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Intel Unveils PC for Developing Nations
Poppler writes "Intel has announced it will produce a PC aimed at developing nations, the 'Community PC.' Instead of giving out minimal PCs to as many individuals as possible, Intel wants to sell these machines to 'kiosk owners' who will rent out use to their village. Price TBA. How does this stack up against the $100 laptop, in terms of helping the developing world?"
Based in Cairo, Egypt here. We have long slagged the USD 100 laptop project, since for that price you can get a more functional second hand pc. What the market here needs is more efficient hardware trickle down mechanics, not new architectures.
Now, if they're building a kiosk, then the lest they can do is make the machine fnction in multiseat mode. This is possible both using Linux and windows.
But then again, that would translate to lower Intel sales, so I guess this is just another case of developing markets being receptacles for unworkable ideas developed by some guy in a suit in NY or CA whose idea of field visits involve brave runs down to the mall.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
These cheap PC for developing countries seem to be getting quite popular at the moment. Is this just a case of people in the technology industry trying to do something nice rather than meeting an actual need ?
I would have thought that other infrastructure is more important to developing nations than having access to a PC.
I'm a medical student and a technophile. I studied part of my third year clinicals in a third world nation with Doctors without Borders. Quite frankly, people who keep pushing for computers to be put into 3rd world nations don't seem to actually visit the poorest (and hence the most populous parts) of those places. The fact is that even a $100 put towards a computer can be better put towards generic versions of prescription drugs. Clean water, food, medical care and education are more important than any internet connection, laptop, or cellular phone. Unfortunately, Slashdot folks don't get it. A computer is nothing more than a tool that only matters when an educated and healthy population can utilize them.
There are lots of places where $1 an hour would be a very significant blocking point against general usage. In locations where a "normal" Internet cafe is commonplace (and affordable), I think that both this device and the hand-driven $100 laptop would be little more than an oddity.
Lets see, high on a rational priority list would be (just off the top of my head here):
...
1) Convince the Muslim clerics in Nigeria that the polio vaccine is not a Western conspiracy to kill off Muslims.
1a) Fix polio.
2) Stop the hysteria over genetically modified food, so that people can grow 'golden rice', rice modified to produce beta carotene, so that people who live only on rice, at least get some nutrition from it.
3) Provide real birth control options for developing nations.
4) Stop pouring money into China.
5) Get the French out of the Sudan, so that the UN can actually fix the problems there.
1001) Get them all laptops, so that the power of the Internet can Change Their Lives.
Seriously folks, stop the laptops-for-everyone circlejerk, and fix the real problems.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
From the article: Intel's Community PC is designed to withstand temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit and up to 85 percent relative humidity, and has a removable dust filter.
See, this is a concrete example of the intelligent engineering behind this particular PC For The Poor. Negroponte's $100 laptop has a hand crank for powering it, but I do not recall hearing how it handled heat and humidity. (maybe he said somewhere but I don't see it)
Still, as someone who works for an international nonprofit that works to improve healthcare delivery systems in "Third World" countries... I am afraid that we are putting our attention and investments into some of the lesser problems. Can you e-mail food to a starving person? Can HTTP protect you from malaria? Honestly it's not the end user who needs reliable computing power and Internet access; it's the medical professionals, ministries of health, NGOs, etc., who need up-to-date information and communication capabilities.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Intel is of course not happy with the $100 laptop since that runs on the AMD Geode processor. Intel is of course focusing on the "fully featured" "community sharing" idea because they want to stop the idea that having a limited CPU is sufficient for most tasks. I think that is the elephant in the room here: For most common tasks, like web browsing, document editing, and e-mail, a top of the line processor is simply not really required. Ars Technica has said it well.
Wanna provide developing nations a PC for under $100?
DONATE your old PC.
Stop being a let's catch the headlines bullshitter and adress the PROBLEM instead of YOUR CORPORATE EGO.
'Developing Nations' have been developing for decades, yet they are still in poverty.
Now why is that? Shouldn't they be developed enough to create wealth and an educated populus? It seems to me that they are kept in poverty to suit the needs of other countries that exploit them. I hope a PC will help them, but I doubt it. Things need to change on a global economic scale first, then these nations might have a chance at creating a 'first world' society.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Does the developing nations need computers? Maybe...
Does the children at these nations need computers? Pehaps...
Does they need better EDUCATIONAL and WEALTH DIVISION policies? You can bet it!
I live at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And I can tell you that most of the children here already has acces to computers. But they don't use them to study, they prefer to user them to play Counter-Strike.
Distribute free computers among the poor populations, and dump them at public schools has NO USE when the average teacher is underpaid... When there arent enought schools... When there is no social programs to make sure the children stay at school... When lots of children go to the local drug dealers to make money, because their mother are unenployed... When these children has a drunken dad, or no dad at all!
Don't get me wrong. I think that it would be fantastic if every children here at Rio de Janeiro, or at Brazil, has access to a computer. But the problem is, nobody is thinking what these children will do with these computers! How they fit within the current brazilian school model?
Computers are not the priority right now. And I gues this is the same situation on every other developing nation. Lets get the basic stuff first, like EDUCATION, and JOBS, and HOUSING... Then the governaments can start giving away free computers to garantee some more votes on the next election.
Just my $0.02
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
1 person using a 100.00 laptop for 10 hours a day or 10 people using a 1000.00 laptop for an hour a day each. While only an hour that person could probably get more done than with the 1000.00 kiosk machine and more people could gain access too it.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler