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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."
i wonder if powerhungry processors and the electric generators necessary to power them are the actual root of global warming.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Intel wouldn't make a hitch if it wouldn't feel at least a bit threatened by this gadget. So this might be good news for MIT people.
Intel is just afraid that people will come to realise that you dont need a $500+ processor to surf the web, and you can get by just fine with 4 year old technology.
$200 for a laptop that I could slip into my backpack on a camping trip and not worry about battery life since I can hand crank it? Put me down for one. It would be perfect for logging camping trips, vacation abroad, ebooks on a plane, etc etc. So what if it's not the most powerfull thing in the world. Open source and the very nature of the product SCREAM oodles of programs and potential. I'm reminded why I haven't found myself removing the shrinkwrap from an intel box lately.
No one will buy an iPod,
maybe 4 people in the USA would want a personal computer,
telephones have no practical use for business,
japanese cars are no threat to American Automotive manufacturers.
Intel is giving a fair and unbiased opinion.
I live in the USA, and I would love to replace my
$3,000 laptop upgrade with a $100 wind up, internet enabled gadget.
Slashdot, Google, Email, Notepad and calculator - good enough.
Go-Go Gadget Windup Laptop!
:-)
On a serious note, he's Greek in origin - and Negropont (or Euboea) is one of the bigger islands around the Greek archipelago. It was called that by the Venetians after the bridge which connected them with mainland Greece.
I think the term, "negro" is common around that area - there is also a place in the Balkans called Montenegro.
The fact that this project contains so many underdogs just might make it succeed. Their egos won't make it fall apart. Except for the MIT staff, almost every company involved can be replaced with someone bigger at any minute. AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat. They've all got bigger counter parts. I think it really pisses off the bigger companies that these smaller companies had more insight than them. When they realized how big this thing is going to be, it was too late.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
That is what you say. However, there was an mpeg of him saying it readily available from most OS/2 BBSes. I am sure someone has a copy.
Don't forget, when he said that, no one, not even Bill, could afford 640k. Early PCs shipped with 64k.
Before the PC, we bought computers with 4k! (Yeah, OK, that was words, because bytes were not invented, so 8K really.) I dont mean home computers, I mean machines like the PDP8, DG Nova, TI 990, HP 1000 and their many competitors. Really - the standard programming environment was "4k Fortran". AND the software that ran on those machines could PAY FOR THE MACHINE IN A WEEK!
Slightly later than the above senario (approx 1980), My mother (also a programmer) bought a house with 8 bedrooms in Islington (Where Tony Blair lives) for the same money my employers paid for a PDP11/60 with 1/2 MB of RAM, and two 40MB disk drives. (About the same power as a 386, but still able to support 12 users well.)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
WiFi-enabled "USB ports galore". 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.
Christ! And Intel is calling it an underpowered "gadget" capable of a "limited range of programs"? Someone is smoking crack!
I set up a family member with an old hand-me-down system...
No WiFi, just a dialup modem.
Zero USB ports.
350 MHz
0.125 GB (128 MB)
Capable of a megapixel, but set at a default of 0.5 megapixel (800x600) to keep all of the fonts and icons larger.
Sure it's an "old klunker", but for your average non-geek it's more than powerful enough for personal and even business use. It sounds like these $100 units plenty capable, and a stunning bargain at the price.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Look in the screenshots on their page of that green laptop. From the bottom left of the key board to the space bar: Fn, Ctl, Alt, Windows Logo?!? I thought these were running Red Hat or something. http://laptop.media.mit.edu/images/laptop-front.jp g
So will I. Actually, I'll buy four. As a father of four kids of different age ranges, this sounds ideal. Fast enough to surf and IM (which is what my kids do mostly anyway) and cheap enough that I can get four at the price of one mid range Dell or custom built machine. And it runs linux so there are fewer security issues to deal with.
Barrett is missing a huge secondary audience. Third world kids can use them. And American middle class parents can get a cheap laptop for each of their kids. Sign me up.
This is not designed for that purpose - this is primarily designed as an educational tool to help kids learn, as a constructionist tool.
That it can also be used for other purposes is secondary.
I'm not a seer who can tell you what this can bring to the table, but how about giving it a chance and seeing what it does?
But then again, this place is full of arm-chair critics who would much rather criticize a tool without knowing what it's for rather than do something proactive.
As another poster remarked, MIT would be better off not doing anything, and instead, they're getting shit for doing something. And people wonder what's wrong with the world.
*shakes head*
A hint: either let others do what they can and help them, or do something yourself. Not doing either and putting down those that are, is a pointless exercise, and does nothing more than inflate your ego.
As your story left a lump in my throat, I recalled other stories from other places. In fact, every time I see a documentary on underdeveloped countries, or read about humanitarian efforts in foreign lands, these same factors come up again and again. Even amongst the ghettos and wastes of America (and I've waded in them hip-deep!), you have the same problem: you could literally go down skid row handing out hundred dollar bills - most of them would go on a drinking binge and the rest would blow it on lottery tickets. Both routes lead back to skid row. It isn't the lack of necessities that's the problem - that's just a symptom. The problem is that the US condones most of it's citizens' growing up as ignorant savages.
Where you are, I bet a mere book is a real treasure. Well, they're banned and burned, here. I bet a scholar is someone to be looked up to where you are. Not here; here, we're "geeks" and "nerds" and "literary faggots". With any luck, if these efforts do what they're supposed to do, the opportunity to join the 21st century will at last be placed in your people's hands.
I'm sure they will be eager to learn. Not here; instead a cursory reading of my fellow American's postings on Slashdot discovers a litany in praise of ignorance: "It's too difficult." "I'll just spend my money and pay somebody else to do it for me." "Why don't you like Bill Gates, are you a hippie communist terrorist?" and the resounding cry that roars from the mob above it all: "I'M TOO BUSY TO LEARN!!!" You know what they're too busy doing, don't you? Earning money working multiple jobs. So they can pay more money to other people to have them do things for them. Because they're too busy to learn how to do it themselves. But what happens when *nobody* knows *anything*? Money is a poor substitute for brains.
The scary part to me is, your country is heading where we are, while ours is heading where yours is! If so, I am almost fed up enough with this one to think, perhaps, that both nations shall get what they deserve.
Cell phones have to be fed serious m.o.n.e.y. every time they transmit or recieve.
... They will be less isolated and less left out.
You basically become a cash cow to your service provider. Which, in less affluent and remote locations, if you're not 'elite' enough, means virtual serfdom. With grace service and all.
These laptops, if they live up to the hype; enable, liberate, and instruct.
Dozens of Libraries suddenly become available. Texts. Lessons. Books. For free.
Not to mention subject tutorial sites. Maths, Geography. Philosophy. Literature. Accounting. Law.
Ok, so movie and song stars will also get a lot of attention. But they'll be able to read a lot about them, when all they had was the radio or TV, a Photo from an old magazine, and a CD or two.
Local landlords are going to have a harder time fleecing their usual flocks with wrong tallies, wrong exchange rates, wrong legislation quotes... etc. And emails / blogs denouncing all this can spring from pratically everywhere at once.
Family ailments will soon be looked up on the Net, adding to information and choice.
With all this, will come better organization among the harder ups. And maybe the slimier middlemen will get cut out.
Some good can come of it. As will some mischief.
But at a better level.