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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
Next week: Bill Gates denounces its operating system.
Deja vu all over again.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
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.
Maybe Intel is just jealous because to hand-crank power a Pentium 4 laptop would take you a few hours.
I thought the whole point of these laptops was for people in far poorer countries who could not possibly hope to afford anything remotely as good as these anyway... I can hardly see people living in Brazilean shanty-towns saying "this laptop can't hash files fast enough"... Besides I'd buy one just because they sound impossible to destroy and it would be good to take to uni and have kicking around in my bag; I'd only need notepad anyway.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
If they're as good as they sound then I'd buy one. I think laptops today are rather stupid. To slow to do anything demanding power and yet hot, noisy, and power hungry. I'd rather have something light, quiet, with a long battery life that does the basics I need - web, email, im, ssh, light word processing, and light image manipulation. I'll be surprised if the $100 laptop can't handle those and more.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
You can only get finite-sized memory for $200 and therefore the range of programs is limited. For $2000 the amount of memory you get is... oh wait
Grundes!
Of course, Intel is going to say that.
Quite obviously, when you are going to be selling an entire computer at the price of their processors and motherboards, they're going to be pissed.
Sure, I could use a dual athlon if I'm running the latest game or doing some serious number crunching - but for a user in an developing country with limited funds, the choice is definitely beneficial.
Today's computers have a lot of crap that most users don't use - but they have them anyway. The idea of a computer is to be a tool - give those people a simple, straightforward system that a user can truly use in doing their job, and you'd have gone far.
Of course, given the choice, companies like Intel would sell a $500 processor to a poor man who'd have no use for it. But that doesn't mean the idea itself is flawed. If anything, it's a nice way to help bring technology to the needy, and give them a chance.
I've seen the use of some of these technologies (MIT's Michael Best does some work on e-development -- they've some really nice work) - and they truly are helpful. Just because it doesn't help Intel's bottom penny doesn't mean it's useless. Given time, I'm fairly certain that it would be proven so.
$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.
I think someone should change the name "Negroponte" to something more politically correct. Like "Africanamericanponte".
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Good lord, is there always an idiot who has to come up with these comments on all articles related to technology?
Seriously - stop and think for a moment. Technology has definite uses. And it's what's keeping us the edge over one another.
Even if you are a farmer, being able to predict the rains, know about prices, fertilizers and the like helps. In the past (late 70s/80s, I think), in some parts of the south, India had a programme to help fishermen be informed about storms and the like by having a special radio channel that broadcast such information. They gave all the fishermen free transistor radios and told them to use it - and guess what? Several lives were saved, productivity increased and people in general were happy. And some started using their system for other purposes, like listening to alternate channels - because it's enough if there is one fisherman who knew what was going on. A whole system was developed within the community to this end, and everything improved as a whole - people were coordinating the whole process, resulting in much better productivity. It had benefits that the original creators did not even see.
There are always more pressing needs, and the only way you are going to take care of those needs is by making them self sufficient. This is a tool to that end.
You cannot forsee or predict how these tools will be used. But the only way to find out is to develop the tool and see how far it goes. Sure, it might be an absolute failure - but you would have tried, and you would have learnt.
Better than not doing anything, IMHO.
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.
Have you seen MIT Media Lab's work towards helping kids? They've tonnes of toys and other material that are aimed at learning, primarily constructionist in nature.
It has been well proven that constructionist learning goes a long way towards building analytical and engineering related skills - while it may not be the only thing towards that end, it definitely helps.
Now, for a constructionist learning environment, you need tools that they can experiment with. What better way to do this than computers? However, a $2000 computer for a kid is quite obviously not a good idea, so MIT went ahead and developed a cheaper alternative.
Do you know why they can be networked? Because one of the fundamental needs behind education is to have some means of collaboration and team work. Do you know why they have tonnes of USB ports? So that they can be extended upon - a lot of MIT's toys (such as Flow Blocks) are toys that interface with the computers. It's important for folks to be able to add on to these computers, and build new things - whether it's for a farmer in a developing nation using it for weather prediction or whether it's a kid who's adding stuff for class.
Simply because you are ignorant and cannot comprehend the need for this does not mean it's useless. But go ahead, though - am sure you know a whole lot more about educational technology than all those fine folks who've spent years doing this stuff for a living.
(P.S. The same thing applies with printers.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I believe that there's need for maybe 5 inexpensive laptops in the world.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Well, MIT doesn't grow corn. They don't research AIDS cures. Other people are doing these things. MIT is helping the best way MIT can. MIT helps by building you a computer.
Amazing...MIT would be drawing 100% less criticism right now if they'd simply sat on their hands and done *nothing*. Why is it to get rotten egged off the podium in this world, all you have to do is volunteer to help?
The easiest things in the world to be are a critic and a cynic, and yet many of us wear it like it's a badge of honor.
My linux distro all that and an office suite, educational software, graphics editing (vector and raster), desktop publishing, and a great compiler suite that just happens to be the same one as above, except newer. Oh yes, and the source code to every single program on the box. Were the programs "first tier"? Well, some less than others -- but they were at least there to use.
It's truly baffling that you can buy a $2000 Mac and not even end up with a basic word processing program or spreadsheet on it -- especially when that software can be had for free. Owning a Mac is like a owning a Jeep -- pay once to own it, then pay continuously to use it.
Apple's OS has no business anywhere near this project -- it's a gloriously decorated desktop operating system designed for people that can justify paying thousands of dollars for a photo editing program. Id est no one outside of California. I certainly can't afford it -- I had to fink my way to a fully functional desktop box since the missus wouldn't switch from Linux without the equivalent of Open Office, Scribus, The GIMP and Inkscape. The "first tier" commercial equivalents of those programs would have cost me significantly more than the computer itself.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Just a matter of time before some opportunist does thus:
My name is Ebou Nogamono and I need your help in retrieving 14,732 gold coins from Croesus' Vault...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
"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.