too.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Since it is running Linux, and you can get great software like OpenOffice, Gimp, FireFox, for free, is it really stripped-down?
1. Distribute cheap Linux-based laptops to 2 billion indigent Asians
2. Extort $699 Linux license fee from each user
3. Profit!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...is how children in these countries will gain access to all of the other things you need to make a laptop into a real tool for learning (and while whether stuff like a printer and shiny pre-packaged educational software may or may not be necessary, I think we can all agree that they would at least need an internet connection, and some software that may not be available as freeware). While this is a great idea, I wonder whether he also has plans to set up a free or low-cost ISP in these areas. Or, barring that, I wonder whether these laptops will have CD-RW or floppy drives, and if so, whether the school will be provided with blank disks/CDs. You also have to wonder whether there's some way to provide teachers/parents in these areas with some sort of computer education, both so that they can utilise the computers intelligently in the classroom, and so that they can teach the children basic skills as well. I guess my point is: while this is a beautiful idea in theory, I wonder if it will have much effect without lots of additional support behind it.
At least they won't have to worry about running Windows and having to put 13 patches into it today like Windows users:
The patches are still not available, as of 10:56 EST.
I sincerely hope the plan is not to outfit each student with one of these ridiculous things. Certainly I learned how to do everything without a computer, and had the honor of seeing computers/internet introduced into the classroom gradually through my education and can tell you that for the most part, they didn't do much.
Most of the uses were for Power Point slides and other useless replacements of existing technology: a blackboard, an eraser, chalk, paper, pencil, etc. It has made research a lot easier, but not necessarily better. You can find stuff faster but is the time savings used to put together more convincing arguments or properly written materials?
I think the $100 laptop is a good idea for schools to have in small numbers, say 1 per classroom at most. If it were up to me I wouldn't have any computers in school outside of a designated "computer lab" as I think they interfere with learning. They are a tool, but they are mostly applied the incorrect way.
I would hope that for the severely impoverished we would worry about other things first, then the laptop. Although certainly it is worthwhile* $100 can buy a lot of books and learning materials.
Negroponte says: "In China they spend $17 per child per year on textbooks. That's for five or six years, so if we can distribute and sell laptops in quantities of one million or more to ministries of education that's cheaper and the marketing overheads go away."
Laptops certainly will have information more current, but laptops also need to be replaced every five or six years, or even less. A broken laptop is more expensive to fix than a broken book.
I would say a better solution is to give each classroom a laptop, say, for every five kids. Then one kid can take it home each night and use it if they wish. But back to my original point, the teacher is the best tool, not the laptop.
* I say worthwhile because the developing world can use more cheap tech. Read "Africa Rising" or look at Ubuntu for example.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
This gets brought up a lot. Yes, those people have more pressing, more basic needs. But if you can offer them *information* which is a good commodity. The best example I heard is the the farmer who would normally take his wares to the market and haggle price. Now he can use the internet to check other local prices, and decide whether or not the trip is even worth it (and for large amounts of items, and long trips, this isn non-trivial to farmers).
People in 3rd world countries have 'basic' needs, but they also realize that there are some tools worth having. If a computer is going to cost you 5 years of income, then it's not an issue. But if you can get one relatively cheap, access to information can be extremely valuable.
-- I have fans? Wow.
The idea is that slower memory is cheaper. You get other advantages by going slower. A motherboard with a low fsb speed is WAY easier to design and build (perhaps locally). A slower clock speed means less battery consumption. That means you can use cheaper batteries.
A simple computer with Win 3.1 used to run everything I needed. You should almost be able to implement such a computer on one chip these days.
The thing I think will be a challenge is the $20 display.
What about that?
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
From looking at my inbox, Nigeria is populated by thousands of princes worth tens of millions of dollars each.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
A can't believe that people in this country aren't developing an ebook like computer for the education market. Something along the lines of Apple's old laptop-like Newton, or Psion's NetBook would be examples of good platforms. These things would weigh less than 50 lbs of books...
Is it a new distro ?
In a few years I think we will be seeing stories about the miraculous sub-$100 movie ticket
Looking at old PowerBooks (Pre-PowerPC), you can get several color screen PowerBooks for under $50. Many have a built in modem or Ethernet, you can run Adobe Acrobat to handle PDF's and it will also support Internet Explorer for web stuff. I am sure there are comparable Windows laptops selling for the same price or less. IMHO, we really should be making an effort to use older computers with proven hardware/software first before manufacturing newer computers for people who have never owned them before.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I'm sure the textbook publishers will be happy to cooperate with this venture. Won't they?
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
Do I dare to hope it will come preloaded with Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and the full collection of Project GutenbergeBooks?
(I remember how intriguing it was when Steve Jobs premiered the NeXT with the American Heritage dictionary and the complete works of Shakespeare as standard equipment...)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I believe it was somebody from Commodore (or Atari) who said that (in subject line) back in the early 80's. At the time the primary display for home computers (since it was the C-64 and Atari's...and Apples) were composite monitors and TV's. It's what everybody had.
You could...and they did build computers that were at the sweet spot of $200 bucks. People forget that Commodore sold MILLIONS of Vic-20's and C-64's
With High def capable TV's being sold (even without an HDTV tuner) and HDMI and DVI connectors on them it seems that you could do this again. Make a $200 (or less) computer with a keyboard and mouse (or maybee track pad) attached or built into it and connect it via HDMI to to a high def capable tv (HDMI also includes sound).
The manufacturer that comes out with a device like this could sell A LOT of these devices!
It sounds like a great idea, but how are these things going to be powered in developing countries? Electric generation is at a premium, when it's up, and a laptop is just going to suck that much more down.
Books can be read by candlelight or anywhere away from a power source and for more than 3 hours!
(Never mind the fact that, when you need to, they become a nice heating source! What do you do with a dead laptop?)
I have to admit that I currently hate laptops. Part of it is that they are expensive and fragile, but mainly because when someone can carry a computer about with them, it becomes "MINE" - they assume they can do whatever they want with it. I could envision using these as a mobile lab or textbook running off of a LTSP type host, but otherwise I'd be afraid at the upkeep time needed for them - even running Linux!
T.J. Schmitz - the man, the myth, the legend - o
I don't see how a laptop could ever replace hard-copy textbooks. Firstly, ink and paper is much easier on the eyes than text on a screen. Secondly, I am constantly flipping back and forth in the book, highlighting, and taking notes in the margin. I'll even print my digital downloads for this exact purpose. While certain software allows for note taking and bookmaking, etc., it is hardly a substitute for the simplicity and flexibility of good old analog pen and paper. Also, I've yet to have a book crash on me and lose all its contents. Linux or not, I wouldn't trust my extensive tech book library to a sub-$100 laptop.
This proposed system does present some unique advantages though. Firstly, text will be much cheaper to distribute, though some sort of minimally intrusive DRM will need to be developed to protect the rights of the author. Secondly, text will be available more quickly as the printing process is eliminated. You could also receive corrections and revision updates online. This would be especially useful in technical writing, as new editions often contain important changes to reflect the latest software.
Did anyone else get a "Diamond Age" vibe when they thought about huge numbers of Chinese kids with laptops?
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
int i=0;u nd=true;
bool found=false;
while(i<array.length && givenint<array[i])
{
if(givenint==array[i])
fo
i++;
}
if(found)
cout<<"This was found, yay!";
else
cout<<"Not in the array";
Point taken -- I was late to this and made a bad assumption.
Now Coward, why not add something more to the conversation, than "hey, itsadupe"? My view stands, that this dupe is valuable -- while not intentional :)
BG
-
Print out the list of integers
- Make a hologram of the integer of interest
- View list through hologram
- You will see a bright spot on the hologram image where there is a match
Unfortunately, this will also provide false positives for near matches. The closer the graphical match, the brighter the spot. O(N) time to print the list, but O(1) time to to the actual search. This is also useful for finding tanks.the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Maybe you should read the article... you might find something like, "He described the device as a stripped down laptop, which would run a Linux-based operating system." Try harder next time.
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
Wha[tt] you fail to understand is that Microsoft keeps people employed and puts food on the table for many millions of Americans. Most of the people from the tree hugging *nix hippy crowd forget that what makes this country great is the ability for anyone to become a millionaire if they work hard enough. You start distributing some free OS and that puts a hole in the system. Free OSes are un-American. This Negroponte character may as well be a mafia don trying to undermine all that is good and pure in the American free-enterprise system. Microsoft is a shining example of what happens when you put brilliant minds behind a product made for profit. Bill Gates alone has made more millionaires for this country than all businesses combined in the 20th century. The fact that the OS has to be patched is just a small inconvenience to pay in order to keep this country and every citizen in it as rich as they are. So thank you... I'll take my patches and happily keep up with them. It's not like it's that hard (just set up auto update and forget it). I'd rather support the American economy than some hippy tree huggers with no real understanding of how this nation works.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It consists of a notebook and your choice of pen (black or blue) or pencil, all for $7. For an extra $3, you can upgrade to a 3 subject notebook, which supports multitasking.
Does not need laptops... it needs more weapons.
Dell, a big fat name brand is selling a $600 laptop. I recently read in TWICE (This Week in Consumer Electronics) that LCD screens are expected to drop 50% this year and another 50% in 2006 as increased production and yields forces prices down. So I'm guesstimating we should be below $200 for conventional laptops some time in 2008.
I think a bigger challenge than getting cheap screens is making the machines rugged enough. Kids + Third World living conditions = MDL. (many dead laptops).
Insert witty sig here.
from the posting Yes, it does run Linux.
This has been available and shipping for years. It is even in "tablet" format. It's called an Etch-a-Sketch, and currently, that's about the only thing any sub-$100 notebook is going to be able to do.
The only sub-$100 notebook you'll ever need can be found right here.
"United Nations officials report a mysterious 50,000 percent increase in Ethiopian pr0n online...
Messiah's soft cover quantum books are ok. The thick covers are nearly drool-proof. In comparison, hard covers on Jackson's E&M text gets pretty gross after a few sleep/drooling sessions. All this is, of course, hypothetical.
Think global, act loco
I remember an article from several years ago that ran in the printed version of The Jakarta Post (link to paper, not article) stating that the Indonesian government ran something like 97% of its computers on pirated versions of Windows and Office. Corruption asside, this and similar cheap alternatives could help stamp out pirating at the government level, perhaps inducing a positive trickle down effect.
Holy..whens the last time you visited Africa?
I assume since they have abundant electrical power, they have factories pumping out cars by the million..
And here's a great e-week article which asks: Where would they get the power for the laptop from? And wouldn't a cell phone offer better cost/benifit?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1759073,00. as p?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000605
The article:
"Power Politics Overshadow $100 PC Concept
February 2, 2005
By Guy Kewney
DAVOS, Switzerland--Nicholas Negroponte, wandering around this city, was trying to get people excited about the idea of a very small, very cheap PC, costing $100. A favor, if you like, for the poor countries at the World Economic Forum, from the rich.
Nothing wrong with the idea, as another delegate to the WEF (World Economic Forum) pointed out last week.
But Wenchi Chen, founder and president of VIA Technologies, knows a bit more about small, cheap PCs, perhaps, than the MIT Media lab chief, and he pinpointed the flaw in Negroponte's pitch quickly enough. It's power.
I've been amazed at how few people in the First World really understand how important it is that PCs don't chew up wattage like an elephant munching hay. We've gotten so used to having cheap energy that we honestly don't realize we are paying to charge our mobile phones.
You can cure yourself of this blindness simply enough. Check out any online store for something such as the Maxxima hand generator, and then try it. Just try generating enough charge in your cell phone for a five-minute conversation. It really isn't funny; it's hard work for little result. And so now, try to imagine generating the power to run a 75W personal computer.
Chen's point at the WEF was simple: All of the things we are hoping to harness the personal computer to depend on power. "Even if we built a nuclear power station a day for the next few years, we wouldn't have enough to drive all the PCs we're hoping to build," he warned.
Naturally, VIA has an axe to grind: It has focused its technology, as have Transmeta and ARM, on the power budget. But the days of cheap energy can't be taken for granted anymore, and within a decade, it may be that even we in the West will have to share the Third World's concern with power budgets.
Whether we can have cheap energy or not, the remote, rural communities of Africa and China don't have the sort of revenue that would let them put a computer such as the Media Center in every home. And I think that's where Negroponte's vision exposes its Achilles heel: He's said the minimum order for his $100 PC would be a million.
Next Page: Better to buy a cell phone?
As Peter Rojas pointed out sardonically enough, most poor villagers would rather buy a cell phone.
And indeed, why not? Cell phones are usually subsidized by the network operators for the text and call traffic revenue they generate. Increasingly, they have considerable local processing power--and, with the built-in camera, substantial local news-gathering ability, too. And the networks are now offering offline storage for trivial amounts.
Wenchi Chen is best known, in my part of the forest, for his mini-ITX range of motherboards which, amazingly, are forming a growing thicket of wireless mesh boxes providing rural broadband links to people who don't have ADSL or cable, and can't afford satellite. But the interesting thing for me about the low-power platform isn't just the wireless application.
Read more here about wireless mesh networking.
Rather, it's the discovery that more and more people are using these things as servers. And again, why not? It may take two or three low-power PCs to match the performance of a top-range Xeon, but the power budget is a tiny fraction.
And in a co-location center, they charge you for your heat output. And so smart guys are buying a half-dozen mini-ITX boxes and sticking them in their co-lo corner--and that's the cue for the Third World.
One machine per home may be a rich boy's dream. One machine per village, however, with mobile-phone peripheral access, is another matter. You can work out a power
There are starving people in America too. I don't see anyone attacking the computer industry here....
What do I have to do to get some love around here?
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
Back in college (mid-1980's), I was working with a nonprofit to provide local access to a database of development-related articles. How to build an artisian well, that sort of thing.
The proposal was to use a satellite or ham radio connection, with absurd latency (like: request today, the document comes down in two days). It would've worked fine, in theory, but I'm almost certian it never saw the light of day.
I'm a little surprised there isn't an existing network of ham radio connections. It obviously wouldn't be broadband, but I'd think it would beat nothing.
The original idea has long been outstripped by other means of information delivery, but if you can deliver blueprints / health information / agricultural data to people who don't have access to a library, the applications of this technology are pretty obvious.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
I dunno which developing countries they're talking about, but in India at least the school books are developed by the government and sold essentially at the cost of printing them. You could buy at least 200 school text books for $100.
Maybe it would make more sense for higher levels like college where you could buy a mere 10-50 (depending on whether its an Indian reprint of a foreign text book, or one by a local author) text books for $100.
The Zire retails for under $100.00. And has a processor much more powerful than the first Macintosh 128/512/Plus.
Something like a Zire with a larger screen and some useful apps would make a great low cost Laptop.
There was an old HP Omnibook with a black and white LCD display, Flash Memory Drive with Windows and Office in ROM. Something like that with a built-in modem might be good.
Leveraging legacy apps and operating systems to create a perfectly usable computer for these people is a good idea.
Just because we as users, have moved on to 3Ghz P4 Processors and the like, doesn't mean a system running on a Pentum 233MMX with appropriate software won't have utility for non-power users.
We're jaded by all the hardware advances and forget that we used to do fine with that older hardware.
The power adapters we use for our IBM T40s are universal. All you need is a plug adapter(Just a straight US-to-* physical adapter) to use it w/ 50Hz-60hz/whatever and whatever voltages you might encounter.
As for straight 12V DC.. I don't see why that would be a huge problem.. maybe make the power brick modular.. seperate the voltage regulation circuitry from the rectifier circuitry.. if you want to plug in DC, bypass the rectifier.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
But does it run Windows?
Se queman solamente los libros en unen estados, gringo!
This could really work. Take the basic design of the portable Tandy Color Computer 3 that had a greyscale LCD screen and redesign it a little. Make a bigger screen (line 640x480), a clam shell design, and a low cost ARM processor (/. had an article about cheap 32 bit processors a couple of months ago) with 64 megs of ram. Make sure it has either and a serial or a USB port, 1 gig flash drive, and a cheap 16 bit sound chip. If the they even come close to the Tandy design this system would last decades.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Why can't they just get them all PDAs now? Sub-$100 text reader that can be electronicaly updated and lasts longer than a laptop batteries. Screen is small and not the best thing to read from. You can probably forget localization of the language in a standard install but it coudl probably be done.
Of crouse, one thing I've always wanted was a laptop form factor PDA. I want somethign realativly small and cheap that I can edit text on that turns on and off like a PDA. Laptops just don't work because they are too heavy and take too long to boot just to input somebodies phone number or address. yet current PDAs have really narrow screens and poor text input devices.
There is no reason why some device like what AlphaSmart makes couldn't be manufactured today for $100. It's primarly non-technical issues that prevent such things...
....it's called a PDA.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
... a portable, highly stealable computer for poor developing nations. Those will last long.
Unlike the prior government-supported "$100" laptop, Professor Negroponte's goal isn't to build the latest greatest laptop at any cost, and then use tax money to make up the difference over $100 - it's to build a truly $100-valued general-purpose PC.
Restructuring PDA internals inside a laptop frame to suffice as a full computer -- taking advantage of Linux's portability -- is a great idea. This is exactly what I felt should be done instead when I first read about the ridiculous government plan.
Kudos to Prof. Negroponte.
Someone who's RTFA might have already mentioned this,
but IIRC these sub-$100 notebooks will be sold in mass quantities and
only orders of 1 million or more will filled.
So getting your hands on one of these cheap laptops will require some ebaying or something.
------ no thanks... I've quit
How to use a TRS-80 Model 100/102 as a Linux terminal using a serial port.
He said the child could use the laptop like a text book.
Would it come with a highlighter? Oh, wait, he said child not business major.
USAnotebooks.com shows an IBM TP760EL for $229. I'm pretty sure you could find a hundred of these on eBay for less than $100.
The only real problem is getting new batteries, because they eventually conk out and of course the screen which can get easily damaeged.
The real problem is software. With notebooks like that you're pretty much committed to DOS/Win3.1 or possibly Win95 if you have to go the Windows route. Maybe OS/2 version 3 or 4. Or pick whichever low end freeNIX you prefer.
Do a binary search! This is O(log n) running time. More efficient than a linear search (O(N)), which is what someone else posted.
bool is_in_array(int *array, int n, int key)
{
int low = 0, high = n-1;
while( low < high )
{
int mid = (low+high)/2;
if( array[mid] < key )
low = mid+1;
else
high = mid-1;
}
return array[low] == key;
}
(stupid lameness filter....)
the Commodore 64 was $99 way back in the mid-eighties this is old news!
Anyone who's taken an introductory computer science course in algorithms knows that this is obviously not what the professor is asking for. This is a linear search. It goes through the item N times. For a large array, this is bad.
It says the array is sorted. This means they are looking for a binary search. Running time is log(N). So if it's an array of size 1024, it'll make 10 iterations, not 1024. Much faster!
It seems really bad to manufacture a bunch of already obsolete machines, that will wind up in the trash anyway! Why not reuse what we already have, at least for this cycle? Someone is making money here, otherwise recycling would have come to mind first.
I was just thinking about the 1st world possiblities myself.
My guess is walmart is going to see this and then will demand the makers of the $499 Linux laptop to meet hte price or get kicked out of the store.
http://saveie6.com/
Maybe if a dirt-cheap electronic device like this got popular, it would bring more emphasis to efficient, minimilistic programming practices instead of bloat and feature creep.
Your point caller?
HAL
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
With all the crappy jokes going around on here getting modded up, it's about time we actually read a funny one.
All problems are simple when approached with the Bush method (TM).
Just pray for a couple of seconds, and God will tell you what the correct answer is.
If the correct answer is "Invade Iraq" or "Ignore North Korea", well, who are you to argue with the deity, eh?
All problems are simple when approached with the Bush method (TM). You are not a true conservative if you do not agree with the Bush method (TM). God told me so!
The key to this problem is to divide the array in half, then decide which half contains the value you want (by virtue of the current value being greater than or less than the value you are looking for). Then divide the half you have selected in half again. Rinse, repeat until you find your number.
Your loop will never find anything because one of the conditions that the while loop has precludes the if statement inside. If you ever want to find anything, you have to change your while logic to
while(i<array.length && givenint<=array[i])
Also you may find multiple identical entries into the array, but its hard to tell if you intended this or not.
...and for us out here, I know of a sub-100 laptop vendor, and that is "The guy selling stolen laptops on the corner of the street".
ph34r!
Peace and happyness to you, by LullySing
You need this $100 laptop- and this $1000 solar panel.
Some people are aiming higher - trying to solve the problems of cheap computing and world hunger simultaneously.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I did it like that for a reason. the givenintarray[i] will kick out once you proceed past the required value in the loop, without finding it. the iarray.length tests to make sure you dont go out of bounds (assuming the given int is less than the last item). The if statement just tests to see if it finds a matching one. If i wanted to get rid of ALL extra iterations, the while loop would be: while(iarray.length && givenintarray[i] && !found)... Anyway, he said to find one, not to find EVERY one, this just finds the first instance, what he does beyond that is up to him.
We already have sub-$100 laptops. They are used obselete PCs from ten to fifteen years ago. Stuff that gets given away as too old, slow, and embarrassing for anyone to be associated with today.
The point is; all these sub-$100 laptops are unique. They all have individual things wrong with them. Dead pixels, dead floppy, one burned- out bit on a parallel port, flakey loose power connector, etc... They aren't shiny new shrink-wrapped machines. Unless you consider a 'GameBoy' to be a laptop. After all, it has a computer chip, keys, and an LCD screen.
Plus there is no central place where you can go with '$100 in my hand' (shades of the Velvet Underground) and get one on these old laptops. They aren't even worth the eBay shipping charge.
But, to get technical about it, yes we do already have sub-$100 laptops.
Cheap and nasty but opened up computing to the masses.
A Mobile ZX81 with a screen. Dont expect many add ons to work, as long as it runs linux I reckon it is a winner, and version 2 will be the killer application that gets cheap hardware certified with linux, even if it uses ARM.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Om second thoughts the cheap laptops would be closer to psions wince machines that were/are almost laptop size. I would by a new 300 euro linux laptop nomater what the compromises were. X and a battery would be nice to have, but a text only cheap laptop that needed to be plugged in would be useful. A return to factory default (wiping the hard drive, bootstrap from rom) would make a useful de virus/malware tool.
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blah blah blah.
Ends justifies the means. And that's why you had planes crashing into buildings.
Because lo and behold the ends... DON'T justify the means in EVERY single possible occasion.
And saying OSS is unamerican is funny because I believe the first admendment says otherwise... E.g. free speech [well from govt, but let's take it all the way].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
When you strip windows off the machine the price really comes down.
I want one.
But then, I always want one.
"We have to get the display down to below $20, to do this we need to rear project the image rather than using an ordinary flat panel."
Its rediculous, flat panel screens are already just $15 or so each for manufacturers. This guy got this crap from that silly movie where they made the 3d projection computer while trying to do the sub $100 computer.
EzSnag.com offers a notebook for $32. (Well, kind-of).
whereas random models, one of each, from ebay = nightmare to support.
This way, maybe with the model spec held for a year, a country could buy 10,000 and 10,000 rebuild cd's or whatever.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/08/1 432207
that's 100 post-conversion namibian mega-dollars, right?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Now wait just a minute. When apple released the Mac Mini, it's critics here were complaining about how underpowered it was. Now they release a hundred dollar pc and everyone wants one?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Just because a small percentage of the population in a country has most of the wealth doesn't mean that everyone in that country is prospering. There are people everywhere who are in just as bad a situation as those people in "developing" countries but don't get the help or sympathy because everyone judges their welfare based on the name of their country.
Instead of a pure laptop, I'd like a small desktop system that uses largely laptop parts. I'm concerned about power usage, noise, size, and heat, but I don't need the portability, and I'd like a PCI slot for video recording, etc.
The main piece I'm missing is a small barebones PC a la the shuttle minis that uses a Pentium M processor. I'd like to be able to pair that up with a hitachi 72000 rpm 2.5 inch drive.
Anyone know where I can find such a thing?
You can probably find thousands of used laptops that people would be willing to sell for under $100. Just collect those, install Linux, and presto!
For around ~$20 you can buy a nice 400MIPS PowerPC CPU with a FPU or a nice ARM. These run at ~1W. Add $10 of SDRAM and $10 of NAND flash and you have a nice computer core that is low cost and does not need a lot of power. Hence no fan, less battery cheaper charging etc.
Bloatly code and x86 are a terrible combo for a laptop.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Isn't that a mini mac. Just teasing mac people.=P
I know we point out that a story is a dupe all the time...but when the summary blurb states so and it still gets posted???? WTF editors
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Vintage mid-'90s laptops built for MS-Windows 95 and NT can be had for under $100. Linux and a lightweight desktop should run fine on them, if you can find appropriate device drivers.
A scan of e-bay found this working thisIBM Thinkpad 390X 4.1G 24x wifi 56k win98 NIC 400mhz for just under $100, plus $25 shipping. 400 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 4.1 GB HD, and Windows 98, and 802.11b on a 13.3" screen isn't a bad deal for $100. About 3-4 years ago a desktop with this on it and a 15" screen would run over $400, i.e. in the range of a "low/medium end" PC.
Other recent auctions included other working sub-$100 notebooks from late in the last century.
Note - you may have to log into e-bay to see the now-completed auction listing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I realize this, but if someone is asking to do something this simple, I would assume they are not well versed with Recursion, or a Binary search. If the person had gone over binary searches in class, he/she would have mentioned thats what they were doing. I assumed the person didnt know recursion, so decided to just do an iterative search instead. I do agree that a binary search would be signifigantly (hugely) more efficient.
DLPs just reflect the image, you still need a light source, optics, and a screen to project it on. If you want a color image you also need to cycle the light(RGB).
Getting all that into a laptop will be very hard, and I would think it would probably be easy to mess up. These laptops need to be very resiliant, I think they are probably just going to have to spring for some LCD panels and work that extra cost in somewhere, maybe by getting rid of the battery. LCD panels are supposed to start falling in price soon.
Has anyone seen a laptop with a rear projection screen before?