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

[superid]

In other news, cardboardium alloy futures plummet.

"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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

[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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Perfect

[Moby Cock]

These things are going to be so stable!!

Quanta never crashed, definitely never crashed.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

[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.

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)

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

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

[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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!