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Laptop Makers Skeptical of $100 Laptop Schedule
coolgadget wrote to mention an article at DigitalTimes reporting that the production schedule MIT has laid out for the $100 laptop may be unrealistic. From the article: "Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and Inventec, which are reportedly bidding to manufacture the world's cheapest notebook distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives, consider that meeting the volume shipment schedule for the US$100 notebook would be 'unlikely' given the current technical hurdles that need to be overcome ... The OLPC project will need huge support from governments to solve a variety of software and hardware problems including handwriting recognition, translation, and panel issues, all under a low-cost production budget, Taiwan notebook makers stated. Related components for the low-cost notebooks are still in the design stage, indicated the makers, noting that a 7.5-inch display sample for the US$100 model could be released by January of next year at the soonest." We've previously discussed this story.
This is the notebook that partially came apart while Annan was demonstrating it at the U.N.? Probably not quite ready....
http://www.busyweather.com/
Though lack of planning, the $100 laptop is in thousands of small pieces..
Maybe they should have had the Archbishop of Canterbury's brother do the demonstration?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Maybe the folks at MIT Media Lab with all the funding they get from the US government should be concerned with providing laptops to underprivilged children in Appalachia instead?? Of course that won't garner headlines that they so crave.
So what distrabution have they settled on?
and please don't make this the start of a "What distro is better?" flamewar.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
Well, they are trying to integrate WiFi, Bluetooth and all this other stuff. Why? For $100 bucks, I wouldn't expect all the bells and whistles. A keyboard, trackpad (if not a trackball like the oldschool macs), screen, CDROM (not one of those new fandangled DVD-ROMS), and a USB port for thumbdrive access. And besides, $100 is a good price, but even $300 would be lower then most if not all other laptops.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
No, it's Third Post...
I thought we would have learned by now that refusing to index the cost and benefit of items (Alternative Minimum Tax, 401(k) maximum contributions, defined pension plans) is just the wrong way to go.
By the time the $100 laptop takes off, $100 will buy you 4 gallons of milk, 3 loaves of bread, and 5 sticks of butter. And who wants to compute when there's buttery milky bread to injest!
You, insensitive clod, don't have a rigth to live if you have to ask why should be anyone worried about millions of people.
Wasn't it shown again and again that if you provide an open platform to people, you don't really need much more: the 0.1% super-savvy will eventually write the missing drivers/software for the platform.
Why can't they build a $200 machine and subsidize half the cost for the first few years? Even at a $100 subsidy a pop, how much could it possibly cost to outfit the first generation of customers? You could outfit 1 out of 6 people in India for an outlay of $200 million bucks.
The laptop might not be ready in January 2006? Haven't we already learned that if you start basing your actions upon "timetables" then the terrorists have already won?
Seriously though, it's a lofty goal, I honestly wouldn't expect to see this technology real soon, but it's good that someone is working on it.
And to preempt the coming "don't they need food, water, and medicine in the third world more than technology" debate, the answer is yes, the third world could really use those things. Unfortunately, no solution to these problems has been applied through conventional means (read: first world countries dictate "solutions" to the third world). And often the best solutions come out of the countries that live with the problem firsthand - why not give them access to knowledge and technology and see what they can do with it?
why build new laptops when you can refurbish old models for much less?
Why don't people notice that this is all transparently implausible?
They'll have a $100 laptop if they can solve the software, the hardware, the screen, the power, the engineering, and the manufacturing... and it'll be $100 if they can solve all those issues for under $100.
Suckers!
And it might do many kids better.
A loudly-publicized, world-transforming project from the MIT Media Lab turns out to be a lot of hot air? Gee, what were the chances?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Why? As a son to 2 parents who work in the Detroit Public Schools, I can name a million better ways to improve the education of the students other than $100 lap tops. Don't get me wrong, this is a nice gesture and ulimately this is a positive in a lot of different lights, but so wrong in other ways. How about getting regular computers, there are some middle and elementary schools that share a few computers between the hundreds of students, if any at all. And dont even get me started on how my rural area schoolchildren are yet to see a computer until their latter high school years. Again, great thought, but its too ahead of our time.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Because Peapod.com ain't delivering to their locales.
Actually it was the second post made, and only off from being first by less then a minute.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
LMAO, thats second post, not first :P
So manufacturers are not 100% enthusiastic about this idea? Well what a surprise!
If the third world gets $100 laptops using open source software, this will be really bad news for harware manufacturers and the end of the road for many closed source software manufacturers.
If tens of millions of those things go there, they will end up in the developed world as well - and they won't help the bottom lines of the rich companies.
Of course there are difficulties. What do all the trainers with their suits and powerpoint keep telling us? "There are no problems - only oportunities!"
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Never let the person who says it is impossible, stop the person who is actually doing it.
At last the rubber hits the road, and the people charged with actually making this guys dream come true announce that they can't, without a massive infusion of support from the government. Since governments are representative of the general population, this basically boils down to: we need a big fat subsidy, which means: all your taxes are belong to us.
But hey, who's going to complain, that extra USD on your tax form is for a good cause right? I mean, its for the children. Are you going to be greedy?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Would it be marketable in North America?
I for one wouldn't mind a second laptop that's cheaper than many PDA's, even at reduced featurset.
Only real negative I see is the ~7 inch display -- I hope they'd provide external display option, though I don't think it's likely due to cost constraint.
Rational (i.e. non-empirical) arguments for the plausibility of improvement are not sufficient. For example I saw very nice properly randomized study about giving textbooks to African school children. Children with textbooks did no better than children without textbooks. That is to say, textbooks were a waste of money. The failure was ascribed to the textbooks use of English, but who knows if that was really the cause.
On the other hand, I can see a higher chance of positve change by providing laptops for farmers and small businesses -- especially if the laptops provide access to market data, aid management, or foster B2B commerce. Improving the productivity of small farms, factories, and distributors would raise wages and living standards. This has clearly occurred in the developed world although it takes decades for businesses to really change their processes to get the most out of computers. Helping 3rd-world businesses may not have the same level of charitable karma as aiding school children, but it might provide a greater reduction in poverty.
It would be very sad to see this effort fail because of unfounded assumptions about the impact of laptops on school children.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'm curious as to why there seem to be so many manufacturing hurdles before this project. After all(Maybe on a slightly simplistic level), what is it? An LCD screen, input devices, a processor, some flash memory, a power supply and a plastic case to put them all in. Take away the flash memory and input devices and replace them with a DVD drive and what you have starts to look a lot like a portable DVD player, something that's manufactured for prices in the same ballpark as the quoted $100. Would the economies of scale on this product not similarly pull down the hardware price?
Oxford Dictionaries Online
I'm very sure that they can get $100 laptops by next year. I can't wait to get signed up on the waiting list!
Here are the proposed specs:
486sx 25 MHz
2 Gig HD
16 MB RAM
2" Passive Matrix LCD
MS-DOS 3.2
This is turning into one of those misguided-with-the-best-intentions type projects, I can see it coming.
Even in the western world, I can't help but wonder what might come out of the widespread adoption of a $100 notebook computer. Not only would this put computers in the hands of people who might not otherwise have the opportunity, but it would also put them in a lot of places where they're not cost effective right now.
Increased accessibility to communication would be the obvious one, it would become VERY interesting if that played off into productivity and creativity growth as well.
Might even make e-books mainstream.
..don't panic
Anyone who thinks there are software problems has never heard of the Sharp Zaurus or the OPIE distro of Linux. All the problems they mentioned have already been solved. This laptop is rather like a large-screen version of a Sharp Zaurus with an integrated power generator.
As for the $100, that is the final volume price. The earlier models will cost more but will be subsidized by the later, high-volume production. This is normally how manufacturing costs end up in the real world.
The problem-solving costs are irrelevant because all the engineering work is being donated by MIT engineers.
While I partially agree with some comments on the utility of laptops vs. 2 gallons of milk, you have to think past the obvious shortcoming. Sure, third-world children could use a TB vaccine or even extra gallons of milk I suppose, but that doesn't mean that all the money that's invested in the third world should be put solely into medical grants and food aid. Dumping food into poor countries isn't a sustainable plan in the long run. What to me this $100 laptop would really do is open up the world to underprivileged children in a way that they never had access to. Sure, it won't feed them but then again I assume that the $100 laptop is not aimed at the demographic that would sell it for a loaf of bread. What people in the west do not understand is that poverty comes in varying shades. Not all underprivileged children would sell the display screen for bread -- some have access to very basic of neccessities but face a bleak future nonetheless because of the lack of opportunities. I see this laptop as encouraging them to explore and dream beyond their circumstances. If this laptop hooks one kid per thousand, like our first computers did to so many of us, and encourages that kid to stay in school, learn , be better educated and dream beyond his circumstances, then this project will have done more good than dumping $100 worth of bread and milk into his family could ever do. Teach a man to fish...
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
We've previously discussed this story.
If I were the Slashdot editors, for dupe protection sake, I would add this statement at the end of every submission.
Hagrin.com
If you give a man a fish, he'll have food for a day...
The third world does not really need (*) the kind of assistance that the rich countries offer most of the time (food and medicine).
The third world does need:
1. technology (vide my first phrase above)
2. fair trade
Yeah, basically, that's it. And yes, I do live in a 3rd world country. My father comes from a really poor rural area, and both his sons to college, and me an my brother are sort of living the (South) American Dream.
(*) except in the most emergencial cases, of course.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Laptop?! I think they'd get more use out of a llama!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I think the project is just slightly out of focus:
As other posters have vocalized, our students really don't need laptops. Here in California, I've witnessed the pains of introducing computing to our schools. The labs were over-stuffed with cheap machines from Gateway, and there were two or three in every single classroom. The labs were chaotic and full of malware, the library computers weren't even understood by the library staff, the single sysadmin the school hired was seriously overworked and underpaid, and it took all of the district's entire efforts to keep a web server and an exchange server on our domain (all systems were Windows NT/2000/XP).
In this part of the state classroom sizes are a big problem, and in classes with anywhere from 30 to 40 students, the 3-4 computers in each classroom were virtually unused. Talk about a waste of money! When they WERE used, they never helped anyone do actual learning.
Witnessing how computers are misused in lower education have really made me reconsider things like laptop iniatives and whatnot. While I do believe having small, well-managed labs is good for teaching students about computers and various software, they don't belong in more general classes that don't require them.
Where computing really shines is in the home; home computing gives people the knowledge and experience that, to reiterate some form of a cliche, "vital in our day in age." Also, it's not just for students or young people--it's for everyone. I suppose you could argue that laptops in the hands are students equals laptops in the home, but I just think "for education" is just an excuse to get people to spend money on these cheap laptops.
I'd rather see the program distribute computers to low-income families that can't afford them or otherwise wouldn't buy one. They also need food, clothing, work, housing, education, etc...but if those things are met then I suppose computers fall somewhere closely down the list (don't jump on me for being all socialist...I'm just saying that if you're going to waste money on computers, you might first think about whether or not there's something more important to spend it on).
If they're going to spend money on students, they might consider things like better classroom equipment, nice books, and maybe even BETTER PAID TEACHERS. :-)
The OLPC project will need huge support from governments to solve...
Well...right. So, first you pour several millions $$ into the development, and in the end you will be able to produce a 100$ laptop... of course if you forget the (mal)invested millions... Hey, I would be able to build an airplane like this. First I would need you to pay me some 100 million USD for 'development'. Then I sell you an Airbus for 100 bucks....
Lots of penny-pinching croporations would be glad to use those instead of expensive virus-prone employee-issued laptops.
And if snobbish employees would not be caught dead using one of those, well, let them buy their own fancy-pantsy machines at their own expense.
Once these babies actually hit production; I wonder what small percentage will actually get to under-priveleged children in 3rd world countries, due to the majority being snatched away by /. readers?
My tech blog
It's either the 1000 $ shipping fee or the biodegradable components they havent talked about :)
If you'd just looked a little bit deeper into this you'd have seen that they meet and exceed your goals. Please watch the presentation on the site, I know it's over an hour long (and a bit klunky in places) but you'll get a better idea of the path they are taking. And it's a good path.
Or at least what I've done with it.
I was born in a 3rd world country. When I was a teenager, I got a computer. I used it to learn enough math, computer science, and English to get accepted into a western university and subsequently get the f*ck out of that hellhole of a country. Fast forward 6 years or so, I'm now a CS Ph.D. student at another western university and I have no intention whatsoever to go back to the hellhole, where research opportunities are, shall we say, somewhat lacking.
In conclusion, send computers to the 3rd world if you want more immigrants.
who invisions serveral old men smoking cigars in a dark room complaining that they need to make this look more difficult, because when the people find out they can do it no one will pay $2000 - $3000 for a laptop again.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
Don't want to be a nagger, but I told you so!!
If you use outdated things, it might be closely possible, but that would restrict (a lot) what you can do with the laptop.
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken
2. If there is an absolute mandate to help the children in underdeveloped nations, wouldn't food, shelter, clothing and basic education be more suitable areas in which to provide assistance? To lift a line from M*A*S*H* - it is wholly inappropriate to give dessert to a child who hasn't had dinner.
That would be something with like a mini laptop (or extra large PDA?)with a 8" screen, 1Gb flash memory as permanent storage, 1 usb port and 1 PCMCIA slot, for people who really want to add ethernet or wi-fi.
I've seen portable DVD players with the right size and screen quality for this, selling with generic brand name for EUR99... If someone could remove the DVD stuff and replace with the right components, voilá, instant "sub-notebook".
An existing product for underprivileged children. It is about one inch thick and roughly the size of a piece of paper, has a screen in the center, a red (usually) border and two very ergonomic rotational controls at the bottom right and left corners. It has advanced security features and is erased by shaking.
...
I guess no one gives a shit for technical development / opportunity in rural Amerika. Just don't teach any of that dammed Monkey science
I personally like IceWm very much, in fact it manages the firefox window in which I enter this very post.
But IceWm is not a destop environment, it's just a window manager (no problem for me it provides all I need, and fast). Concerning the look of it: you can make it look like whatever you want which is true of almost all contemporary window managers.
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
If I were a spammer, I'd have thousands of new mass-mailing nodes with which to send mail.
If I were a hacker, thousands of different hops to baffle authorities on my wire-transfer scheme.
If I were a virus writer, I'd have that many more infectuous terminals bouncing viruses to a plethora of networks.
If I were a malicious code author, I'd have an army of darkness composed of all your zombified laptops.
Not to mention the amount of support we'd have to give these people when the damned things break. Since most of these people don't even own a car, they have no idea what 'maintenance' is. They'll assume they can use it as a chopping block, doorstop, an object to level a rocking couch, or perhaps just throw it on a pile of old magazines and hope for the best as one of their cats pees on it. The laptop may be $100 or less, but what about that $100 hard drive replacement? Maintaining these machines will be more of a pain than building them. Do you expect people of third-world countries to be perfect computer users? HA! PIBCAK! "Oh, your keyboard won't function? That's $129.99 to repair, but free, under the warranty that just ran out this morning." While we're at it, let's give Corvette keys to chimps. Some would say Chevy drivers ARE chimps...
Bring on the flamebait!
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
It was on the UNDP booth. The thing was made out of balsa wood, with a photo where the LCD display would one day sit. It clearly was nothing more than a mock up.
Or did you really mean ingest?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
that people in third world countries are worth less than Americans, or that any people are worth more than any others? All people are created equal, are they not?
This assumption is one of the greatest evils in the planet--it allows wars, prejudice and the general state of stupidity that exists in the US right now. Jesus would despise most Americans because of it, were he around to notice.
The laptops are needed in other countries more than in Appalachia, so sane people consider the need rather than physical locality.
You, your child or your wife are no more important than any Iraqui solder that died yesterday, it only seems that way to you, and even that is only by luck. If you were in Iraq, you would be willing to murder US citizens to save your own people--you would even think it was right and might even voulenteer to go on a suicide-bomb mission.
This natural tendency to see people as less important the further they are away is something we should always recognize as a biological artifact--a remnant of evolution, like an appendix, that doesn't actually help much and occasionally kills people.
Oops, I didn't read my post through. That's two dollars a day. There really aren't that many people living their entire lives on a grand total of under two dollars. :-)
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Literacy + Health_infrastructure + Government_infrastructure are all aspects of the "technology" thing.
First you learn to wash your hands and drink only clean water,
then you learn to read,
then you learn to think,
then you learn to vote,
then you learn a trade,
then you succeed in life as a society.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
It is not normal for adults or children once weaned to drink milk, and cows mil isn't the easiest to digest, either.
So, 2,000 gallons of milk will be of absolutely no use whatsoever, unless for fertiliser.
There is an organization that is already doing something similar: the Jhai Foundation. They have developed a PC (not a laptop, but still portable), designed by Lee Felsenstein, with no moving parts, that runs on Linux, and can be human-powered, and is based on wireless networking.
They are not as well funded or well known as the Media Lab, but they are already in the field doing it.
Here's more information via Google.
I thought third-world countries usually don't have widespread electrical service. Doesn't this problem make the whole endeavor futile?
I heard about one of these breaking during demonstration, so I'm slightly skeptical, as well. I'm still hopeful, though. This could be a great opportunity for a lot of people who can't afford a thousand-dollar laptop, and I'd really like to see this idea come to fruition. Go-go-gadget-laptop.
i would get laid this weekend but my cargo van is in the shop and im out of chloroform
Being from Mexico and having resided all my life here, I find many comments on 3er world countries somewhat exagerated or lacking facts. I thank you for your "third world citizens are not stupids you know" and although I know Mexico isn't that bad economically when compared to other Latin American or African countries, I would like to comment a little bit about living in a 'third world' country.
We are not working hard all day in 80 hr shifts just to have some beans on the table. That is not happening in any rural or urban area. We do like to learn and aren't very much interested in having someone 'save' us from any hard time we are having. Times aren't that hard here, and you should know that 'third world countries' are just countries that are not as developed as others, but that doesn't mean they are fucked up. Of course an average mexican recevies 5,000 dls a year of salary, and a poor mexican family lives in a shared unfinished house, with not many clothes and drink 40 oz all day. But they eat, have a roo, clothes, and even beer money, that's a very long way from 'striving to find something to eat'. The government here has done hard work on medical services and we have a life expectancy of 76 yrs, which talks kinda' well about our health. We have a very rich culture and large companies from Mexico are known wordwide. Heck, the world's fourth richest person is a mexican! And he has made all his money in telecom companies here and all over Latin America! Telecom!! In Latin America!!! 4th richest!! You see, our technology systems are not as bad as some people may think when they say 'third world countries'.
More technology? we invented de color TV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television)!!
*** I talked about technology and medical because I feel that's what people think is lacking the most in thrid world countries.
Due to the unreliability of electricity in rural areas, the battery can be charged by a built-in hand-crank. I donet know how many other laptops do this.
Food, water, and medicine is usually bought locally but that's with what's after the "warlord tax".
Nice to hear that you've sticked into Fox News or any major American TV channel.
We all know that there are soooo many warlords in developing countries such as India, China, Mosambik, Egypt, Botswana, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, Poland! Thank godness we know these things!
I propose that US Students (elementary,highschool,college), instead of spending $100s on a TI Graphing calc that they instead contribute $100 to programs that benefit developing countries...
US students will actually be forced to learn arithmetic. (When was the last time you saw an US person multiply a 3 digit number by a 2 digit number in their head?)
And developing countries get the support they need to improve themselves.
This is not mean to be offensive... I am also from the US... And it never ceases to amaze me how little math is actually *learned* here compared to what international students can do.
Yes there is a big difference between simple arithmetic and calculus, abstract algebra, etc... But I think even promoting the simple arithmetic could make more students a bit more amenable to studying the higher maths.
Which reminds me of something else... Currently, it is "geeky" to have a big graphing calc and use it all the time... And it is even more geeky to do the simple math in your head... WTF?!?!
Why go through all this development. Why not attempt to RECYCLE all the pc's geeks like us go through every year. 7 inch LCD? Are they crazy ! For the same resolution how about a TV out ? (eg. C64 or ZX Spectrum, come to think of it that would be so hot, tape drives and all, man they could probably afford floppies !) What use does the 3rd world have for a portable computer ? Are they going to be working whilst commuting? Do they have electricity at home? Do they even want to have something that valuable in their home...? Seems to me a bank of reconditioned towers based at a local school or library, with a tech support guy around, hooked up to somekind of broadband would be the most ideal situation. But what would that leave MIT to do ?
So... It's not really going to be a $100 laptop. I mean, whan was the last time any goverment supported project came in on budget? It would be nice, bet real...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
How exactly is a laptop for every child going to help? I went to public schools in the US, and we didn't have much access to computers. My family had a PC, but most of my classmates' families didn't. For one semester in jr. high, we got to use some very old computers (even for the time) to learn to program in BASIC. Then, in high school, I got to take a computer programming class for one year where I learned some basic programming concepts in Pascal, again with very old computers. I never got to use a school-owned word processor or any educational software. But that didn't stop me from getting a good education. You don't need a laptop to learn math, science, history, and to speak and write your language with proper grammar. In college some of my classmates had very limited computer experience, but they managed to learn what they needed to know very quickly in order to get a degree in engineering. By the way, in case you think I'm an old-timer, I graduated high school in 1997.
Now, some guy from MIT has dreamed up an idea in his ivory tower that students in third world countries need laptops while students in the US still have to share old PCs. Laptops won't make up for the lack of well-trained teachers, they won't make up for the lack of emphasis on education by third world parents, and they won't improve the health of the children.
But all of this is moot, because these laptops will never materialize in any form close to what has been described. Not in ten years. Just look at the specs to convince yourself. Each time these $100 laptops are mentioned, the design gets more and more preposterous. It's vaporware designed to grab headlines and secure research grants.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
"So the free market system is bad."
So we were better off when we lived to thirty and ran around half-naked killing antelope with our bear hands? I hope you were being sarcastic, but I couldn't detect any sarcasm.
I can not wait to buy one of these things.
I know they are going to sell them to 3rd world countries...
Well most of the individuals who get these $100 laptops will make far less than $100 a year. So they are given the choice to eat or sell the goverment supplied computer on ebay. As fast as they give them out they will be appearing for sale buy the people who would rather have $100 in food.
I could always use a cheap laptop device computer for long road trips or travel outside the contry. Case in point I just spent some 12+ hours traveling the other day - my work lap top works for at most 2 hours on a full charge = a whole day of lost work. I cheap computer that can be hand cranked to keep the power levels up would be nice.
Maybe IBM and the other laptop makers will copy some of the ideas like hand cranking power supply. Now while looking at porno on the plane for a few hours I can lean over my computer and crank the knob for 5 mintues every now and then!
These manufactures don't care about the end price of the laptop. The MIT lab designed the project with the intent that manufacturers could profitably build them for a reasonable price. The manufacturers aren't saying that it won't happen because they won't make enough money, but because they don't have enough time.
My personal experience is that academics do not fully appreciate the amount of time and work required to make something that works in theory work in the real world. When products are brought to market, it is usually the result of years of planning, design, and development (even in the computer industry). Most academics seem to think that once the concept is developed, most of the work is done, but in reality that is a very small part of the overall process. While the MIT lab has been drumming up political support for the project, they've left most of the real work to the manufacturers they plan to contract to (they've really only designed the concept). Since it is still the bidding stage for all of this work, we are really only at the very beginning of the process. The MIT lab has given an unrealistic estimate of the amount of time the project will take. Manufacturers don't care who they work for, only that they get paid.
...a beowulf cluster of these $100 laptops.
So, with this being an initiative to better educate third world countries and narrow the "digital divide", is there a massive arsenal of educational software available for these things as well? Say at a reasonable price of under a dollar?
If you teach a person to fish and then give them a fishing pole, they will soon be starving without fishing line and a lure.
Cheesy Movie Night
$100 goes further in Sudan than it does in Appalachia.
That's assuming that any of it gets there in the first place.
PS: In the specific case of the Sudan, you might also ponder the question of whether your money ends up in the hands of the murderers [i.e. the Muslims] or the murderees [i.e. the Christians]. But that's probably too fine a point to concern most people, and, as regards the latter category of Sudanese, I suppose it also begs the question of what use your money would be to a corpse.
I just want my OBPD....One Babe Per Dork.
Not to sound xenophobic, but aren't these the countries that this community has been so affraid of w/ regard to cheap labor and outsourcing? I'm not sure I understand someone can argue that one is bad and in the same breath argue the other is good. For tech industry, in particular, does this strike anyone else as a dangerous proposition? Support all these other countries w/ cheap labor pools, ignore your own countries technical talent, which is currently diminishing... Perhaps my math is off but that doesn't seem like a balanced equation.
I'm all for improving people's way of life, but I can't help but think that ultimately there is going to be a greater expense to the US than $100 per laptop (yes, I know the cost per laptop would be born by the local goverments footing the bill and perhaps be subsidized by the UN...but the point is the ultimate cost to the US).
Sorry, I don't believe for a second someone can make a $100 laptop, except in some university geek's pipedream.
Not to say that we don't need cheap access to technology, just that this industry isn't going to make it happen.
Look, most toys with built-in LCD screen cost more then $100, and they have far less features and spec's then what the MIT group. I have yet to see a portable DVD player under $100 worth is weight in salt.
They say that current notebooks are fat, they are going to cut out this excess to make it cheaper. MIT says that most notebooks has features to manage other features that are not needed? Nice marketing spin, but completely meaningless. Business partners are going to gobble up that line, but in reality, any notebook maker is always looking for ways to trim the fat, to ensure that the notebooks are LIGHT, use LESS POWER, so they can RUN LONGER on a battery. Today's notebooks are streamlined and don't contained redundant or superfluous systems. Sure, perhaps the $100 notebook won't use firewire, PCMCIA and a slew of other features, but these features are NOT fat for a full featured laptop.
They also say they will market the laptop in large quantities, like millions. What does Dell do? HP, Compaq, etc? Most PC's are marketed in the millions and we don't see significant discounts on those products? Because the laptop is aimed for poor kids around the world component makers are going to significantly discount their products?
Also, the whole hand generator concept is also garbage. Ever use one of those hand generator radio/flashlight combinations? It takes a lot of effort to get a charge built up. It's not as easy to turn these things as you would think, the gearing makes it stiff in order to get enough magnetic spin to affect the battery. Sure, a radio can last a few hours on a charge, but turn on the flash light and your down to less then 1 hour. A laptop, and I don't care what they make it out of, is going to consume way more power then a radio/flashlight, some poor kid is going to wear their arms off churning this thing long enough to make it useable.
Lastely, where the heck are they going to get Internet access? Many places don't have electricity, let alone phone or internet connectivity? What software is going to run on it? Who is going to make the Swahili version of Linux and OpenOffice?
This whole thing is also based on the premise that poor kids around the world NEED INTERNET ACCESS? I mean, come off it. This is the kind of tripe that University students gobble up. They want to make the world a better place because they haven't had a taste of reality yet, not in the protected cocoons that university and college are. Kids around the world need MEDICINE, FOOD, and FRESH DRINKING water before they need the Internet. Also, there is this assumption that kids around the world need to be highly educated. You can't apply Western society principles to 3rd world problems. Here, you can't make it without a degree or high school education, you can't get a job, and if you can't work you can't afford the high cost of our society. You can't buy land cheaply here and even live off it and become self sufficient without money. There, its a simpler life. The cost of living is very inexpensive and those societies are not career oriented and materialistic. They can live off the land (if its not famine or drought stricken) and can find jobs labouring or other simpler jobs that don't require high education. The only problem is that Western corporations are exploiting these people and imposing Western philosophy in those regions, so many are becoming career oriented and materialistic. Western society is creating an environment of poverty in 3rd world countries by trying to improve the quality of life, which simply drives up the cost of living making it more difficult to live in these areas. There is nothing wrong with not being able to read or understand math or physics, as long as your happy, well fed and contribute to society, which is how
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
am I the only one thinking that there would be a lot of scam/fraud with those laptops
also, let's say your child gets such a laptop, that someone else is willing to buy for $200
You'd sell it right away and say it was stolen or something
It won't, heh.. only people on Slashdot are crazy enough to think that. Although they could sell them on eBay...
They should sell these things as kits! The manufacturers get to save on assembly costs, and people can build their new laptops using only a soldering iron and having the ability to read schematics! If they don't know anything about computers, they would have to learn something to build this, giving them the knowledge to become IT administrators in their hometowns. Amazing!
Several years ago I fleshed out a business case to replace schoolboks with one "e-book" student appliance, similar to the goals of this $100 laptop. Combine many textbooks into one unit, with annual updates to course material, allow for useful tools like email, IM, mp3 audio playback (and possibly video). Tie it in with supplementary teaching materials for video projection and stuff in-class. Plus, the students could do their homework on the thing and have it auto-submitted when they come to school. All units would log in to the school's Wi-Fi network when on campus.
In the end, I decided there were several major hurdles to implementing such an idea. First and foremost is the governmental and political blocks to getting coursework material on various states' approved lists. And of course, there was the technological issues.
I believe the best form-factor is something of a large PDA, essentially a tablet PC. So first we need to develop a large, PDA-like touch-sensitive screen. Then comes the question of battery life. Running in a constantly-networked environment and being used by children, battery life is of utmost importance. Ideally, the thing would have 12-24 hours of battery life form a single charge. Lastly, it would need to be made very rugged. Additional features such as custom colors (like cell phone faceplates) and such would be nice, and make recycling units somewhat easier (if a shell is cracked, replace the shell, not the unit).
Software is easy. You can write software to do anything, and the demands of such a unit are not very high. Many of the intended features (IM, email, 'push' information delivery, e-books) are well-established. It's the hardware end, especially display and battery technology, which needs to advance before the project could happen. I have been waiting for the "e-paper" display tech to mature before I look into it again. e-paper is low-power-consumption, and relatively rugged compared to LCD, so it could possibly solve both major technological hurdles.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
The free market is an excellent motivator for creating ...well, anything really, that makes a profit. As we all know, the free market and capitalism has made all kinds of wonderful toys for us. I'm definetly not complaining about those.
The problem of course is the stuff that the free market does not do so well, namely the bummer stuff that does not make a profit, namely feeding and clothing the poor, protecting the environment and minor things like that.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Are you kidding? Do you have a job? A couple checks from McDonalds can get you a laptop here. I refuse to believe you can't come up with $600-$1000 for a laptop.
I really doubt that they can produce them for $100. Let's take a look at the BOM:
1. 500 MHz CPU w/ mainboard (even some generic Via or clone): $35 (and that sounds low to me)
2. 1 GB Memory (not sure what kind of memory we're talking about here, but 1GB flash costs about $50. In '06 that will drop to $25, but with flash storage doubling or quadrupling every year, who will want just 1GB in '06?): $50 (wear-leveling like Intel's Strataflash)
3. Wifi barebones chipset: $10
4. 1 Megapixel LCD: $35 (for whatever Mr. Negroponte has in mind)
5. 4 USB Ports (attached to motherboard): $0
6. Battery and cool hand crank: $20
7. Linux w/ special development: $0 (assuming their development costs are donated)
Things they didn't mention:
8. Fancy silvery yet rubber enclosure with custom hinge: $15
9. Modular keyboard (to support int'l character sets): $5
10. Touchpad-like device: $5
11. Modem? GSM Modem? Maybe it's integrated with the motherboard?: $0
13. Misc. (power-cord/strap, stylus, manual?, buttons by screen, etc.): $10
14. Assembly: $10 (if they can find a sweatshop to do it somewhere cheap like say Cambodia)
These are pretty low component costs. Maybe they're looking for manufacturers to sell these components at no profit. But who is going to handle the operations, QA, warranties (?), support, software updates/patches rollouts? These things all cost money!
My subtotal costs about $195, and that still seems pretty cheap.
I have a feeling Mr. Negroponte is "throwing it out there" to see what the response will be. Maybe he'll get some donations of materials/time/R&D/etc. Maybe he'll have to pare down the features. In the end the computer that he can build for $100 will be much less than what he's showing us right now.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
This University Prof. is coming out here saying that he's going to basically show that they are inept. I think he's going to have a hard time though. I mean who is this guy anyways? He may be smart. He may be good at designing laptops, but making 100 million laptops at a price less than one third that of the closest mass produced models is quite ambitious. Given that he has no experience doing this, I think he's likely to fail. There is already a trend for cheaper laptops as we speak. Some models are selling at below $400. I believe companies like Dell will release sub $100 laptops before this guy can ship 100 million.
No Sigs!
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Let us look to our own house first - and it's not where it needs to be!
For example I saw very nice properly randomized study about replacing the oil in cars. Cars with new oil ran no better than cars without oil. That is to say, new oil was a waste of money. The failure was ascribed to the fact that the oil used was virgin Italian olive oil, but who knows if that was really the cause.
...ya think?
Ooh, what a shame, he was so close...
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
I stand by my previous comments, tre paragraph.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Is that $50 figure for the flash memory the retail price? Because the manufacturers aren't going to be getting the parts at Best Buy, they'll be making them themselves. And isn't it possible that rather than using flash, they could go entirely old school and use a 1GB hard drive, such that I might have seen on my '92 Acer Aspire? I can't imagine that would be costly, either to sublet or to manufacture.
If you can get a 1GB flash card for $50 on newegg, I'm sure you can get it cheaper if it's wholesale and not flash specific.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to just design a non-modular, solid processor, board and memory? I don't know much tech so I wouldn't know, but it seems that mass-producing most of the guts would both make it cheaper and make assembly easier.
You're right that your or I would have a hell of a time putting it together from storebought parts for $100, but manufacturing parts specific for the price and getting the materials wholesale? I'd be astonished if you couldn't.
If the project targets the under-priviledged segment of the developed world, the existing players (Dell, Apple, Intel, AMD etc) won't be too happy about that.
We may argue that the unfortunately kids cannot afford to buy a new computer at this moment anyway. But, it is actually difficult to draw a line to say, who can and who can't. It is actually a difficult decision to make... Say, the cheap laptop is only available for the poor kids. The labelling effect will be very bad. If the cheap laptop is available for every one at say $150, but free for the kids in families receiving social benefit, then the plan will effectively knock out the whole home computer market....
The $100 laptop was conceived based on the following assumptions.
1) Enough information can save this world and cure all ills
2) Information is not available in the third-world
3) The poor can tap into this information easily as long as they have a computer and a net connection.
I question the validity of these assumptions.
I think every age has its "High Priests". During the dark ages, it was the priests from the many religions on the world who were the high priests. They held sway and had complete control over the people and influenced their every decision and way of life. They were above question and everything they said was accepted as the Truth. The priests said that everything in the world could be cured if the people adopt the 'right' religion, and use the 'right' holy oils. It didn't matter that you were dying of smallpox, but if you said the right chants and use the right oil, you will be 'saved'.
Now we live in the Information Age - now the high priests are the scientists and the evangelists are the telecommunication companies, IT companies and the IT professionals. Now the latest 'cure' being preached is Information. You can't have enough Information - all Information is good and Information is going to change this world and cure all its problems, the poor are going to be liberated, the sick are going to be healed, the lame will walk, the blind will see, and mankind is going to freed from all bondages. We need to spread the Information across the world as fast as we can - and wirelessly to reach even remote areas. Then we must have people who can access this information - as cheaply as possible, since we want ALL to benefit from having this Information; so like the Gideon's Bible, we have the $100 laptop.
But the truth is information of all kinds and types is already available in most of the 3rd World. People are using cellphones; magazines are available; second-hand / cheap books are easily available for next to nothing; Internet Cafes are all over the place and one can browse for an hour for something like 15 cents, and cheap second hand computers many of which will be more capable and cheaper than this $100 laptop are available. But the people are continuing to be poor, and in some cases, they are actually getting poorer.
I live and work in the 3rd world and it has been my experience that the 3rd world remains that way because those in power benefit from keeping it that way - cheap domestic and industrial labour is available only if the poor are around. Most of the poor ALREADY know that bad water causes disease, they ALREADY know that they shouldn't be living over a sewer, but what options are open to them?
The poor already know that they must get to the doctor and get that infected open wound / tuberculosis / tumour treated before it gets worse and needs amputation / major surgery / expensive treatment; but if they go to the doctor, they will lose that day's wage and they will also have to pay the doctor, so they will wait it out to see if the wound will heal by itself.
So it appears that it is not information which can liberate people - systems must change to allow these people to get out of the grinding poverty and most importantly there must be political will to affect this change.
Ha ha ha
"The first generation machine will be based on a 500MHz processor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which is one of the project's main backers, and will have 256MB of main memory, 1GB of flash memory in place of a hard-disk drive and a wireless LAN connection,"
And you contacted Advanced for a quote on 6 million units (see above) in order tp prove MIT wrong? If not why not?
wouldnt it be a better idea to provide developing countries with FOOD and WATER and MEDICINE and then give them cheap $100 laptops? After all, some of them dont even have electricity, let alone running water.