Manufacturer Picked For $100 Laptop

IZ Reloaded writes "MIT has picked Taiwanese firm Quanta to manufacture its $100 laptop. From PCWorld: 'Under terms of an agreement with One Laptop Per Child, Quanta will devote engineering resources to develop the $100 notebook design during the first half of the year, according to a statement issued by the group. At the same time, Quanta and the non-profit organization will explore the production of a commercial version of the laptop.'" Apparently they don't think it's ineffectual either.

Comments

So much for the Compy 386 LT

[ackthpt]

The stock for Strongbad Industries, of Strongbadia (Pop: Tire), took a severe hit on the news.

like my good friend, Craig Barrett says, it is no good if our sales no asplode

BTW, how do you spell Barret(t?), even Intel seems to forget.

Re:So much for the Compy 386 LT

[Anonymous Coward]

You call it asplode -- I call it pulling off a goatse.

P.S.: GNAA.us now uses WEB2.0-compliant Rubi On Rayls AJAX DHTML exploits for Firefox to help spread the HIV around the globe.

Re:So much for the Compy 386 LT

[AEton]

It's Barret.

(He's the one with the chaingun.)

Re:So much for the Compy 386 LT

[superid]

In other news, cardboardium alloy futures plummet.

Re:So much for the Compy 386 LT

[woobieman29]

Actually, it's 'Barrett'. Same last name as me. I worked at Intel in Folsom, CA for a while and it was AMAZING how quickly my IT requests were approved.... :-)

"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[eldavojohn]

So perhaps some of you have read Bill Gates' Business at the Speed of Thought . No, not the Necromonicron, I'm not referring to anything written by Satan (just one of his understudies). I have read this book and a very interesting concept that I gathered from it was that a business could be measured by the speed at which information passes through it. This makes sense as the easier it is for employees to gather information or to pass information increases the amount of brainstorming and learning that occurs at your company.

I then speculated that this could also be applied to nations. A country's greatness may be able to be measured by the ease at which its citizens gather information. And if you look at today's countries, this might be true.

Perhaps this initiative to deliver cheap laptops to students of poorer nations will help boost their economy and the rate at which information travels from person to person. After all, isn't internet access the fastest and cheapest form of communicating?

Just something to think about. I wonder if anyone else feels the same way--I know this is a very altruistic view. On top of that, I realize I've just mentioned Bill Gates in a somewhat positive manner. *sprays himself with flame retardent foam and begins to pray*

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[Saven Marek]

I don't know, I think before any of that you could like put resources towards feeding people and providing them with fresh drinking water. Some of the basics to survive before giving some kid out in the middle of the kalahari a laptop and saying "go pedal. information is free"

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[eldavojohn]

Well, you're right about an immediate form of aid. But have you really helped them by giving them this water or food handout?

What better way to free a people then to allow them the means to learn how to grow the food or purify the water? What I'm trying to say is that teaching someone how to help themselves is worth more than you helping them along their entire lives.

That's why I like this laptop idea so much. It's not a temporary bandaid with a few truckloads of food. It's a possible permanent fix for people in need if it is done correctly and used by the people.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not the Necromonicron, I'm not referring to anything written by Satan (just one of his understudies).

The "Necromonicron"? Isn't that the UNIX daemon written by the Jamaican Satan?

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[quanticle]

The whole problem I've seen with this "one laptop per child" initiative is an inadequate focus on infrastructure. Sure, your laptop won't need a power cord due to its crank handle. But how are you going to get on the internet? In my experience, having a computer is increasingly irrelevant if that computer does not enhance your ability to obtain and share information.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[AKAImBatman]

I have read this book and a very interesting concept that I gathered from it was that a business could be measured by the speed at which information passes through it.

That sounds like a typical Bill Gates idea.

Q: What happens when you have a lack of organization in a company?
A: A lot more communication occurs as everyone throws around questions about "who knows this" or "who is responsible for this" and "I *think* that ABC is true, but I'm not sure."

A well oiled company should only need a minimum of information exchange. So as metrics go, information flow is a pretty poor one.

Same thing goes for nations. What happens when the infrastructure is poorly managed? You get a lot more emergencies, and overtax the resources available.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[DogDude]

What better way to free a people then to allow them the means to learn how to grow the food or purify the water? What I'm trying to say is that teaching someone how to help themselves is worth more than you helping them along their entire lives.

Any idea as to the literacy rates in these areas? Somehow, I find it absolutely absurd that a person who lives in the bush somewhere in Central Africa is going to Google "manual water purification systems", whip out a credit card, and have one sent to them from Amazon. Or potentially find a web page written by another bushman describing the best way to skin a wildebeest.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[jcostantino]

I don't know if it's in the final design but I believe there is supposed to be a radio inside that functions with others as a grid/repeater.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[quanticle]

A well oiled company should only need a minimum of information exchange. So as metrics go, information flow is a pretty poor one.

I respectfully disagree. Information sharing is what allows one part of the company to see what the other part is doing and adjust accordingly, with a minimum of fuss, thus producing your "well-oiled machine" analogy. Without wide data paths between groups, teams don't know what other other teams are doing and either work to cross purposes, or make incorrect assumptions that lead to product failure.

A prime example of this was the failed Mars Climate Orbiter project. The contractor (Lockheed Martin?) assumed that certain data was being received in standard units. NASA, however, assumed that all data would handled in metric units. The result: the probe burned up in the atmosphere, after failing to slow itself properly. If the teams from NASA and the contractor had communicated more often, it would have been easier to weed out these incorrect assumptions.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[eldavojohn]

Or potentially find a web page written by another bushman describing the best way to skin a wildebeest.

I don't really know a decent way to deal with racist/ignorant comments. I guess I'll start by saying that people are extremely resourceful regardless of their nationality. I'll also bet that these "bushmen" you speak of know (on average) more languages than Americans.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[eldavojohn]

All I can say is that WANs grow larger everyday. Right now, there are certain cities that offer city-wide network connections.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[1u3hr]

Some of the basics to survive before giving some kid out in the middle of the kalahari a laptop and saying "go pedal. information is free".

They're not going to the Kalahari. You're talking about the "Fourth World". The laptops are targetted to the "Third World", not so desperately poor, places like Thailand. The Media Lab knows about computers, they can't help with providing fresh water.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[DogDude]

How is this racist? What in the hell are you talking about?

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[eldavojohn]

This is mentioned in other posts, but not all poor nations are "bushmen and widebeests." Generalizing the situation into "bushmen" trying to communicate with other "bushmen" is a bit narrow minded.

I have a firm belief that anyone can rise above their initial malfortune in life. If these laptops are given to "bushmen", I'm sure they could come with a built-in translation lookup program so they could begin to learn an additional language to suit their desire to learn.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[jmilne]

But how are you going to get on the internet? In my experience, having a computer is increasingly irrelevant if that computer does not enhance your ability to obtain and share information.

You're absolutely right. I know that my computer was just sitting around, completely useless, until I was finally able to connect to the Internet in 1994. Prior to that, it was a very expensive paperweight for two years.

The Internet isn't everything. There's plenty of useful things a computer can accomplish without having to talk to other computers. Which, actually, these laptops can do. A child's laptop will be able to communicate with another laptop in their village, even without a connection to the Internet. The goal isn't to get more people hooked up to AIM, or browsing web pages. It's to provide a tool for education. Have a teacher pop in a CD with some form of documentation, and let all the kids be able to view it on their own computer. Take it home, and still read it. Work on it. Figure it out. Collaborate with others. Give a man a fishing pole kinda stuff.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[DogDude]

This is mentioned in other posts, but not all poor nations are "bushmen and widebeests." Generalizing the situation into "bushmen" trying to communicate with other "bushmen" is a bit narrow minded.

Ok, then if helping the poorest people of the world isn't the point of the program, then who in the hell is it supposed to help? I don't see any plans to ship these $100 laptops to urban kids in the US in inner cities that could actually use them. The poorest people in the world don't have water and food. My guess is that there are many millions of people on the planet who have never even seen a computer. How is giving them a cheap laptop supposed to help them, exactly? Are people working in India to break down giant cargo ships supposed to teach themselves how to program? Are diamond miners supposed to know what in the hell wi-fi is? This whole idea is so absolutely ridiculous that I don't even know where to start. The organizers are so completely out of touch with reality that it borders on insulting.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[Hognoxious]

you can plough a field with a $100 laptop

Even if you could, some warlord would come along and steal all your crops. And then kill.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[AKAImBatman]

Information sharing is what allows one part of the company to see what the other part is doing and adjust accordingly, with a minimum of fuss, thus producing your "well-oiled machine" analogy.

Agreed.

Without wide data paths between groups, teams don't know what other other teams are doing and either work to cross purposes, or make incorrect assumptions that lead to product failure.

I'm certainly not going to argue that wide data paths are important. However, the amount of information they carry is not indicitive of their importance or performance. Take Atari as an example. Here was a company generating TONS of data on schematics, games, technology, pizza restaurants, mind reading devices (I'm not making this stuff up), holographics, and billions of other things that were completely unrelated to their business. Atari was in trouble for a long time before they finally folded in a reverse merger. If you use the formula that Health == Information Quantity, then Atari should have been the healthiest company in the history of mankind.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Apple. In the days of Mac development, Information did NOT flow. At all. In fact, information was kept to the minimum necessary to do the job. They didn't generate tons of documents, prototypes, interdepartment memos, or millions of other things that would be considered Information creation and flow. Yet the Mac was extremely successful. In part, its success was because information flow was tightly controlled. It flowed as it needed, but only as it was needed.

To create a parallel with computers, the slowest part of any distributed system is always the communications channels. As a result, you always get a bigger bang for your buck if you reduce the amount of information flowing through the pipes. That's why SETI@Home or the Distributed Key Cracking Contest both download the necessary data to you once, then make as much use of your machine before turning over the data. Imagine if every computation was exchanged over the network!

The contractor (Lockheed Martin?) assumed that certain data was being received in standard units. NASA, however, assumed that all data would handled in metric units. The result: the probe burned up in the atmosphere, after failing to slow itself properly. If the teams from NASA and the contractor had communicated more often, it would have been easier to weed out these incorrect assumptions.

Your own example betrays you. The problem was not the quantity of communication. There's no guarantee that more open lines wouldn't have meant more confusion and bickering. (In fact, that's a far more likely outcome.) What was needed was more precise communication that covered issues like this in detail. That's a matter for engineering planning and testing. Throwing more communications bandwidth at it wouldn't have solved the problem any more than throwing 100 Chevettes at a quarry would help transport 30 tons of rock.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[jwink]

You are absolutely correct - a laptop with a web-browser does you little or no good if you can't actually reach the web. I do wonder, though, if this effort will encourage other efforts. I heard a story on NPR last night about someone who took the time to get free, wireless broadband to the community where he grew up rural West Virginia (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor yId=5053488).

It was an interesting story, especially when they explain how little it cost to set up or run. Is it likely this kind of thing will occur in the countries where these laptops will be distributed? Probably not as likely, but after hearing this, it seems possible to me. It would still need someone to champion the effort, like Negroponte is for the laptops.

My opinion is still that giving these countries access to information is a step in the right direction. The question still remains with access...

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[smoker2]

I then speculated that this could also be applied to nations. A country's greatness may be able to be measured by the ease at which its citizens gather information. And if you look at today's countries, this might be true.

Perhaps this initiative to deliver cheap laptops to students of poorer nations will help boost their economy and the rate at which information travels from person to person. After all, isn't internet access the fastest and cheapest form of communicating?

This reminded me of a report I saw on the BBC about micro loans in India being used to buy mbile phones, which the buyer then charges out on a per call basis to other people. The best I could do with google on the subject was this.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[drinkypoo]

While you certainly make a salient point, the first step to learning is to provide materials to learn with. Textbooks cost around the same price as this computer! For the price of a textbook, you can give people the world.

My guess is that there are many millions of people on the planet who have never even seen a computer.

Yeah, and there's lots of people who've never seen a book, either. Are you suggesting they not try to learn to read one?

Are people working in India to break down giant cargo ships supposed to teach themselves how to program? Are diamond miners supposed to know what in the hell wi-fi is?

Yes, and no, in that order. Granted, not all of them will be programmers, but some of them may go that way. I more wanted to address the second question above; why the hell would they need to know what wi-fi is? They go to a hotspot, it finds the network, gets an address via DHCP, and works. Do you have to know how a four-stroke gasoline engine works to drive a honda? Do you have to know how to build logic components to post to slashdot?

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[Hognoxious]

Without wide data paths between groups, teams don't know what other other teams are doing

Never mind the quality - feel the width? I prefer quality over quantity, myself.

There's a difference between access to information you need, and information flow just for the sake of it. Most of the flow is irrelevant to most of the people it flows over. The examples given by the grandparent are that - noise, not signal.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[drinkypoo]

Brilliant! you can plough a field with a $100 laptop.

Maybe you can't plough a field with it, but you can learn something about crop rotation, so that maybe you can avoid completely depleting what little good soil you have to work with, so that it lasts more than few years.

And now, on a lighter note:

KABINDA, ZAIRE--In a move IBM offices are hailing as a major step in the company's ongoing worldwide telecommunications revolution, M'wana Ndeti, a member of Zaire's Bantu tribe, used an IBM global uplink network modem yesterday to crush a nut.

Ndeti, who spent 20 minutes trying to open the nut by hand, easily cracked it open by smashing it repeatedly with the powerful modem.

"I could not crush the nut by myself," said the 47-year-old Ndeti, who added the savory nut to a thick, peanut-based soup minutes later. "With IBM's help, I was able to break it." Ndeti discovered the nut-breaking, 28.8 V.34 modem yesterday, when IBM was shooting a commercial in his southwestern Zaire village. During a break in shooting, which shows African villagers eagerly teleconferencing via computer with Japanese schoolchildren, Ndeti snuck onto the set and took the modem, which he believed would serve well as a "smashing" utensil.

IBM officials were not surprised the longtime computer giant was able to provide Ndeti with practical solutions to his everyday problems. "Our telecommunications systems offer people all over the world global networking solutions that fit their specific needs," said Herbert Ross, IBM's director of marketing. "Whether you're a nun cloistered in an Italian abbey or an Aborigine in Australia's Great Desert, IBM has the ideas to get you where you want to go today."

According to Ndeti, of the modem's many powerful features, most impressive was its hard plastic casing, which easily sustained several minutes of vigorous pounding against a large stone. "I put the nut on a rock, and I hit it with the modem," Ndeti said. "The modem did not break. It is a good modem."

Ndeti was so impressed with the modem that he purchased a new, state-of- the-art IBM workstation, complete with a PowerPC 601 microprocessor, a quad-speed internal CD-ROM drive and three 16-bit Ethernet networking connectors. The tribesman has already made good use of the computer system, fashioning a gazelle trap out of its wires, a boat anchor out of the monitor and a crude but effective weapon from its mouse.

"This is a good computer," said Ndeti, carving up a just-captured gazelle with the computer's flat, sharp internal processing device. "I am using every part of it. I will cook this gazelle on the keyboard." Hours later, Ndeti capped off his delicious gazelle dinner by smoking the computer's 200-page owner's manual.

IBM spokespeople praised Ndeti's choice of computers. "We are pleased that the Bantu people are turning to IBM for their business needs," said company CEO William Allaire. "From Kansas City to Kinshasa, IBM is bringing the world closer together. Our cutting-edge technology is truly creating a global village."

(Found here by doing a google search on 'bantu tribesman modem'. Damn, that joke is a classic.)

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[Langdon]

I guess you haven't been in a third world country yet.

This won't directly go to the "poorest people in the world"... this will go to the slighty less poor folk trying to help them. I'd imagine a lot of these will end up in farmer's cooperatives or collectives, used to distribute information to the farmers themselves. Sure, an illiterate farmer can't use a computer, but the local aid workers or agriculturists can.

And even if the parents are illiterate, the presence of cheap computers available at the local library will help make sure their children aren't (with $100 computers and some form of wireless access, small rural libraries are now feasible in areas where shipping books in useful quantities are too expensive).

I've seen a project in India where a guy accesses the US Navy Geographical Survey page, looks up local weather conditions, and broadcasts the current weather report over short-wave radio every morning to the local fishing villages. The main problem was maintaining an Internet connection and computer for the announcer guy. Being able to deploy even one computer and 'net connection (rudimentary dialup, whatever) per village instead of only in the bigger population centers will help in disseminating this information to more people.

The organizers aren't as completely out of touch with reality as some people here, it seems.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[kesuki]

Well, wise guy, if you'd RTFA you'd know that a. the laptops contain both wifi, and cellular broadcast capabilities, now the normal wattage of the cellular antenna is going to be about 5-10 miles, but with say and extrnal antenna booster at the school a simple 3 watt antenna can easuly reach 50+ miles, and the laptop hooked up to that 50 mile antenna can use the wi-fi to connect all the little student laptops to the internet.

now don't you feel stupid? i do realize not every third world county is within 50 miles of a cellular tower, but quite a few are, especially if there is any kind of tourism, or major economic development in the region.

true 192kbps split between 40 students doesn't go far, and Someone has to pay the monthly cost for cellular internet, but they Will have internet access, where available.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[Syberghost]

I don't know, I think before any of that you could like put resources towards feeding people and providing them with fresh drinking water.

If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for the rest of his life.

This is about teaching the next generation how to fish and produce fresh drinking water.

(holds breath waiting for the inevitable "fire" post).

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[volsung]

BTW, that's originally from the Onion, though it seems to be unreachable via their current online archives.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[stanmann]

Give a man a computer with internet access, he'll spend all day downloading Pr0n.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[robpoe]

If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for the rest of his life.

You have it all wrong. Bill Gates' method is ..

Give a man a fish, they will come back to you for more.
Teach a man to fish, he will patent it and sue you for fishing..

That's why he gives us fish and won't let us know how he gets them!!

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[wiggles]

If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for the rest of his life.

I disagree. If you teach that man to fish, he'll sit around on a boat drinking beer all day.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[timeOday]

Any idea as to the literacy rates in these areas? Somehow, I find it absolutely absurd that a person who lives in the bush somewhere in Central Africa is going to Google "manual water purification systems", whip out a credit card, and have one sent to them from Amazon.

I think you've got it all wrong. Can we at least agree that literacy and education are the key to a better life? Forget the Internet and credit cards for a moment. People cannot learn to read, or learn anything by reading, if they have nothing to read. Now they will. If nothing else these laptops can hold hundreds of books.

Do you really find it absurd that some African might consult a first aid manual on their laptop to help their ill child? Or designs for a solar water heater? Or circulate political tracts with the built-in mesh networking?

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[GlassHeart]

Not to minimize the usefulness of the Internet, you nonetheless forgot about books and magazines. A good book, some magazines, and a laptop can produce a self-taught programmer. That's how I and probably anybody else over 30 learned to write code. Now, was that the most efficient way? Probably not, but it does work.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[autopr0n]

Somehow, I find it absolutely absurd that a person who lives in the bush somewhere in Central Africa is going to Google "manual water purification systems", whip out a credit card, and have one sent to them from Amazon. Or potentially find a web page written by another bushman describing the best way to skin a wildebeest.

Does it hurt, being that stupid?

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[FRiC]

Actually, I live in Thailand and everyone here has incredibly good computers since all software are "free" so people can spend all their money on the best hardware.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[rtb61]

Actually I took that wee willie gates idea to be more of a marketing thing, and the differences to be more of a comparison between diarrhoea and constipation, especially when it comes to promoting microsoft's products.

Re:"Business at the Speed of Thought"-ish?

[1u3hr]

Actually, I live in Thailand and everyone here has incredibly good computers

Not everybody in Isaan.

Good choice of manufacturer

[Rude Turnip]

Quanta is highly regarded as one of the better laptop manufacturers and I wish them luck. Quanta manufacturers a number of product lines for Apple and their own line of X86 laptops get good reviews.

Re:Good choice of manufacturer

[Austerity Empowers]

Quanta also makes many of Dell's computers, and a few others.

They ARE cheap. That's about all that may be construed as good. Momma said if I can't say something nice, I shouldn't say nuttin at all.

Bad title

[DogDude]

The manufacturer wasn't picked. A company to investigate how this thing could be manufactured was picked. No company has yet to say that this is even possible. This is still ivory tower, public reltations mumbo jumbo at this stage.

Sub-contractor

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual production of the laptop will, of course, be outsourced to the Ohio Art Company.

But Does it...

[alfrin]

Run Linux? Oh wait, cheap hardware, of course it runs Linux, fine.

Quanta's specs

[digitaldc]

The 500MHz
1 GB Memory
"Skinny version" of the open-source Linux operating system
Two-mode screen, viewed in color and black-and-white display
Powered either with an AC adapter or via a wind-up crank w/ 10-to-1 crank rate
4 USB ports
Wi-Fi- and cell phone-enabled
Each laptop acts as a node in a mesh peer-to-peer ad hoc network
When closed, the hinge forms a handle and the AC cord can function as a carrying strap
The laptops will be rugged and probably made of rubber

I say this is not bad at all for $100.00.

Re:Quanta's specs

[Anonymous Coward]

The laptops will be rugged and probably made of rubber

Hm, that's an innovative material. I certainly didn't know that rubber was a semiconductor.

Re:Quanta's specs

[quanticle]

No kidding. Where can I get me one of these? I'd happily pay up to $350 or so for something with a guaranteed long battery life and a much more rugged design than a conventional laptop. I mainly program on my laptop anyway, so as long as it runs vim I'm ok.

Re:Quanta's specs

[rolfwind]

I am skeptical, especially as it doesn't have a harddrive and the screen is small (9.5 inches).....

But I read up on it and the idea as a whole isn't bad - no need to keep 100 different versions of everything running for some poor admin at an elementary school.

Plus it always be cool to have on for myself as an el-cheapo version to keep in the car:)

Re:Quanta's specs

[Lumpy]

1- USB ports = bad. These are for developing countries so why do we use a port that is fragile and easily jammed full of goo?

2- made of rubber. Again, not that good of an idea. Offering a removeable rubber sleeve or "jacket" is a better idea or how about building it out of plastic that is 2X as thick as they normally use with some extra plasticizer in there to make it even more flexible and resistant to cracking and breaking?

3- Wifi? ok good idea... Cellphone enabled? WTF??? if they cant afford a small computer they certianly will never afford a cellphone with a data plan. And no kids, analog modem over cellphone does not work worth a damn... it used to in the analog cellphone days today it does not.

4- memory is good but make a easy to open slot where I can insert a sd card with new software in it or to expand it's storage. These will have to be upgraded and making it easy and dirt cheap to swap out an inexpensive and robust card to do so is a better idea than having a specialized tech open the device to do it.

They have a great idea, but I see lots of failure points and ideas that only increase cost for no good reason.

Re:Quanta's specs

[drinkypoo]

1. (USB ports == necessary) == true. All the cheap peripherals are USB. What are you suggesting, firewire? Or maybe a LPT or RS-232 port? Which is to say, useless today?
2. Made of rubber. They can not possibly mean this literally. For one, display panels can't take the kind of flexing this would result in.
3. Cellphone enabled. You clearly have no idea of what the cellular phone uptake rate is like in third world countries. Cellular infrastructure is many times cheaper than wired, and in many places it's not possible to get a land line, but every fifth person has a cellphone. Even if there's only one cellphone in your village or whatever, in many places that's infinitely more than there are land lines.
4. I agree with the memory expansion but if you need this functionality, you can get it through USB.

Re:Quanta's specs

[Anonymous Coward]

if they cant afford a small computer they certianly will never afford a cellphone with a data plan.

Nonsense. In most 3rd world countries, the fixed telephone network is nearly nonexistent, and everyone has a cell phone. When demand starts to surge, adequate data plans will be provided.

Re:Quanta's specs

[xenotrout]

1- USB ports = bad. These are for developing countries so why do we use a port that is fragile and easily jammed full of goo?

Rubber plugs should help here--common on USB gadgets (cameras, phones) but oddly uncommon on computers.

2- made of rubber. Again, not that good of an idea. Offering a removeable rubber sleeve or "jacket" is a better idea or how about building it out of plastic that is 2X as thick as they normally use with some extra plasticizer in there to make it even more flexible and resistant to cracking and breaking?

MADE of rubber sounds like an overstatement to me. The case would be too bendable. I don't know whether they actually plan to use a hard rubber or perhaps a rubber-coated plastic.

3- Wifi? ok good idea... Cellphone enabled? WTF??? if they cant afford a small computer they certianly will never afford a cellphone with a data plan. And no kids, analog modem over cellphone does not work worth a damn... it used to in the analog cellphone days today it does not.

Some way to connect to the internet would be useful and Wifi isn't going to do that. An internet-connected gateway, yes. Why not have one of these notebooks be the gateway? They are to use ad-hoc networking, after all. Sure, they don't all need it. Maybe it will come in handy. Developing nations (a particular target for this laptop) sometimes do a technological leapfrog--for example, skipping wired telephones and going straight to cell. They might have analog cell. The data plan might not be so expensive...really I don't know.

4- memory is good but make a easy to open slot where I can insert a sd card with new software in it or to expand it's storage. These will have to be upgraded and making it easy and dirt cheap to swap out an inexpensive and robust card to do so is a better idea than having a specialized tech open the device to do it.

Sounds good. Might add cost. Might actually reduce cost (custom parts more expensive). I haven't read what format the memory will be. Perhaps (hopefully) it will indeed be a standard and removable format.

They have a great idea, but I see lots of failure points and ideas that only increase cost for no good reason.

Agreed. It's still in the idea/development stage, though, so there's still time fo the more expensive "luxury" features to be cut. There's still hope (and possible total failure).

Re:Quanta's specs

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - All cheapo peripherals are USB, and people in developing countries are humans, not apes, and will not throw crap at the laptop. Actually, they will take good care of it, since it's not that easy for them to have one.
2 - Its not just rubber. Probably just a layer for extra protection.
3 - Do you really know the cell network infrastructure of this countries, or are you just talking out of your ass?
4 - Use usb pendrives

Re:Quanta's specs

[Anonymous Coward]

3 - are you simply an ass? he mentioned COST you fool.

Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[dotslashdot]

This $100 laptop is a great idea, but the justification stated on the website seems a little "creative." You could also argue for any number of modern conveniences that would help children in 3rd world countries, like a $1000 Mercedes using that justification. The bottom line is, people in these countries need food, shelter, clothing and education but more importantly, political stability. It just seems funny with all the problems countries are facing--particularly in Africa--a $100 laptop for every child, though commendable, would not solve.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[phaktor]

They already built cheap cars, There called Yugo.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called One Laptop Per Child, not One Ultra Gamer Laptop Per Child. Your analogy might make more sense if you said $1000 car per child, but probably not.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[TedCheshireAcad]

You are not seeing the big picture in this project. If each child has one laptop, they can all be interconnected with one another, and with the rest of the world. The Internet is the greatest communications device ever invented. With such a level of communication, third world children could take it upon themselves to create their own means.

Take, for example, the new-evolving web 2.0 boom. This is a time where web software runs king, that is, software that is globally accessable, promoting a free exchange of information. There is a ton of money flying around this universe, moving from one great idea to the next. Where will the next great idea come from? Africa? South America?

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. The $100 laptop initiative is handing out fishing poles, who is going to collect?

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[mpfife]

Someone had this as their post-script and I think it applies aptly here.

The biggest problem with nerds is that not every problem needs a nerd solution.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I hope you get modded all the way up to fucking five. I'm seriously tired of hearing about how these hundred dollar laptops are going to increase the productivity and life quality of people in, we'll say second world, for sake of argument.

Has your computer made you more productive? NO! You are reading slashdot! This is your boss! Get Back to work!

Do you honestly think these are going to teach them useable farming techniques that they don't know about? If these people farm for a fucking living I'm damn sure they know what the fuck they are doing. I remember hearing about a small, remote village in brazil that grew potatos, 73 different kinds of potatos, and rotated where they grew them in order to conserve the nutrients in the soil. How this going to help them? The can look up market prices? With what internet? Who's updating the page?

There is little that these laptops can do that cannot be done by phone, book, or television. And books are signifigantly more hardy, and I'm willing to say cheaper to produce than laptops.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[xornor]

I've never believed that access to computers make people more intelligent or educated, in the same way I think calculators are overused in math classes today. People will just use them as a crutch. The only thing access to a calculator helped me with in high school was my TI-85 programming skills for automating problem solving (you could argue cheating) on calculus tests. Then you have all the people just downloading their term papers, and test answers. We will soon have a society full of people who are excellent at using computers, but not very good at anything useful.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[Anonymous Coward]

"This $100 laptop is a great idea"

Right.

"You could also argue for any number of modern conveniences that would help children in 3rd world countries, like a $1000 Mercedes using that justification."

What the hell are you talking about? In most countries, children can't even get a driver's license. If they could, they'd still need good roads and fuel. And of course they wouldn't need a V-12 sports coupe. Mass production of good cheap bicycles would be a better comparison to this laptop.

"The bottom line is, people in these countries need food, shelter, clothing and education but more importantly, political stability."

The needs vary from place to place, and even Rome wasn't built in a day, but the network that these devices provide will enable advances in all the areas you mentioned.

"...a $100 laptop for every child, though commendable..."

So, you're saying that this is a good idea, or a bad one?

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[Colin Cordner]

This $100 laptop is a great idea, but the justification stated on the website seems a little "creative." You could also argue for any number of modern conveniences that would help children in 3rd world countries, like a $1000 Mercedes using that justification. The bottom line is, people in these countries need food, shelter, clothing and education but more importantly, political stability. It just seems funny with all the problems countries are facing--particularly in Africa--a $100 laptop for every child, though commendable, would not solve.

One of the problems that is facing poor citizens in less developed countries (LDCs) is lack of organization & information. The extremely high die-off rate of experienced adults due to war, diseases such as AIDS, starvation, and state-sanctioned violence has the effect of cutting-off the transference of knowledge from the old generations to the new.

Consider the fact that agriculture is still the primary economic activity of LDCs. Great farming involves alot of knowledge; you can't just throw seeds willy-nilly and expect things to grow, obviously. You need to select your crops, select your grains, select your plots, your fertilization and watering methods, you need to know the growing seasons & their effects on your particular crop...

Now, imagine a situation in which adults & elders are not able to consistently pass-on this information. The result is less efficient farming methods, in which their kids are trying to get along, but barely know what the heck they're doing. Heck, even if their parents didn't pass on prematurely, they may be living in a country, like India, where traditional farming practices are have become inadequate.

While charities such as this one have been doing on-the-ground work for years, consider how much faster such information can be spread using a combination of laptops & literacy.

Then one should consider all the other simple inventions that all of our ancestors invented time & again, but have been forgotten in most places: hand & foot-pumps for wells, the pot-in-pot refrigerator, sewing, weaving, essentially, all the inventions that can be made in the home, or by a small village. Imagine the benefits.

The easy sharing of ideas & information has the potential to solve many problems - and that includes political corruption. As the saying goes, nothing spreads faster than village gossip, and if that gossip can be spread, lightning fast, across an entire country, it can seriously undermine the impunity with which back-room deals & graft are undertaken.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[frank_adrian314159]

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish...

... pretty soon all of the fishing zones are decimated.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[bigpat]

political stability

Hmm I think political stability is the wrong phrase. Dictatorships have political stability, while western democracies can change their political leaders every couple years. What I think you meant by that is a government with less corruption. A government that works for the people and is made up of the people in a truly representative way. But the term "political stability" is an oxymoron, because the more political "stability" there is, the less stable that society will become through corruption.

In this context, a $100 laptop can truly help solve the problem of political corruption when politicians or dictators are confronted with a free flow of information and ideas at a pace they can not control. Even well meaning and less self serving governments will be confronted with a society that can respond to its own needs faster than a central government made up of a small elite ever could.

Knowledge can allow people to do more with less, which is what people with less need to know. But you are right, eventually that knowledge needs to be translated into stable laws that protect equally so that people know that what they create and build for themselves will not be taken away by others.

Re:Coming up next, $1000 Mercedes for every child

[AP2005]

The laptop is just a means to information and communication. You are right - political openness and removing corruption are important. These are difficult goals but providing access to information helps achieve them:

1. Governments have set up websites where people can anonymously post instances of corruption. Just the fact that a politician's name could be displayed in a public place along with his/her crimes is often scary enough to stop some corruption. Without the internet, there would be no such forum. This is often the only real "free speech" that exists in these places.

2. Access to the source: Most corruption is from middlemen. People will realize that they can directly apply to government loans without having the "permission" of the local bureaucrat. They can learn of their rights without just accepting whatever the local leader tells them.

3. Taking advantage of globalization: People will realize that there is a market for their skills outside their immediate environments. And often they can expect a higher price for their services than what the local market will provide.

4. Protection from globalization: The rate of change in the economic systems in many third world countries is extremely rapid. If the people do not learn the rules of the new reality, they will be taken for a ride (they should learn that "free markets" also means fewer government subsidies and no fixed prices, how large multinationals can change their way of life, ...).

5. Internet revolution: We have all seen how the internet has profoundly changed our lives. Perhaps the most amazing thing is how little you need to contribute or participate (set up a website and you have a business, set up a blog and you are an activist, ...). The $100 laptop will hopefully bring this revolution to these people too.

Call me crazy....

[scenestar]

But this could mean a new era in computing.

cheaper computers mean more units out there.

think ipod/pda/game handheld being replaced by a small laptop

Re:Call me crazy....

[alfrin]

There's a difference between and iPod and a laptop loaded with music. The point of the ipod is a convient thing to carry your music around instead of lugging around an object that requires two hands. Plus it fits into your pocket. As far as I am concerned a laptop will never replace handheld devices, because it isn't a handheld device.

Re:Call me crazy....

[Elad Alon]

One won't replace the other when you can afford both.

What about older laptops?

[cejones]

After recently visiting my local Goodwill computer store, I saw hundred of old laptops laying around for sale.

Why not take donated laptops and refurbish them.... get donated spares from the orginal OEMS, etc Fix them up and then you kill two birds with one stone... No more computer waste in the landfills and cheap laptops for Ghana.

Considering the cost of labor in Ghana, why not send donated laptops to Ghana... Bring a few hundred people from Ghana to this Taiwanese company to train on how to refurbish the laptops...

Re:What about older laptops?

[1u3hr]

After recently visiting my local Goodwill computer store, I saw hundred of old laptops laying around for sale.

Why were they there? They very likely don't work, have dead screens and/or batteries. One important feature of the $100 laptop is the wind-up battery. Even if these Goodwill laptops were working, what a nightmare to support; all with different batteries, weird custom parts, expensive RAM, and many needing special drivers to work at all that probably haven't been updated since the machine was made, thus limiting the software it can run.

Re:What about older laptops?

[silentbozo]

The problem becomes how do you charge them? Network them? Get data on/off them? Fix them when they break down in Ghana? - since the machines are long out of date, and parts/batteries are hard to get (unless you manage to get enough volume to estabish what amounts to a manufacturing operation over there, in which case, they can take care of themselves.)

The concept behind the $100 laptop is to create a commodity computing device tailored for an area where power and communications infrastructure are absent. In fact the laptop BECOMES the communications infrastructure (with ad-hoc nodes). Sending over relatively fragile devices that were designed for 1st world power and communications (and repair) networks just won't cut it... at least not in the rural areas where this is targeted.

Your idea works fine for the cities, however, and I think there are actually used equipment import/export companies, who send over refurbished heavy equipment and computers. But again, different target user, different infrastructure.

Re:What about older laptops?

[MaxQuordlepleen]

Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to install a standard operating system on 1,000,000 random previously-junked laptops? Or providing any kind of support? Or spare parts?

I think those donated laptops are probably better utilized in smaller-scale scenarios like a drop-in centre. Take a look at what these guys have done in creating a standard Debian-based distro for use on marginal hardware. (It's a very impressive project, proves what kind of talent exists in the K/W area)

There's poverty close to home, too, and close to home in the developed world is probably a better place to use this kind of hardware, where there are lots of geeks close by to lend a hand.

Re:What about older laptops?

[amalcon]

There are two advantages of the $100 laptops and refurbished laptops:
1. The $100 laptops are designed with durability as a primary concern. These things need to last. Refurbs are notoriously bad at that.
2. The $100 laptops have a hand power crank. While this is a nonissue to many people, even I (as someone who camps fairly often) can see some small utility in something like this. In countries where there isn't much of an electrical infrastructure at all, this could make the difference between being able to use the laptop at home, and having to go to the library to plug it in -- or even more.

Re:What about older laptops?

[gdek]

Because that model, sadly, doesn't scale. It doesn't even scale well when you're trying to set up a single school, much less a whole nation of schoolchildren.

Re:What about older laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to install a standard operating system on 1,000,000 random previously-junked laptops? Or providing any kind of support? Or spare parts? It's a party if you like figguring out what's not working. I run a not-for-profit computer recycling project ( http://stuporglue.org/ ) that collects used computers and refurbishes them for students who don't have comptuers. Even when network cards and video cards do have Linux support, figguring out which modules need loading can take some time. It probably takes about 10 hours per computer that gets repaired. Doing this on a small (one campus, not TOO old computers) scall isn't bad, especially since most are x86 desktops. Trying to do it to junked laptops would be a nightmare.

Re:What about older laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is THAT Goodwill store located??

Crank Now

[Nom du Keyboard]

Once upon a time you had to crank your Victrola to play your music.

Now you can crank your notebook to play your MP3's.

Re:Crank Now

[fishybell]

It's just that people really want to be like Sting.

Let's get them all out of the way now...

[Anonymous Coward]

-- Yes, but can it run Linux?
-- In Communist China, laptop making you $100
-- That guy has way too much time on his hands
-- Server's already slashdotted, it must be running on a $100 laptop
-- Imagine a beowulf cluster of $100 laptops
-- Bill Gates is evil (what, I need a reason?)

Did I miss any?

Re:Let's get them all out of the way now...

[God'sDuck]

Did I miss any?

only one: "I B41LDZ3D MIN3 L4PTOPZ F0R ONLYZ 98 DO11AR$ AND 1TZ M3G4FAST SO QU4NT4 IZ THE DUMZZERS!!!!!!!!111111two.

Re:Let's get them all out of the way now...

[greenegg77]

I, for one, welcome our new $100 laptop overlords.
Picture of the laptop here [goatse.cx]
Netcraft confirms it!
Dupe

It's a Toy!

[Anonymous Coward]

This $100 is more like a toy than a real notebook computer.

Re:It's a Toy!

[Angry Toad]

I'm old enough to remember when the first microprocessor-based computers came out.

People said *precisely* the same thing about them.

If they make this thing they might just be surprised at the demand - a huge proportion of the population doesn't have $700+ to thow away on something like a computer.

Re:Bad title - I DIsagree

[Nom du Keyboard]

The manufacturer wasn't picked.

I disagree. According to this article Quanta plans to start shipping in Q4 of 2006 if it can reach acceptable arrangements with component suppliers.

Poor choice

[blueadept1]

One laptop per child? If they used the manufacturers that Nike uses, they could surely turn out at least 3 laptops per child per day.

Re:Poor choice

[God'sDuck]

that's...that's...oh...that's just...excuse me, i think i have to go hide under something now.

Re:Poor choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but what *exactly* is a "child"? I can see that a seven year old could make three a day, but sheesh, a 10 year old could certainly crank out four a day!

Re:Poor choice

[lmalmeida]

yeah, but these are the good guys. They only make the child work 8 hours a day.

Forecast

[wombatmobile]

The group did not offer an explanation for the numerical difference between this forecast, which would involve shipments of at least 7 million notebooks, with the forecast that initial shipments could number 5 million units.

They have to count everything by hand and estimate large numbers until they build the first laptop for their own office use.

More informations

[this great guy]

I submitted the story 2 days ago, but it was rejected (damn I hate when that happens), so here is more information...

Here is the official press release from the One Laptop per Child organization. OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said, "Any previous doubt that a very-low-cost laptop could be made for education in the developing world has just gone away."

Also tech specs can be found on the FAQ page: 500 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM.

Re:More informations

[kgp]

I've been spending a lot of time researching the specifications for the $100 laptop (my info comes from interviews or talks given by Jepson and Negoroponte).

Everything I've found out I've written up in the $100 laptop Wikipedia article.

I still have more to write up about the software system.

But little hint: think about where Alan Kay comes from. Smalltalk. The Dynabook. Constructivist learning.

This is not a "linux laptop" as most of you know it (linux kernel + X + GNU tools + a Window manager). This is a Squeak/Linux laptop not a GNU/Linux (to parallel the nomenclature). This is the Dynabook that finally ships to lots of people.

The user will live in a Squeak (i.e. Smalltalk) world. They'll have everything they need to modify the system. In Smalltalk. With other systems on top of it (yes, you can write browsers and email and everything else in Smalltalk and the user can modify it if they should wish. I suspect that it will also ship with Kay's current research systems like Scratch and possibly Croquet

I want a permanent fix, not a band-aid

[eldavojohn]

Well, you're right about an immediate form of aid. But have you really helped them by giving them this water, food or mercedes handout?

What better way to free a people then to allow them the means to learn how to grow the food or purify the water? What I'm trying to say is that teaching someone how to help themselves is worth more than you helping them along their entire lives.

That's why I like this laptop idea so much. It's not a temporary bandaid with a few truckloads of food or mercedes. It's a possible permanent fix for people in need if it is done correctly and used by the people.

Laptops are powerful devices considering the amount of information they make available to you.

Re:I want a permanent fix, not a band-aid

[Anonymous Coward]

How does giving a child a $100 laptop free them? Someone still has to teach them how to read (i.e. EDUCATION, which a laptop does not provide) and use a laptop. Who will do that? These laptops are just another band-aid. If someone was going to build schools and make sure these kids had enough food/shelter, then this program would solve something. But giving kids laptops without providing other crucial support is just a band-aid, as you put it. You sound like Bush when you say "laptops free a people." I don't know of any country that was freed by laptops.

Perfect

[Moby Cock]

These things are going to be so stable!!

Quanta never crashed, definitely never crashed.

Re:Perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

"Course...course dad lets me type slow on the information superHIGHway.....superHIGHway....yeah.......dad, ty-type slow......on the.....on the HIGHway...."

Re:Perfect

[pimpimpim]

Not since 1951 at least, I guess this is the movie quote you're referring to ;)

You're wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What will bring political stability is education, freedom of speech, and communication.

This laptop will bring those about. It has wireless capability. Even a programming language. It can teach obviously new farming techniques, basic healthcare, but also new political ideas by exposing people to the last 2000+ years of political experience and historical knowledge.

Furthermore, this laptop is not necessarily targetted at the poorest of the poor. It is targetted at the children in the middle poor countries who already have their fundamental basic needs such as food taken care of and now need other tools so that they can be more productive and self sustaining without being permanently dependent on aid.

Giving aid is already being done. You are pooh poohing somethat is less than one tenth of one percent of the "aid" budget

And by the way yes, a $1000 vehicle and cheap fuel _would_ go a long way into helping farmers.

Re:You're wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You're Wrong. What will bring them freedom is AK-47s, C4 and RPGs. I don't remember the last time a revolution was won by laptop.

sure

[BitterAndDrunk]

There are a myriad of needs in second and third world countries that aren't addressed by a $100 laptop. That's a no-brainer.

But the education need is addressed with the laptops. That's the whole point - it allows for a better education than without. Electronic medium textbooks are a pretty big deal even in America, let alone a third world country with a minimal GDP.

Food, shelter, political stability - of course these aren't answered. But that doesn't imply that bright minds shouldn't be working towards innovative solutions on other fronts as well.

Re:More informations - Dittos

[Nom du Keyboard]

I submitted the story 2 days ago, but it was rejected (damn I hate when that happens)

We all hate when that happens. At least they didn't take the **Beatles-Beatles version.

Would be nice for Slashdot to have, in addition to Accepted and Rejected statuses, a Posted Another Subscriber's Version annotation to your submissions record. Might not sting quite as badly that way.

Many Aspects to Development

[JLavezzo]

Seems like every time the OLPC project comes up, someone brings this up. Fact is, there ARE people working on improving supplies of drinking water and irrigating crops. The MIT Media Lab isn't going to be involved in that. They do stuff like come up with technology that can be used in classrooms where the school budges barely pay the teachers, let alone buy books for the students. That's awesome. The problem has lots of aspects, let's look at as improving as many as we can

Are you saying that this project won't succeed because there are parts of developing countries that don't have close access to clean drinking water? Or are you suggesting we only look at one aspect of the problem at a time? Because, that hasn't worked very well, yet.

I wish I had a book or something to suggest as reading for folks who don't "get" international Social and Economic Development. Best I can suggest is calling your local Peace Corps recruiter or Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Association.

Re:Many Aspects to Development

[gabbarbhai]

Here I have one for you:
Development as Freedom by A. Sen (received the Nobel in Economics a few years ago)
at amazon

Re:Many Aspects to Development

[plibnik]

Hell, I've lived in country only a bit richer when I was young (average wages $100-$400 per annum), we went with all the family to plant the potatoes to have food every year. And I'd damned prefer to receive the Iskra 1030 Soviet PC i did get at 12 (Soviet clone of i8088, 10Gb HDD, 2*360 floppies, mono CGA) than to get some clean drinking water (which was an issue, our surely was not clear and was chlorinated), better food (well, we did not eat meat often, etc), and world-grade medical care. Would I get the support - whom would I be now ? Another loser who needs clean water, med treatment etc. Now I'm a programmer good enough to pay for it all for my family and read slashdot, and not to beg help from international organizations but instead get payments for software development from richer Westerners. Don't give them fish, give them net. Well, and enough fish for them not to starve to death while learning fishing!

Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[SmallFurryCreature]

Isn't anyone else getting fucking tired of the same old crap bullshit over and over.

Not every 3rd wold nation is a disaster zone. Their are plenty of places where there is political stability and food and water and hygiene are no longer the primary concerns.

What is the problem is getting them to the next level. EDUCATION. Books are expensive and you need a lot of them for even basic schooling worse they need to be translated for each country.

While laptops are also expensive you only need 1 per child, its software can be updated constantly to give the latest book the child needs, it can replace paper to make homework on.

Stop thinking the 3rd world is like the horror shows you seen on tv. These occur because the 1st world always looses interest the moment the immidiate horror is over and the real hardwork needs to start.

SCHOOLS are needed much more at the moment. These laptops would help in those 3rd world nations who are at the moment struggling not to feed their citizens but to educate them.

These are not for refugee camps, they are for places like south africa and india.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[Anonymous Coward]

The point you're missing is that the first world doesn't have an infinite amount of resources to spend on third world development. Wouldn't it make more sense to take the enormous amount of money that would be spent on these laptops to help out third world countries who are doing pretty well and instead spend it on food and water for those third world countries which are hellholes?

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[amightywind]

What is the problem is getting them to the next level. EDUCATION. Books are expensive and you need a lot of them for even basic schooling worse they need to be translated for each country.

The guy is not a retard. He challenges the idea that a gift laptop = education. You are buying into the fallacious idea that this green toy and education are synonymous, which is foolish. These gadgeteers from MIT should stick to what they know and not mislead the developing world with their weird technological distractions. PC's (particularly those that run GNU/Linux) are already commodity items. Surely the developing world can get by with them.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[TheKubrix]

Oh yeah, and by calling them "third world nations" really helps,....

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[Flamingcheeze]

Sorry, Mr. Pottymouth, but you're wrong. What people need is the protection of private property rights. Without that, time preferences are skewed higher, and capital does not accumulate. All the education in the world is worthless without capital.

It's up to the people living in these poor regions to make private property a high priority, so that capital accumulation is possible. As long as they don't, they'll be stuck in their third-world hell.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[mosb1000]

"Their are plenty of places where there is political stability and food and water and hygiene are no longer the primary concerns."

Yeah, and they all have growing economies, and an increasing quality of life. If the problem's going away on it's own, that's not a compelling argument for action on our part (we'd probably just fuck it up).

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[Ryvar]

The point you're missing is that the first world doesn't have an infinite amount of resources to spend on third world development. Wouldn't it make more sense to take the enormous amount of money that would be spent on these laptops to help out third world countries who are doing pretty well and instead spend it on food and water for those third world countries which are hellholes?

This is brutal, perhaps, but population in an uneducated society increases exponentially, which results in a not-quite-as-exponential demand for resources. I say not quite because resources are finite and thus the margin by which each person in the society survives grows slimmer with every successive generation. In short, providing resources without education only exacerbates the problems of a third-world nation and leads to a greater amount of suffering experienced by a greater number of individuals.

Now take a look at the massive geriatric health care problems most non-USA first-world nations are facing and understand that this problem exists because the surest way to stymie breeding is through education. Many of these nations have, unlike the USA, socialized healthcare which ensures that their lower classes survive long enough to become major burdens upon the healthcare system due to geriatric issues. Compounding the problem, many of these nations provide free or heavily government-subsidized higher education (far moreso than the US) which compounds the negative population growth problem.

To put it in simple terms the US isn't facing a geriatric healthcare crisis because our lower classes are undereducated enough to provide a slow but steady population increase and they tend to die young from lack of access to proper preventative medical care but not so young that we haven't sucked them for all the surplus labor and resources they can feed into the economy.

I'm not sure if there are really any easy answers here, but checking the the massive population explosions of second-world nations (China, India) seems like a universal good for everyone - hellholes and struggling non-hellholes alike - because it reduces demand, or at least diminishes the acceleration of demand.

--Ryv

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI. 1st world: United States and its allies. 2nd World: Soviet Union and their allies. 3rd world: everybody else. It's an outdated scheme to begin with, and more importantly, 3rd world doesn't mean poor. It means who the super powers were fighting over. A moot distinction.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[Arandir]

And while they're at it, they should get rid of their culture of corrupt authoritarian governments. It's hard to own private property when you have to be the correct tribal ethnicity to do so. It's hard to accumulate capital when genocide is being waged against you.

Africa has a lot of problems, but being treated as children by white Europeans is not the solution.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[TheSync]

Actually there are a lot of poor countries who have made great strides in education, especially in Africa, and continue to be poor.

The problem is with an over-regulated economy, no combination of education or aid can lead to economic growth. For example, Cuba (with a very regulated economy) has a very high literacy level, compulsary education up to age 15, and almost anyone in Cuba can go to college if they pass a test, yet most people in Cuba are lucky if they make the equivalent of $10 a month.

This reference shows that despite pouring massive resources into education systems, many poor countries have seen a steady decline in economic growth.

On the other hand, advancing economic freedom is a much better way to achieve economic growth.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[iggymanz]

hmm, travelled much? Please list third world countries where a third of the population doesn't live in horrible conditions. For every one you list, I'll list two that are BAD, food and hygiene and health definitely the main issues.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[jmarpet]

Well said!!!!!!

I just moved from Katrina area to New JErsey, and I'll tell you one of the greatest things for the weeks after was a buddy with a generator and satellite internet. I was VERY busy typing in "I'm ok" emails for my fellow cops to their families who had no! idea if they were alive or dead.

Re:Oh shut the fuck you fucking retard

[Anonymous Coward]

"To put it in simple terms the US isn't facing a geriatric healthcare crisis because our lower classes are undereducated enough to provide a slow but steady population increase and they tend to die young from lack of access to proper preventative medical care but not so young that we haven't sucked them for all the surplus labor and resources they can feed into the economy."

That is completely ignorant. The U.S. doesn't have net population loss like other first world countries due to massive immigration.

So far as the laptops go the point should clearly be to allocate resources where it will do the most good. From that perspective clean water, food and shelter clearly trump laptops any way of the week.

Interesting that you would say that

[WindBourne]

This is being designed to be used by 3'rd world kids. Lets assume that it makes it into these countries. One of the first things that will happen is that software will have to be designed. In adidtion, many of the text books will be re-designed to work on this. That will mean fewer sales for book publishers. More importantly, if MIT does the smart thing, they will come up with a library/software that encourages this. There will be a whole new industry rising from this, and a wounding of a monopoly. Interestingly, this may encourage new text that is targeted to different thoughts.

No, I would have to say, that this has the potential to truely change things.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[Catbeller]

Wikitextbooks. The savior of every school district. Textbooks shouldn't cost a hundred dollars each. A hundred dollar ebook reader for each student, to which you add wikibooks for free, free, free forever, and the world save $billions$ of dollars in useless schooling costs -- not to mention all those forests.

Of course, the textbook publishers will detonate a nuclear device on Taiwan to stop it from happening, if they can.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[WindBourne]

Yeah, but you need tests, grading, etc. That should be standardized. Currently, it is a hodgepodge of different programs.

Of course, the textbook publishers will detonate a nuclear device on Taiwan to stop it from happening, if they can.

I suspect that we will see a lot happening when publishers start running to congress to get this stopped. Plain and simple, this has the same disruption capabilities as the Internet and mp3 players have had. The internet has change society and impacted everybody. The mp3 players (and more video players to come) have impacted RIAA and the music industry. This small computer may have the same impact on the educational world as well as on computer manufactuers. One of the bigger mistakes for large manufactuers is to ignore this.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[waterlogged]

Well, I think Google can provide a portal for this. They already have a large infrustructure of knowledge, and already convert there site to a multitude of languages. That way you don't need a bunch of customized/regionalized software, just a link to the internet. And if they can jump all the hurdles in the print scanning arena, they also will have access to the aforementioned textbooks.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[Catbeller]

A little violin music...

An anecdote from the remote past.

In the first month of my junior year at Lane Tech high school, my trig and physics textbooks were stolen. I went up to the teachers, and they told me that I'd have to pony up big bucks (for a kid with absolutely no money, whose only daily meal was the school lunch) to get new ones, and just to stick that old knife in deeper, they didn't have any spares even if I did have the gold.

So I sat for two weeks in class at the beginning of the semester with no textbooks, no calculator (they were really expensive then), trying to do trig and physics calculation by hand. Yes, that year was a no-go. For pennies, I had to repeat the classes because the books were too expensive to replace.

And if any Laneites say it wasn't like that, all I can say is that for a poor, quiet, shy kid, the school didn't exactly strain itself to help. Terry Pratchett said that the world consists of three types of people (paraphrasing): those who say the glass is half full, those who say it's half empty, and those who say, "This is my glass? No, my glass was full, and was a lot bigger than this. I want a new glass -- NOW! Who's the manager here?" There's a fourth: those who slink away, thinking they really weren't entitled to a glass anyway. If I'd a time machine, I'd not go back to punch the teachers, but instead that dumb kid who didn't think he was entitled to a book. I'm now not only thinking he needed a book, but that today all the other kids get books too. And I'll won't bother to ask the manager about it. I'll make my own damned glass.

I never forget what it was like to be without books or means to use them because I didn't have the cash. A stupid, meaningless interruption because the books were so damned expensive that you were SOL if someone stole them. (Come to think: what did the thieves do with the books, pawn them? Set them on fire? No doubt they're stockbrokers now)

Bring on wikibooks. Bring on the 100 buck reader, for all the poor kids trapped in a world that doesn't care about poor kids.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[Catbeller]

On second thought, if I'd the time machine, I'd smack the teachers too. And take their textbooks.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[hackstraw]

In adidtion, many of the text books will be re-designed to work on this.

From http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html:

The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports.

I'm not familiar with ebooks or similar, but I'm curious how much data can be stored on such a machine or how long the flash memory will last due to limitations on writing to the disk.

There are always networks and USB storage devices, which may be a solution.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[pkhuong]

Flash rewrite lifetime is mostly non-issue nowadays. With wear levelling (and taking into account the not-that-great writing speed of flash), I'm pretty sure other components will fail before the flash.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[Gorshkov]

I suspect that we will see a lot happening when publishers start running to congress to get this stopped. Plain and simple, this has the same disruption capabilities as the Internet and mp3 players have had.

Oh, horsehockey .... there is a world of difference between somebody typing up an article on crop rotation, history of the Bantu, or any other academic subject and the stealing of copywrited materials. I can't think of a single possible scenario where the publishers would have any cause to object, unless somebody is willing to type up Pax Britannia or some other work for inclusion.

Re:Interesting that you would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I suspect that we will see a lot happening when publishers start running to congress to get this stopped.
>I can't think of a single possible scenario where the publishers would have any cause to object,
And yes, the mp3/riaa issue is not really about theft. It is about control. RIAA is trying to make sure that they are the middleman. Publishers are currently middlemen. They will certainly fight to prevent that from being disrupted once they realize that they are no longer needed.

Re:Bad title - I DIsagree

[DogDude]

Quanta says the goal is achievable, "if MIT can reach an agreement with component manufacturers to supply components which are 70-80 percent cheaper".

70-80%? That's a pretty huge if. So then a company making, say, power cables that has a gross profit margin of 10% is going to somehow reduce their prices 70-80%? How is that economically possible? How is MIT going to convince companies to lose massive amounts of money? I'll believe it when I see it.

Um, any other ideas, Mr. Cynical?

[eldavojohn]

Yeah, you're right, it could fail.

But what are you doing to help these issues?

Even if the laptop came with only a document about AIDS, its symptoms and how to avoid it, people can benefit from them.

You can't plow a field with a laptop but you can learn how to build primitive plows from wood and use oxen or tamed cattle to move them.

You can't sow a field with a laptop but you can go learn how to harvest wheat and walk the rows and spread it correctly with each sweep of your arm.

If you look around, there are a lot of resources online regarding this stuff. I grew up on a farm and I was taught a lot of things. Farming is 90% knowledge and 10% physical tools.

Already are. It's called the GP2X

[jasonhamilton]

And the GP2X also runs linux.

For $179, I can watch movies, music, play several different consoles (Right now we have 100% functional sega genesis, gameboy, not bad for the first 2 weeks. PSX and SNES are partially functional)

Re:Already are. It's called the GP2X

[Anonymous Coward]

Thant looks neat. Can you send samples to a few reputable reviewers?

one second...

[abstractrude]

Do the 5 year old kids working in the factory get a free laptop. They would probably be good at turning the crank. anyway just a thought

$100 in antimalarial treatments

[WideMouthMickie]

One wonders how much good could be done if said funds were used to keep a few more million contributing souls alive each year? An adult dose of antimalarial drugs run from $0.10 to $1.00, http://www.rbm.who.int/amd2003/amr2003/ch3.html depending upon who you ask. Add a few bucks for delivery and dissemination, and maybe one of those kids invents the $10 computer.

Re:$100 in antimalarial treatments

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but I'd suspect that some people have something against medicine use. I don't know much about the region, though.

Re:$100 in antimalarial treatments

[apflwr]

There's a lot of money floating around this world. Perhaps your energies would be better spent canvassing funds for the methods you think would improve the third world. Maybe Bill Gates could be hit up for another $100 million? Or perhaps you could pressure the existing charities to reform their inefficient and wasteful management practices? (UNICEF, Red Cross etc. have a lot of money and resources-- unfortunately their methods of distribution tend to be lacking.)

Why do we have to second guess this project's effectiveness? It sounds extremely solid to me. I hate to be trite, but "give a man a fish, feed him for a day. teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." If the $100 laptop was dropped and the funds went to food, water and medicine, these people would be back where they were as soon as the money ran out. If the $100 laptop succeeds, they're potentially giving these students access to education and information that will allow the next generation to solve their own problems and bring their society and economies into the 21st (or at least 20th) century.

Re:$100 in antimalarial treatments

[Just Some Guy]

One wonders how much good could be done if said funds were used to keep a few more million contributing souls alive each year?

Yes, one wonders. The rest of us realize that different people try to make the world better in different ways.

I have a degree in computer science. By your logic, I'm wasting my time because I'm not curing cancer. Of course, the next guy might think that would be a waste of time, and I should be making sculptures. And the fellow next to him thinks I should be growing wheat.

Well, you can all bite me. I'll save the world my way. You save it your own way. MIT Media Labs has apparently decided to save it a different way yet.

Re:$100 in antimalarial treatments

[dptalia]

How about $100 in DDT? It's still the most effective thing out there for combatting malaria... When we banned it the death rate for maliar shot sky high....

Re:$100 in antimalarial treatments

[WideMouthMickie]

agreed...I'll consider DDT and antimalarial treatment. I applaud the sentiment, but the focus seems misguided. I wonder how many of the kids Negropronte has targeted actually live on a reliable power grid? $25/hour seems pretty steep for the usefull lifetime of a computer in the bush.

Re:$100 in antimalarial treatments

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many of the kids Negropronte has targeted actually live on a reliable power grid?

I figure.. none. Maybe thats why each laptop is being equiped with a built in hand crank for power. RTFA.

1 GB Memory?

[PeeAitchPee]

How is this possible given current cost of RAM? Isn't notebook RAM typically more expensive than its desktop equivalent? Might we be seeing evidence of collusion among the RAM manufacturers after all?

Re:1 GB Memory?

[rcw-work]

How is this possible given current cost of RAM?

"Memory" is a superset of "RAM", or "SDRAM" as you are probably assuming.

Note that this laptop does not include a hard disk in its specifications. This 1GB memory is for its non-volatile storage and will probably behave like a 1GB CompactFlash module. It probably has a much smaller amount of DRAM.

Re:1 GB Memory?

[CastrTroy]

I though the RAM manufacturers were already convicted of price fixing. We've known this for a long time. Also, RAM you buy is at retail value. Obviously these laptops will have a cost value of $100, and will be sold for no profit.

Re:1 GB Memory?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the specs on this back in May, http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120845,0 0.asp said that this thing would "have 256MB of main memory, 1GB of flash memory in place of a hard drive" which still isnt a bad thing, but it clears up a lot of the memory pricing speculation.

Cheap notebooks != education

[everphilski]

Givings kids cheap notebooks does not equal education. Without learning how to read, or operate the machine the machine is useless. You need the infrastructure in place to have an educational environment before these things can be of any use. We still don't have educational applications for these machines lined up yet.

Truth be told, the laptop really isnt necessary. It could easily be replaced by a good thousand page almanack containing good information on math, science, culture, farming, clean practices, etc. Ever see how cheap reprints are on out-of-copyright works? 3-5$ for 500 page books are not unheard of. We could be mass producing educational works for $8 if we wanted to. But that wouldn't be "cool" because its not a computer. Book has less failure modes, cheap to produce, could be produced under an "open source" license free to distribute...

-everphilski-

Re:Cheap notebooks != education

[eldavojohn]

You're right, they don't equal education. However, if this is implemented correctly at the local level, they could act a positive catalyst for getting an education.

Re:Cheap notebooks != education

[Anonymous Coward]

Books are also a lot less likely to break when you drop them.

Re:Cheap notebooks != education

[arkanes]

Book has less failure modes, cheap to produce, could be produced under an "open source" license free to distribute...

And can't be updated and don't provide any sort of communication capacity. This laptop can provide everything a book provides except toilet paper, but also more - like communication infrastructure via mesh networking. Handing out almanacs isn't education either - there needs to be a continuous communication effort. These laptops can provide some of the infrastructure for that. Not to mention (several) orders of magnitude more information than your 1000 page almanac holds. Of course a laptop isn't "education in a box". But it is a far, far more powerful tool than a book, or even a similiarly costing amount of books, would provide.

Re:Cheap notebooks != education

[sponge_absorbent]

Without learning how to read, or operate the machine the machine is useless.

Take a look at this. Your assumption is wrong, children are smarter than you think.
http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-W all.htm

Re:Cheap notebooks != education

[everphilski]

(1) you are starting with a different assumption

(2) you should have finished reading the article: They would surf the Web -- Disney.com is very popular with them because they like games.

So much for education. The article continues, saying the author had to intervene to introduce more "advanced concepts" and ideas. Basically children are content to pacify themselves with simple gaming and drawing pictures, they don't have a desire to learn. Give them a book and they don't have much of a choice in the matter... (you still need someone in the loop with the ability to teach them to read)

-everphilski-

Sounds good...

[design by michael]

... as long as you don't have to suspend the power supply with a string.

Quanta is a great choice....

[8127972]

..... because they make stuff for the following companies:

- Dell (Latitude)
- IBM/Levono (any and all of them)
- Sony (Vaio)
- Apple (iBook)
- Gateway

They also made HP laptops in the past. Plus they're moving into cell phones and other eletronics.

Their CEO Barry Lim was named one of Computer Reseller News's Top 25 Execs in November (http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17 3600682 for more).

They have the track record to make this happen properly. I just wonder why they'd do it. Maybe for the P.R. points? It's not for the cash.

Re:Quanta is a great choice....

[Pecisk]

My pick is that they do it for purerly technical challenge and PR stuff. I guess it could be even more of first - if they will get it done, then they will have lot of new ideas for west markets. They choose this product as experimental platform to get other, more serious stuff workin for west partners.

Just my guess.

What will happen

[thecpuguru]

Here is what will happen when those laptops hit the street of those impoverished nations: 1) They will be sold to local pawn shops or richer people for food, clothing or medical treatments that these people need more than this type of technology. 2) The ones that are used, will be used very little or mis-understood, because technology with out proper training is utter folley. 3) They will end up in secondary or used markets and provide litte to no benifit to those that have them due to the reasons listed above. sad but true

Re:What will happen

[slashname3]

You missed one.

The 419 scammers will collect them and use them to run their scams from instead of the Internet cafes they use currently.

Re:What will happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is what will happen when those laptops hit the street of those impoverished nations:

Have you seen these freakin' things? They're cartoonish in appearance, and are very obviously meant for children. That was an intentional design feature; the idea is that anyone who is not a young student will look ridiculous carrying or using one of these laptops, and it will be very obvious that any non-child that has one obtained it through less-than-honest methods.

That is also the same reason that they can't use refurbished notebooks. If the device is a standard, commercially available laptop, they would definitely be stolen and sent out through the black market. Keeping the design kid-oriented and very unique will minimize any shady trading in these laptops.

Re:What will happen

[hackstraw]

Here is what will happen when those laptops hit the street of those impoverished nations:

First, 3rd world nations are not impoverished. They are very similar to uneducated rural people in more developed countries. They both typically depend on others for their livelihood by things like doing simple labor or simple agriculture, often for primary benefit of others.

4th world countries are impoverished.

1) They will be sold to local pawn shops or richer people for food, clothing or medical treatments that these people need more than this type of technology. 2) The ones that are used, will be used very little or mis-understood, because technology with out proper training is utter folley. 3) They will end up in secondary or used markets and provide litte to no benifit to those that have them due to the reasons listed above. sad but true

Nope. You underestimate people that are given basic forms of charity.

Look at the success of government subsidies in 1st world countries. None of these things become true, and more often than not, those people that receive subsidies quickly escape the dependance on them and "better themselves". /sarcasm

I would like to be more optimistic about helping others out, but everywhere I look there are two ends of the bell curve with most being at the middle. I guess the goal might be to shift the mean, median, and mode of the bell curve to a higher level, which seems to be happening anyway. I wish I could be more optimistic in general, but I tend to be more of a realist.

Re:What will happen

[xtal]

Bullshit.

People don't need 'training'. They are not animals. Some percentage of ALL human populations are quite capable, and quite good at, self-learning. All that is required is access to information. Don't believe me? Watch kids interact with a library sometime. If these people have access to the right tools, some of them will realize it can be used to make their lives easier.

Those computers mean access to information on AIDS, mathematics, weather information to help with crops, the ability to communicate and organize governments that are not corrupt.

I would like to see a program like this in every country of the world, period.

Re:What will happen

[HD Webdev]

They will be sold to local pawn shops or richer people for food...

Ob Southpark:

"Okay then, do we have our Bibles that were handed out freely? [an Ethiopian attempts to eat one, but Hollis interrupts] No no no, we don't eat the Bibles, we read them ."

Re:What will happen

[Dr.Potato]

Since I live in Brazil (one of the countries that are in Negroponte's list) I have to disagree with you.

1st - As other /.ers have said, this laptops will be sent to schools. So children will have training.

2nd - Not all developing countries are like Ethiopia, with famished people dying on the streets (even there is not all like CNN shows). This laptops are aimed at POOR people/families, not MISERABLE ones. This make a great difference. These families have jobs (underpaid, but jobs nonetheless), struggle to get by, but are unable to get out of their situation. In this case a computer can be a lever for the kids to get out of there.

Maybe some will get in markets, and not benefit the original targets. But here we are talking about nationwide programs, which on average can work.

"sad but true" - No, definitively not true.

Re:What will happen

[Anonymous Coward]

"1) They will be sold to local pawn shops or richer people for food, clothing or medical treatments that these people need more than this type of technology."

Shit, the impoverished and uneducated are a lot better at reading than you, apparently. This item is to aid the poor, but not so poor that they can't afford food, clothing, or any medical treatments.

Re:What will happen

[Anonymous Coward]

What will happen is that 3rd world kiddies who previously just needed medical treatment for malaria, HIV, etc. will now also require testing for eyestrain, myopia, etc. Factor in the cost of the prescription lenses that most of us computer users seem to end up wearing, and suddenly the $100 laptop doesn't look like such a good deal.

Re:What will happen

[jack79]

They will be sold to local pawn shops or richer people for food... Ob Southpark: "Okay then, do we have our Bibles that were handed out freely? [an Ethiopian attempts to eat one, but Hollis interrupts] No no no, we don't eat the Bibles, we read them ."

A poor joke considering that Ethiopia has been an independent Christian nation since the 4th Century. Ethiopians can eat their [i]own[/i] bibles.

Re:What will happen

[HD Webdev]

A poor joke considering that Ethiopia has been an independent Christian nation since the 4th Century. Ethiopians can eat their [i]own[/i] bibles.

Actually, there are more Muslims in Ethiopia than Christians.

while this is a cool idea

[ChrisGilliard]

Dell is already selling desktops for $299. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs By the time these things get down to $100, what price will it be to buy from Dell or another manufacturer?

Re:while this is a cool idea

[Colin Cordner]

Dell is already selling desktops for $299. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs By the time these things get down to $100, what price will it be to buy from Dell or another manufacturer?

I suspect that it will take roughly the same amount of time that the CEO & board-of-directors take to decide wether they want to risk their money mass-manufacturing a computer for people five-kilometers below the poverty line.

There's nothing revolutionary about the MIT system. It could have been built fifteen years ago (albeit using less advanced parts). But, there's no large profit in it, and the "large" part is just as important as the "profit". Frankly, I'm surprised they were able to find anyone willing to use their manufacturing capacity to mass produce these. Quanta's CEO is either unusually progressive for a suit ("You know what, I'm willing to take a bit of a cut in profits for this."), or is getting a substantial subsidy per-unit to offset the lower margins.

Re:while this is a cool idea

[ChrisGilliard]

I suspect that it will take roughly the same amount of time that the CEO & board-of-directors take to decide wether they want to risk their money mass-manufacturing a computer for people five-kilometers below the poverty line.

If they can make it for $80 and sell it for $100, they'll do it. There's nothing evil about that, it's just capitalism.

There's nothing revolutionary about the MIT system. It could have been built fifteen years ago (albeit using less advanced parts).

And it would have cost way more. I bought a IBM 286 about 15 years ago, and it was well into the thousands, we're not even talking laptops here and no internet connection. Oh yeah, we upgraded the RAM to 1 Megabyte too.

But, there's no large profit in it, and the "large" part is just as important as the "profit".

Sure there is a large profit in it. If you can make this thing for $80, and sell it for $100, your going to make a ton of money because they will be able to buy hundreds of millions of them. The big computer manufacturers have all lowered their prices because they realized that they can make more money selling these things at $300, than they can at $1000. The system is setup correctly to motivate suppliers to set prices correctly.

Frankly, I'm surprised they were able to find anyone willing to use their manufacturing capacity to mass produce these. Quanta's CEO is either unusually progressive for a suit ("You know what, I'm willing to take a bit of a cut in profits for this."), or is getting a substantial subsidy per-unit to offset the lower margins.

I'm sure Quanta will potentiall make a killing on this deal, that is if this laptop beats the other manufacturers to market and is substantially functional when compared to the $299 system I linked to. Again, it's about volume, if you sell 1 billion systems and make $10 per system, that's $10 billion dollars.

You watch too much TV news.

[CyberLord Seven]

I highly recommend you try to locate a copy of National Geographics Africa issue. It is very enlightening in that it avoids the Tarzan stereotype propogated by the sensationalist media in the U. S. and describes what Africa is really like.
Yes, Africa has problems and there is a need for clean water and food. But Africa is not as bad off as you might imagine from what you see on the nightly (so called) news.
If you can't find a copy of NGs Africa issue I highly recommend you try to locate a copy of the latest New African. It is a British magazine and hard to locate in the U. S. but well worth the effort if you do find it. I get mine from DeLauer's bookstore in Oakland, CA. I have also seen it at Barnes & Noble.
Again, I agree that Africa has problems, but they are not as bad as we are led to believe. Also, this laptop will create opportunities that you and I cannot see from our distant perspective.

Nightmare

[pedestrian crossing]

Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to install a standard operating system on 1,000,000 random previously-junked laptops?

See sig:

Re:Bad title - I DIsagree

[Catbeller]

I'd say that if they say they can do it, they will do it. They supply Dell with some laptops, so they seem to know how to cut costs. It's Taiwan, for god's sake.

Of course, we could build it in the States, and pay five times as much so that the CEO can get a 20 million dollar severance plan when he's canned for incompetence.

I'd bet on the Taiwanese company.

And PS: everything a laptop does today will be done with ten dollar chips a decade from now, with five dollar screens and ten dollar bodys. Economics of scale and technological progress will turn PC's into things you can buy for $29 bucks in Walgreens ($18 on sale, this week only!). What else does a PC need to do for people (other than tech monsters) than take input, display output, communicate, and process data quickly? Speed will come for cheap. People "need" $2K computers because Microsoft continually makes new OS's that require them.

I can't wait....

[mustafap]

To get hold of one, so I can hack it and put windows on it.

$100 Big screen HD TV

[pottymouth]

I wish someone would develop a $100 big screen HDTV for those of us living in the undeveloped wilds of suburban America. Think of the benefit that would be brought to humanity by allowing the less priviledged to enjoy Family Guy and Futurama on a 12 foot HD screen.

OMG - MOD THIS UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuff said...

Best thing since sliced bread?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are we slow on news these days. This freaking event has been reported no less than 5 times.

Now you may think technology is going to bring all third world countries into the first. But this will not happen when they are still getting fucked in the ass by you guys. The west has colonialized Africa and abused and exploited the land to this very day. A few lap tops and pork chops will not solve any problem.

Weird Al

[tomcres]

Doesn't this kind of remind you of that Weird Al song "All About the Pentiums"?

What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?

from the onion

[supernova87a]

that reminds me of a funny onion piece from a while ago -- an illustration of how people need to be ready in other ways for a technology in order for it to be useful at all

KABINDA, ZAIRE--In a move IBM offices are hailing as a major step in the company's ongoing worldwide telecommunications revolution, M'wana Ndeti, a member of Zaire's Bantu tribe, used an IBM global uplink network modem yesterday to crush a nut.

Ndeti, who spent 20 minutes trying to open the nut by hand, easily cracked it open by smashing it repeatedly with the powerful modem.

"I could not crush the nut by myself," said the 47-year-old Ndeti, who added the savory nut to a thick, peanut-based soup minutes later. "With IBM's help, I was able to break it." Ndeti discovered the nut-breaking, 28.8 V.34 modem yesterday, when IBM was shooting a commercial in his southwestern Zaire village. During a break in shooting, which shows African villagers eagerly teleconferencing via computer with Japanese schoolchildren, Ndeti snuck onto the set and took the modem, which he believed would serve well as a "smashing" utensil.

IBM officials were not surprised the longtime computer giant was able to provide Ndeti with practical solutions to his everyday problems. "Our telecommunications systems offer people all over the world global networking solutions that fit their specific needs," said Herbert Ross, IBM's director of marketing. "Whether you're a nun cloistered in an Italian abbey or an Aborigine in Australia's Great Sandy Desert, IBM has the ideas to get you where you want to go today."

According to Ndeti, of the modem's many powerful features, most impressive was its hard plastic casing, which easily sustained several minutes of vigorous pounding against a large stone. "I put the nut on a rock, and I hit it with the modem," Ndeti said. "The modem did not break. It is a good modem."

Ndeti was so impressed with the modem that he purchased a new, state-of- the-art IBM workstation, complete with a PowerPC 601 microprocessor, a quad-speed internal CD-ROM drive and three 16-bit ethernet networking connectors. The tribesman has already made good use of the computer system, fashioning a gazelle trap out of its wires, a boat anchor out of the monitor and a crude but effective weapon from its mouse.

"This is a good computer," said Ndeti, carving up a just-captured gazelle with the computer's flat, sharp internal processing device. "I am using every part of it. I will cook this gazelle on the keyboard." Hours later, Ndeti capped off his delicious gazelle dinner by smoking the computer's 200-page owner's manual.

IBM spokespeople praised Ndeti's choice of computers. "We are pleased that the Bantu people are turning to IBM for their business needs," said company CEO William Allaire. "From Kansas City to Kinshasa, IBM is bringing the world closer together. Our cutting-edge technology is truly creating a global village."

Duh

[NotoriousGOD]

Of course they'd need cheap Taiwanese labor. Only by paying 8 year olds 5 cents an hour could they make any profit.

Get real

[Anonymous Coward]

After recently visiting my local Goodwill computer store, I saw hundred of old laptops laying around for sale.

Why not take donated laptops and refurbish them.... get donated spares from the orginal OEMS, etc Fix them up and then you kill two birds with one stone... No more computer waste in the landfills and cheap laptops for Ghana.

Considering the cost of labor in Ghana, why not send donated laptops to Ghana... Bring a few hundred people from Ghana to this Taiwanese company to train on how to refurbish the laptops...

Do you really think that after you gather up a couple hundred million or so of these discarded machines, clean them up, check them out, install Wifi nics, find replacement parts for all the burnt out AC adapters (chances are the OEMs won't have 10 yr old parts just kicking around in great quanities that they've been waiting to thow away), find new Batteries, find power adapters for all the countries you are going to send them to, cook up a universial linux/windows install to work on all of them with standard software (hasn't been done yet for modern equipment hey), figure out a support network that will keep them running and up to date and figure out how to do all that shit for $100 including all of the labour and logistics necessary to make it happen.

You know, if it's such a great idea... I wonder why no one fucking thought of it before you?

Think different.

[hernick]

Whenever the 100$ laptop is mentioned, the hordes scream: "Africa needs food! Africa needs schools!". Well, they've been receiving food and aid for decades, and they're still poor. Maybe it's time to try something different. What if you gave millions of children access to the "sum of human knowledge" - or at least, the next best thing: a laptop with ad-hoc wireless mesh networking?

500MHz AMD CPU. 128MB RAM. 1024MB Flash memory. 4 USB ports. WiFi. VoIP. Switchable colour/BW display. Hand-cranked generator or AC powered. Runs Linux. Rugged. 100$.

This is much more than a toy. It's a communications device. It's a textbook library. It's an opportunity for Africa to embrace information technology and its benefits.

Some laptops will be stolen. Others will be destroyed by accident. Others will be burned at the stake for being evil western technology. A great many will probably just gather dust.

However, most of them will be used right: as learning tools. Millions of children will have and will use this wonderful library of textbooks. They will have a better opportunity to learn and to educate themselves than they ever did before.

But what good is an education when you're condemned to a life of subsistence farming? I'm betting that in the end, the true potential of these laptops will be wasted on 90% of children who get them. And that's to be expected. And that's all right.

There are kids, on every continent, that love to learn and that have a gift for learning. These kids go to school, but they absorb knowledge from available source. These children will go beyond the school curriculum. In Africa, they will use their laptops to learn skills they never could have otherwise. We'll see young africans that know about programming, networking, information technology, advanced farming and construction techniques - and so much more - just pop out of nowhere. We'll see a new generation that knows how to use technology and how to make the best of it.

So, you're right. These laptops will be for the most part, wasted. But it doesn't matter - because we'll have given awesome new opportunities to a few hundred thousand gifted children, who'd otherwise would have been condemned to a life of subsistence farming.

Re:Think different.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever the 100$ laptop is mentioned, the hordes scream: "Africa needs food! Africa needs schools!". Well, they've been receiving food and aid for decades, and they're still poor. Maybe it's time to try something different. What if you gave millions of children access to the "sum of human knowledge" - or at least, the next best thing: a laptop with ad-hoc wireless mesh networking?

That is not new thinking, it is the same old flawed thinking that leaves Africa poor. You're just substituting a material item (food) for an abstract item (knowledge). At the end of the day, nothing would change.

What would change this is to go in and change the underlying political structure that leaves a select few in power with no real incentive to change things, and leaves the masses unable to prosper.

Unfortunately, the translation of "Change the underlying political structure" into practical action is "Go in and take out the corrupt|inept|racist|whatever regime and replace it with one that uses an actual workable political/governance system". Choose a political system -any working system-, but there aren't many organizations (read:UN) or countries (read:USA) that have the brass balls needed to go in and pull something like that off.

And, until that change to a workable political/government structure in those poor countries changes, nothing else will either.

Re:Think different.

[Arandir]

The food didn't work because it was stolen. The aid didn't work because it was stolen. The laptops may or may not work, it depends on whether they will be stolen. Most of Africa's problems can be traced to corrupt authoritarian governments.

Re:Think different.

[Coryoth]

What would change this is to go in and change the underlying political structure that leaves a select few in power with no real incentive to change things, and leaves the masses unable to prosper.

Unfortunately, the translation of "Change the underlying political structure" into practical action is "Go in and take out the corrupt|inept|racist|whatever regime and replace it with one that uses an actual workable political/governance system".

That sounds nice, but in practice you can't just go in and install democracy by fiat. Democracy, to work well, to retain some semblance of stability, relies on an educated and informed populace. Just making a country a democracy by order leaves the political system wide open to abuse: it is far too easy for populists to promise and cajole and get elected and never deliver. That happens, at least to some extent, in first world countries that have a high mean level of education and decent and widely read press that keeps the populace informed as to what is happening; consider the results in a country with lower average education levels, and a poorly informed populace.

And what is going to happen after you install this democracy? Are you going to constantly police it to ensure the same kinds of corruption don't creep back in? How do you intend to do that without, in effect, simply installing a puppet government? First world countries rely on an informed electorate to not tolerate excessive corruption, and even then things are far from perfect. Do you really expect such a thing to work in a country that you've walked into and eclared a democracy?

In practice democracy is an outgrowth of an educated and informed populace. It is something that the people have to want, and it works best when it is pushed for, and created by, the people themselves. Trying to install a democracy from outside is, most likely, ging to create an unstable one. Providing the people with the means and the encouragement and support to move to a democracy is going to be the best way to reform such countries. That's a very large task. The $100 laptop project simply represents a small piece of the "educated and informed populace" part of the puzzle. It is an effort aimed at making it easier for people to get the education that they crave, and to communicate and be informed about what is actually going on. How well it succeeds at that is going to be an interesting question, but I don't tink you can categorically state, a priori, that it is a waste of effort - rather it seems like an interesting idea.

Jedidiah.

Re:Think different.

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds nice, but in practice you can't just go in and install democracy by fiat.

Who says that it has to be a democracy?

If the rest of the world won't step up to the plate, let the chinese go in and give it a go- they are not democratic, but do have a functional (and growing!) system of governance. And, they'd love the shot at becoming more of a world power.

Then, maybe others might suddenly have an interest in chaning things as a competitive measure- the Japanese or the US, for example might get in the game because of the various copetitve natures involved.

The point is that if you truly want the people out of poverty and in to a healthy and (lets hope) meaningful existance, you've got to take an unpleasant, and probably unpopular, set of actions. I don't think that anyone actually cares enough about the people to deal with that, so those places of poverty will continue as-is.

Re:Think different.

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to say that some will be worshipped as idols! Maybe the education should start at the bootup screen.

I'll believe it when I see it.

[DogDude]

OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said, "Any previous doubt that a very-low-cost laptop could be made for education in the developing world has just gone away."

My doubt will go away once somebody actually makes one of these things for less than $100. At this point, nobody has said that it's actually possible. The company that just signed on, signed on to RESEARCH whether this is even possible. Negroponte says that it'll work as long as component makers are willing to knock 70-80% off of their prices, which is unrealistic, to say the least.

what will a $100 laptop used for?

[recharged95]

If it's internet access, hmmm... A poor country needs:

• money

Well, looks like we should all be prepared for more spam.

MIT has good intentions for this, but remember, every solution to a social cause always moves to the least common denominator (that's why such things as the "war on crime" will never end).

Hmm, Knowledge...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Well, yes I got an Idea...

A method to teach people how to read.

Then a method to learn how to speak french/english/german/japanese/spanish/chinese (pick your poison)

Then giving them access to the Internet, where most of the content is in french/english/german/japanese/spanish/chinese...

Oh, you also intended to start working right now on an agricultural wiki in Farsi/bhantou/whatever ?

Sorry, my bad...

(It reminds me of that guy in the medieval times that wanted to teach ppl how to read, so they could get access to knowledge...He created a wonderful method, whith wich anyone could learn how to read. And then he made a book of it, so the illiterate could learn on their own...)

Re:Hmm, Knowledge...

[Langdon]

> Oh, you also intended to start working right now on an agricultural wiki in Farsi/bhantou/whatever ?

They're not going to go on Slashdot and participate in flame wars. This is a way of enabling people in those countries who write in local languages to make their own local information available to more people.

Consider a local aid worker who makes a agricultural webpage (or even works on translations of existing web pages) and makes that available on the local network grid these $100 laptops are hooked to. You have the capability to be distribute your information to hundreds of remote farmer's cooperatives or collectives, and send almost-real-time updates on pest breakouts and market prices.

But yes, conceivably, some sort of Speak-and-spell-type software can also be used to teach illiterates to read. You have a screen, you have a speaker. Use them.

They don't even need access to the general Internet, just access to each other. Enabling communication between two villages that don't have any serviceable roads between them is a huge factor, and if the grid network of this laptop is effective, VOIP or IM can even serve to replace more expensive phone systems.

For those more cynical among you that say poor countries need political stability first, a local revolutionary movement can use these computers to coordinate and exchange information between cells or send information in/out of a repressive regime - again, better information, education and communication tools will be extremely useful in a lot of situations.

Re:Hmm, Knowledge...

[phaggood]

For those more cynical among you that say poor countries need political stability first,

Why generate your own when the US will swoop in, spend hundreds of billions of $$ of their own, and HAND you political stability whether you asked them to or not!

But only if you have oil.

And we helped prop up your dictator

And we sold him most of the weapons used to keep his boot to your neck.

And you have a very generous definition of "stability".

Hmm, I can see this ad isn't going to test market very well....

Err.... Profit!

wrong assumptions

[penguin-collective]

because technology with out proper training is utter folley.

First of all, your assumption that there is no training is groundless--these things are going into schools, they aren't being dropped from airplanes.

Second, your assumption that it requires "proper training" to learn technology is also groundless; many geeks are self-taught. Additionally, Linux is enormously well supported by on-line resources at all levels.

They will end up in secondary or used markets and provide litte to no benifit to those that have them due to the reasons listed above.

If the things aren't traded, they'll stay with students. If the things are traded, they'll end up with people who have sufficient use for them and the necessary training so that they are willing to pay the money.

Creating and distributing a $100 laptop at cost to poorer nations is a win no matter what happens with those laptops. And it's likely a lot better than handing their governments a lot of aid in cash.

Barbie has this covered

[Animats]

The toy industry is getting close. The Barbie B-Book Learning Laptop has a keyboard and mouse, but an undersized screen. Each year, Barbie's new laptop has better specs. The first one appeared in 1999, and now Barbie is up to version 5.

And it's only $59.95!

(For boys, there's the Batman Laptop.)

A bigger screen and some USB ports, and these things are going to be useful.

overlords

[penguin-collective]

I, for one, welcome our new $100 laptop overlords.

You should, because some of the recipients of these laptops may well found the next Microsoft or Google, and they are a lot more eager to succeed than their US or European counterparts.

$100 for the Bare Bones System . . .

[tnsimonson]

. . . but with MS Office 2K3 installed the price rises to $450.

mnb Re:Um, any other ideas, Mr. Cynical?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't plow a field with a laptop but you can learn how to build primitive plows from wood and use oxen or tamed cattle to move them.

Are you really suggesting that people are starving because they don't know how to make a plow?

The problem often is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of capitol with which to put that knowledge into play.

Be it war, corruption, lawlessness, or natural disaster, I think you will find that most of the world's poor are such because of lacking resources not lacking knowledge.

Re:mnb Re:Um, any other ideas, Mr. Cynical?

[russ1337]

OK, here it is... Recipe for plowing a field: Step one, get a plow - Check Step two, plow the field - check Step three, spread seeds - check Step four, water - oh, crap. No water. No well. Oh well, i do have this great laptop and lots of free p0rn.

Save Money on Text Books?

[Bastardchyld]

Alot of posters have mentioned that this money could better be utilized by giving them text books. Which of course earns the response by the other side of why spend $50 on one text book when you can spend $100 on one laptop that can hold 40+ textbooks. Here is where I weigh in on this: Publishers of textbooks do so for the money. It is simple, they copyright their material and sell it. They will not be able to simply get this $100 laptop and keep all the textbooks they need on it, the 'e-books' will have to be purchased/licensed as well. Now if the laptops were connected to the internet then the could simply utilize it as a textbook, however do people actually think that the third world has a cable/dsl connection sitting idle just waiting for a laptop? Telcos will not provide internet into a new market if they cannot make money off of it. If the residents do not have money they will not waste money building the infrastructure. Think of it like this, if everyone had an electric car instead of gas, would you open a gas station? I wouldn't. -matt

Re:Save Money on Text Books?

[CrazedWalrus]

Think "Site License" for e-books. Low cost of publishing, publisher makes money, schools get discounted books that are easy to distribute, and that never need to be collected at the end of the year, missing pages, and covered with doodles.

Re:Save Money on Text Books?

[Gorshkov]

They will not be able to simply get this $100 laptop and keep all the textbooks they need on it, the 'e-books' will have to be purchased/licensed as well.

Think "Open Source" .... although I'm not a mathematition, I AM a historian by training (computer programmer for 25 years by inclination).

I would have absolutly no problem with writing articles/mini-books etc, type them up, and donate them if I had the chance ... and I seriously doubt you would have any shortage of volunteers from ANY field willing to do the same thing.

What about here?

[PFI_Optix]

I hear all kind of talk about how these laptops are supposed to help bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries...what about here at home? I work for a rural school district that has about one PC for every ten students, and their specifications are about on par with these $100 laptops. In other words, they're old.

My first thought when I read about this project was that it could finally put a computer in the hands of every American student and make technology accessible in the poorer inner-city and rural districts. It's amazing how many people don't realize just how much of a divide still exists here in the States.

Re:What about here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on!

My yearly high school tech budget is a paltry $15,000. The quote we got this year for a Dell laptop with wireless access was around $1,300. You do the math. I could put a lot more computers into the hands of students with these things.

Mod Parent Down: He works for Quanta.

[eeg3]

tsk tsk

Re:Mod Parent Down: He works for Quanta.

[Rude Turnip]

No, I don't. However, I have researched them quite a bit in shopping around for a new laptop.

I mean business!

[CrazedWalrus]

I know this wasn't the crux of your post, but I'm going to use it as a jumping-off point...

unless you manage to get enough volume to estabish what amounts to a manufacturing operation over there, in which case, they can take care of themselves

Isn't this the point? I mean, if it isn't, it should be. People here seem to have a distaste for business and corporations, but without them, I daresay that most of us would be unemployed, and maybe in need of some cheap laptops ourselves.

Businesses make the world a better place by circulating goods from other regions and setting up pipelines to do so more easily, generating wealth for the employees, and pushing people to continue their educations by creating competition.

It's another reason that I'm excited by the Virgin Galactic spaceport in New Mexico. Until there's money in it, space travel on any real scale will not be a reality. That means business. Until there's money to be made in making the world a better place, it won't happen on any real scale.

See the connection? Charity, for as nice and warm-n-fuzzy as it is, simply cannot change the world past a certain point. People need to have incentive, and that means business.

Speaking of camping...

[paulpas]

They could make a USB lighter that is powered by the bus so you can light a fire anywhere in the world with only a few hand cranks. ;)

Flash light, hello?

Grill? I could be pushing it.

Not fastest, and not cheapest. Best, maybe...

[ScentCone]

After all, isn't internet access the fastest and cheapest form of communicating?

No, I don't think the internet's the cheapest form of communication. Sitting across the coffee table talking to someone is the cheapest. Well, and fastest, too, as far as that goes. Using the internet to do the same thing - even if you ARE using a $100 laptop - only works if your country has billions of dollars worth of infrastructure, training, and souped-up techno-culture in place to make it all go. Solid power grids, not-too-corrupt entities watching over things, etc.

In the poorest parts of the world, lack of basic rule of law is the biggest thing in the way of growth-by-information-flow. If you can't assume that invested money/time/resources are going to retain their value (or work at all) over the long haul, then no fancy networked anything will get built, at least not at reasonable prices.

Re:Not fastest, and not cheapest. Best, maybe...

[TheRaven64]

Sitting across the coffee table talking to someone is the cheapest.

Well, that depends on who you're communicating with. I live in the UK, but I do a lot of work for people in the USA. Sitting across a coffee table from them requires a minimum of a $500 plane trip - and probably a good $100-200 to get between airports, my house, and the coffee table in question. Don't forget to add on about 24 hours of my time spent travelling. In contrast, the Internet costs a small flat rate.

If it is 'effectual', then I'll be able to buy one

[mi]

If the device can be made and sold at a profit, I will be able to buy it here in US, thanking MIT for the inventiveness.

If not, it will not survive for long anyway.

Autochtonous economic development

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Whenever the 100$ laptop is mentioned, the hordes scream: "Africa needs food! Africa needs schools!". Well, they've been receiving food and aid for decades, and they're still poor. Maybe it's time to try something different.

Yeah, like autochtonous economic development, something that first world nations have been fighting extremely hard for the past few decades. And guess what, food "aid" is in fact aid for the givers.

128 Ram only

[aristofeles]

Some sources say it will have 1024 Flash Memory, instead of a HD, and 128M of RAM. On the MIT page it is only 512M os Flash. http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html

Is there any study that links computers to better

[obarthelemy]

learning ?

because making & maintaining computers + creating & translating software is sure to be a LOT more expensive than custom-designing one book per school year, both to set-up and to operate.

and the last study I saw, admittedly a long while back, showed that computer-aided learning was worse than book-and-paper learning. Do computers actually impair learning ?

Re:Bad title - I DIsagree

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck?!

Did you read your own comment? Did it not occur to you if it were possible to shave SEVENTY to EIGHTY percent off all the component costs, someone like Dell would already have done it?

Do people not realize that there is a $100 billion per year industry dedicated to making computers as cheap as possible? Some dipshit who knows NOTHING about the business comes along and says "gee, wouldn't if be great if these laptops only cost $100" ... and people actually listen to him?!

There's vaporware, and there's vaporware ... and then there's this.

Why?

[Communomancer]

Obviously because Quantas never crash!

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's really quite unrelated, but I noticed your nick on some random page with a quote from one of your posts here, about 9/11. The post was great, I must say.
Bottom of http://www.eleves.ens.fr/home/rannaud/.

Re:Bad title - I DIsagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: these aren't state of the art laptops. They're more like laptops from 5-10 years ago.

Dell has no interest in selling such things.

per child??? how about school!!!

[onedobb]

Why does it need to be per child? Most won't touch a computer after they leave school. Why not provide the laptops per student!!! This way when a student leaves school permantely they can give a laptop to another student. Most people there may not even have $100 for the laptop. That way it makes more sense. It saves money on books, easier to maintain the laptops, and they can re-use them year after year for the same class. Also it's easier to update the books too since you don't hafta deal with "oops I left it at home" and end up with different versions of the same book. Make the laptops for the school, not for each child.

This will be a smashing success...

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as Kofi Annan has no input into the distribution model. If he has any say as to how the laptops are distributed, expect them to end up in the hands of third-world dictators and their cronies instead of in the hands of third-world school children.

A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

[Anonymous Coward]

It is sad to see geeks deriding what is, in essence, an alpha of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. This is hardware that is plentiful for many things (it is more capable than the computers we were using less than ten years ago), and that, judging by the people involved (Seymour Papert, Alan Kay), will come with great software, too. I live in a third world (although not miserable) country, where poor people can climb the social ladder. Hopefully a thing like this laptop will help more people do it.

Coralised & Pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

Coralised :)
press release
faq

Everybody loves pictures
front, crank, side, ebook, theater, handside

Fluffy Puff Inc. to Buy Bubs' Concession Stand?

[WilliamSChips]

from the everybody-everybody dept.

...That would make an awesome April Fools story.

I'm skeptical

[woolio]

The $100 laptop is a honorable idea, but I don't see how it can be realistic...

A damn wifi card costs ~$50. A damn AC adapter costs $10-$20 used! And for an extra $30, they are going to get Memory, a Screen, CPU, storage, case, battery, motherboard, wind-up crank, etc???? Even a crappy 16x2 character LCD display costs more than $10....

The only way they are going to get a $100 laptop is through a lot of donations... Perhaps if they went to Goodwill (cheap computer parts!) and scrounged up a few craptops, they could get a working system (without crank, without battery).. In short, the laptop will only cost $100 when it has no market. But if it has no market, then can it really be good enough to be useful to these people?

I think it will be another 5-10 years before economies of scale make laptops this affordable.. .(or by that time, "old" will be pretty good!)

Re:I'm skeptical

[vexx0]

Your thinking of retail prices, the actual cost to make is much cheaper. Not to mention it is kinda outdated hardware but should hopefully meet there needs.

Also if I'm not mistaken I think alot of money is being donated toward the project and the consumer version will subsidize some of the cost.

Re:Bad title - I DIsagree

[Anonymous Coward]

"more like laptops from 5-10 years ago"?

Yeah, except they have to make them using NEW parts, bought in the same market in which everyone else is buying them. Unless they are going to build them with used parts, they won't be able to drive the cost any lower than anyone else.

My predicition: Someday, the PC market will indeed progress to the point where a new, base model laptop will cost $100 or less. It won't be the result of anything these MIT jackoffs did, but they will claim it was, and fall all over themselves praising their "vision". I can hear it already.

It will probably succeed and put us behind!

[Glomek]

This laptop is going to come preloaded with Logo and Squeak, two of the most open ended, powerful, creativity inspiring development environments ever built.

The people using them are not steeped in western computer culture. They won't find Smalltalk or Logo syntax "weird".

The people using them are not tied to lots of other high tech ways to communicate. When they are taught how to use the computer as "personal dynamic media", that is, as a way to communicate with each other by sending each other simulations of their ideas, they will find it useful. They will learn how to do it.

The people who will be teaching with these won't have a "back to basics" crowd preventing them from using constructivist methods. Their students may end up being able to think better than our students.

In short, the fact that we got computers and education first addicted us to a less developed way of using computers and teaching. The late comers will be able to embrace the more effective ways of using computers and educating, and will probably pass us up.

Personally, I think this is bad news. We had Logo and Smalltalk over 20 years ago, with the chance to have a revolution right here in America (in many ways, one started with Logo in classrooms, but then it sort of died). Because of our lack of foresight, those who were behind us are now going to get the chance to pass us up.

I would still buy one though. It looks really cool!

long term

[jack79]

Long term political and economic development will need a higher proportion of society educated at a higher level. These laptops are a wonderful start IMHO. But it also requires cheap knowledge if the impact is going to continue throughout a child's life. Once you get up to degree level knowledge becomes hidden away in obscure academic journals and pricey monographs. It doesn't take a university education to understand this stuff but right now it requires a university education to get hold of this stuff. Organisations like http://www.jstor.org/ and Ebscohost have online monopolies of most academic journals and charge a fortune to access them - despite most research coming from publicly funded scholars (at least in the UK). This kind of knowledge needs to be opened up, not just in the third world but here too. File-sharing pdfs, anyone?

are you ready for....

[Anonymous Coward]

the $20 a month teenage programmer from africa to take your job?

this is said half jokingly and half serious...

my guess is the joke half disappears sometime within the next decade.

Re:are you ready for....

[808140]

Good for Africa.

They need it far more than we do.

Unfortunately, what with the corrupt dictatorships and instability that have plagued the region for decades, it seems unlikely that western companies would invest in them.

India and China are largely stable and have a well educated populace. Africa (with the notable exception of South Africa and possibly Egypt) has country risk much higher than most companies are prepared to deal with.

Intelligent Design comes pre-loaded!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately,
all the educational material will be developed in Kansas.

3rd World students will be taught that 'Science' is like 'Witchcraft' and need not be believed.

The Laptop obviously couldn't have built itself,
so M.I.T. is the Home of the Gods and all
must bow down and pay tribute to the mighty, techological overlords.

ebay

[christiancc]

How long before these laptops begin appearing on ebay as people look to make over 2 months income on a quick sale? They could even use the laptop itself to facilitate the sale! Im sure many in the developed world would see a tough 100 dollar notebook as quite the bargin. How they distribute these will be an extremely interesting challenge.

What a load of bollocks!

[Ancient_Hacker]

So, the MIT folks must be very clever if they:

• Know what the world needs.
• And funny, it's just what they'd like to play with.
• And they have figured out how to build something for less than the cost of the parts.
• And engineers capable of making a rugger and reliable machine, for peanuts.
• And they've figured out a distribution system, where there isnt any.
• And a support system, where there isnt any.
• And a repair shop structure, where there are not any.
• And a manufacturer willing to build something with no profit margin for them, and a billion headaches.

Prolly happen just about when pigs fly, or Bruno Nagorski kisses Pricess Di. Oops, that rhyme is bit outdated.

GOD PLEASE MOD PARENT UP! PROVES GP WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get why comments like the parents don't get modded up, why does the Slashdot community have to be left misinformed?!?