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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.
It takes a network of laptops to raise a child.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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.
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 $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
+keyboard.
bam - sub 100$ computer.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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!
Well, they're going for $20 for the display, and it'll be a rear-projection screen.
I think that if they use ARM or maybe even Geode x86 CPUs, they can get it under $100. $20 display, $10-20 CPU, $10-20 RAM, $10-20 flash memory (or HDD), which leaves $20-50 for the case, keyboard, and mouse.
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.
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.
What about that?
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
Sure, picture tube built in. Very portable, only 8 kilograms, and a couple of cubic feet in size. That makes sense.
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.
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!
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
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
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).
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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...
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.
Lite-Brite.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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....
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?
....it's called a PDA.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
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