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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....
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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!
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!
Well firstly they aren't providing laptops to third world countries. They are merely designing and outsourcing the production of a laptop such that it is cheap enough to be bought in bulk at $100 a time by third world governments. I assume that, should the US government consider it necessary to provide a large number of its citizens with laptops, they would also be able to purchase them at $100 a time, if they filed a sufficiently large order.
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...
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.
Posts like this worry me (wory me about the poster); it signals a deep lack of appreciation for how important information is to changing lives and conditions. Have you never had a physical symptom which you looked up on the internet to figure out how worried you should be. Maybe even information like, hmmm diahrea and general wasting away. Might be cholera, BOIL THE WATER you drink. How about when you needed help or information? Ever found it through a well placed email? There is nothing to say that medical services AND laptops cannot be provided to the same people. In fact it is MORE likely that appropriate medical services will find its way there if the people who need it have access to communication devices more advanced than bongo drums.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
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.
Because if you pay for medical care you get medical care. But if you pay for information, you get everything.
People in third-world countries aren't idiots, you know. In fact, there's a good chance that they're smarter than you are; they're certainly going to be better at exploiting opportunities, because they have to in order to survive. And if you ask them what they want, then you'll find that the vast majority of the time is that once they've reached basic subsistence, then what they really want is education and communication. They don't want people to do things for them. They want to learn how to do things for themselves.
I don't entire agree that laptops are the best way of doing it, but setting up a basic IT infrastructure is an entirely logical step in the right direction. Take a look at the way mass access to the 'net has changed the western world. Now imagine what that could do for a people who were actually focused on achievement and getting things done, rather than the mental masturbation that we're so keen on.
Would these $100 laptops help? Well, perhaps. A standardised platform with automatic mesh networking that can do store-and-forward email and low-power applications could be extremely useful, but first you'd have to build enough of them to get the infrastructure in place and enough of them in use to build momentum and acceptance. They're the kind of thing that would only be useful if everyone had one --- this is what killed the Cybiko, for example.
(Incidentally, I would buy one --- a simple, portable, useful computer that I don't have to worry too much about breaking would be fantastically useful for me. Particularly if it was an open platform!)
Are there any actual locals here who want to comment?
I believe the idea is to make this laptop available to developed countries for about $200 to help subsidize the $100 to under developed and developing counties. I like that idea and would buy one just to help out.
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wouldn't it be more useful to provide certain other things to third world countries, such as medical care ?
These laptops might pay for themselves by reducing the costs of medical care. When people have more information, they are likely to notice and seek treatment for a serious condition sooner than otherwise; to take your example of tuberculosis, providing a laptop and internet connection to a remote village could easily make the difference between the entire village being infected and only one person suffering (and being quarantined until medical help can arrive).
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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.
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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.
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This isn't insightful.
I can refer to cliches: teach a man to fish, etc.
providing medical care places third worlders in a subordinate position, forever dependant on first world benevolence, or worse, disguised self-interest. Also, providing meds is bullshit because they have to workaround patent laws. Brazil announced that they would violate american patent law to produce AIDS meds and the US threatened sanctions, but allowed pharm cos. to offer the drugs at costs still too high for the Brazilian government to subsidize by and large. What the fuck!!?!?! Don't give them drugs - give them temporary patent reprieve and let them make their own.
Giving them information allows them to develop their own stuff... way of life... cultural systems.
so it isn't more useful to give them some pills. It's way more useful to give them the means to make their own.
This will be infrastructure intensive: computers and connections and education. Education and information self-empowers people.
also... from another standpoint.... projects like this can actually help the US economy (if the books can be sold to governments for a profit or for controlling interest in natural resources going forward, etc.) whereas giving meds is terminator thinking. Give meds and then what?
However flawed this project might be - it's smart people taking risks and thinking progressively. I'll always applaud that.
un burrito me trampeó.
Probably nothing will.
But information from the web will teach about hygiene and disease prevention and first aid, and will allow distance learning that will train nurses and doctors, and will allow those nurses and doctors to do a lot of work at a distance, which will allow them to do more work and at the same time train more medical workers, and instead of saving one life you end up helping to bootstrap improved health for the entire country.
I'd dispute that... Have you ever tried to draw a Chinese character? Basic day-to-day use characters are about 1000, and English has 26 characters. The Chinese has used touch-pad for Chinese character hand-writing for YEARS (the same software can also do English/Numeric/Symbols/Japanese/Korean). I've owned one for 5 years+. Have you seen those business card scanner?
I give to third-world causes for several reasons:
1) More bang for the buck - $100 goes further in Sudan than it does in Appalachia.
2) Need. People in Sudan face war, Aids, typhoid, and rape. Appalachians are born into the easiet country in the world to live, so I tend to take a dim view of people that don't seize the oppertunity. 80% of world would switch places with the Appalachians and count themselves blessed.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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.