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.
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.
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.
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
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!
...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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
except that cell phones are only cheap/free if you buy them with a two year agreement to speng $35 or more on your cell phone service.
the cell phone i just got for free with my two year cingular service agreement costs almost $250 to buy without a service agreement, if you can at all.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
This system is designed for the chunks of the world that already have electricity and water and phones (at least in civic structures), but where $1200 is a fortune, and where a unit costing $100 that could replace 10+ textbooks costing $10, while providing some added functions, is economically advantageous.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
You miss the point of the parent post. There are many situations where it would be nice to have a new (not refurbished computer from a thrift store--often there because several things are broken) computer that may be slightly underpowered but cheap, even in 1st World countries.
And the point here is that not only would it be useful to make available in sub-Saharan Africa or rural India, but to inner-city youth of Liverpool or Los Angeles.
As well, the point here is that you can make something like this available as a cheap commodity computer (avoid the feature bloat... this is to make a very cheap mass-produced computer), it will drive the price down even more simply due to economies of scale. Electronic components are particularly sensitive to volumes of production.
In addition to simply having these computers around at the check-out stands of your local Wal-Mart, there will be a community of developers and tinkerers that will be using the equipment...many of which could translate and port some of the tools and concepts from more expensive equipment to a very cheap platform like this.
There have been some amazing things done with some of the old 8-bit platforms, like the Comodore 64 and the Apple ][, including TCP/IP stacks and web browsers that would have been unheard of when they were originally put together.
An example of a projct made for "an initiative only making sense in desparate circumstances" that has practical application in 1st World countries, The Freeplay Wind-up Radio is one of the most innovative projects to come up. This is a device that doesn't need an external power source, is very rugged, and works in areas of the world like Rwanda or Congo. It is also sold in the USA and Canada to people who want to keep an emergency radio available during a disaster, so you don't have to constantly check and see if the batteries are working.
How come a laptop computer couldn't be any different?
Or to paraphrase your Bill Maher quote a little differently, why not go from 10 to 11 when we can also help a country go from 0 to 1? It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.
I would beg to differ on that. The distribution costs in developed countries can be surprisingly low. I mean, the distribution costs for moving a ton of bannans from Central America to New York City or Kansas can keep the cost of down to less than a 50 cents a pound.
The distribution infrastruction in many developing countries is almost non-existant, and I think you would find that the labor costs associated with selling items like this computer would be much more in Gambia or Rwanda than it would be in London, Paris, or St. Louis. The distribution costs are not the big issue here, but rather identifing what commodity CPU and memory chips could be had to make this a truly cheap computer.
If you had paid attention to the discussion here, you'd realize that the sub-$100 price is only possible in depressed economies. There's too much financial overhead to sell and manufacture goods in the Western world due to legislation and cultural baggage. Assuming you try to sell that same laptop outside the Third World, you'd likely have to charge $200-$300 for it to cover duties, distribution fees, and legal coverage. At that point, you may as well make a laptop that leverages the local infrastructure, since you are paying for it anyways. One of the points of Negroponte's initiative is to make technology that works with limited infrastructure, technology that can't compete in a market where other products use it.
It sounds stupid, but in some ways, it's easier to help a homeless person in Africa than in the United States, if the homeless people I walk by everyday in Downtown Chicago is any indication. The change I and other others handout can only do so much. I've seen people stay at the same corner for years because the US economy is such that people can get wedged at the bottom, no matter what the various churches and civil groups try to do to unwedge them.
Those who complain about affect & effect on