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Intel Calls $100 Laptops Undesired Gadgets
dolphinlover writes "Craig Barrett, Intel Corporation chairman believes that the $100 laptop computers to be manufactured by the MIT media lab run by Nicholas Negroponte beginning in early 2006 are merely 'gadgets', making them unattractive to consumers who will be disappointed by their 'limited range of programs'." From the article: "Negroponte said at their launch in November the new machines would be sold to governments for schoolchildren at $100 a device but the general public would have to pay around $200 -- still much cheaper than the machines using Intel's chips. But Barrett said similar schemes in the past elsewhere in the world had failed and users would not be satisfied with the new machine's limited range of programs."
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
WiFi-enabled
"USB ports galore".
Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.
This signature is typed manually.
Well 800x600 is just fine for a lot of things...
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... put 32 or 64 shades of gray or even less, and make it cheap, so if i drop it in the server room and it breaks I do not have to pay $500 for a damn color LCD ...
.. OK my ipod has 4 :) but I also remember running linux in 94 on some beatup 386 with like 12megs of ram or so and a 650meg hdd (maybe even smaller) can't remember :)
in fact 3 years ago I had a Vaio (I hav it now but it is dead) with that resolution, and I was carrying it to do work, and everywhere
It was perfectly OK to have files with me, to run office aps, and a browser, and to connect to cisco and other appliances and run a term on it
it was also fairly smaller than my current toshiba, that I am not carrying anymore as i consider it too big, too bloat, too expensive, to throw on a car seat and then drive on dirt roads and alike
Actually I would be happy if someone sold a 800x600 laptop, with a small screen and I top it with what some might agree with :
I do not need a color screen
1GB of flash is also killer anough for a lot of things
"Why is it to get rotten egged off the podium in this world, all you have to do is volunteer to help?"
Amen to that. As someone who works full time in a place that has been designated by the UN as a Least Developed Country, I have to say that this absurd, simplistic logic which decrees that food shortages can only be addressed by food makes me grind my teeth with frustration.
Scenario: A child has a boil in his nostril that's gone septic and is spreading into his sinuses and putting pressure on the brain, there are no doctors within 80 miles. How does the poorly trained but well-intentioned nurse get a proper diagnosis, and if necessary the authorisation to fly the child to the district hospital if communications and resource materials are not available?
Answer: She doesn't, and the child dies. From a boil. This really happened; that child was the eldest boy of a friend of mine.
The country where I work is limited in its development for three major reasons: Education, Health and Infrastructure. In terms of communications, there are some villages here that have waited for over 23 years to get phone service. The national telecom infrastructure relies on microwave transmission equipment so old that replacement parts are no longer available. Introducing simple devices capable of creating ad hoc mesh networks automatically would be an absolute godsend.
Just in case anyone has missed the message here: Improved communications, through low-cost devices such as this, save lives. They do so more effectively than any bag of flour or rice could do.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.