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Working Model of MIT $100 Laptop a Hit
capt turnpike writes "The One Laptop per Child association and its chairman, MIT Media Labs's Nicholas Negroponte, unvelied a working model of their $100 laptop at the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) show, and the little laptop that might was a hit. It's got a version of Fedora Linux, is rugged, and each unit will work as part of a wireless mesh automatically. From the article: "However, as Negroponte put it in his address, One Laptop per Child isn't all about the laptops. The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn." eWEEK.com also has photos."
From Negroponte's address in TFA:
Negroponte then went on to say:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I know it's meant for children, but damn that thing screams Fisher-Price ugliness!
Isn't that the $130 laptop? Or did they manage to bring the cost back down?
This isn't trolling or anything, I am still in American public schooling (public uni.), and this quote struck me as odd.
The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn.
I'm in an engineering degree, and I'm shocked at the lack of this ability in college students at american schools! I'm tickled by the fact that we're so set on helping foreign education, when our own educational system is in dire need of....some bloody education.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Seriously, aren't bright reds and oranges supposed to make you a little nuts if you're surrounded by them too much? The orange would make me ill after a while. Are we trying to make the users hyper-active or something?
Everything else is great, but PLEASE TONE DOWN THE COLOR.
This will all be worthwhile when we have first African child get first post on Slashdot (and then gets modded down. Welcome to the interweb, n00b!).
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I was there at the event and got to try it after Nick spoke. It is definitely not a toy. He said people might be able to buy one in the U.S. next year (paying double so half could buy a kid in another country one). It was very light and the screen (which has two modes) was really nice (1200 x 900). The orange plastic was cool and the little rabbit ears (looked almost like devil horns) move freely to get optimal wi-mesh signal. It's definitely Fedora, but is "skinny" as it has been modified somewhat.
The specs?
500 Mhz chip
128 MB RAM
512 MB Flash Memory
Yes, because we all know that all third-world countries shouldn't be provided with anything that would help their economies move forward. Instead, they should only receive insufficient food handouts, remaining in their impoverished third-world states forever.
I thought is was to reduce the desireability for theft.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
>The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual
>and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn.
So in other words, a global pandemic of people who don't know how to RTFM.
I've heard it described as the technology gap will, and has already started to push the first and third worlds further apart. More importantly, it is becoming ever more difficult to improve the living conditions and economies as this gap widens.
This device and plan, if it can be pulled off, could be the single most import thing in helping third world populations on a large scale over the long term.
It's not the technology itself, per say, but the communications that it enables. Getting cell phones into places is a similar type of project. Things as simple as finding the market price of lets say rice, can apparently make big diferences in building economies.
Soccer Goal Plans
It's cute! It's almost kitsch!
It'll be a hit with the /. crowd which will drive up the price through demand.
Heck, I already want one for the kitchen!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Here's the page where you can pledge to buy one for triple the price, donating the other two.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Oh my god you punched a hole in the brilliant plan of supplying laptops instead of food to the starving people.
How about this: These laptops aren't meant to replace food, and they're not gonna throw them after people that's starving instead of food. But these people also need to LEARN. And that's what these are for. Man, you people just wanna feed those poor kids instead of learning them how to feed themselves.
-- Linux user #369862
How long before we find these on eBay for $200? Money and food probably means a lot more to many of these people's immediate needs then a laptop for their child.
Does anybody else think the demo model resembles a Speak & Spell, with its bright orange color and its handle? :)
All your sig are belong to us.
Not everything is about the very bottom of the impoverished ladder.
This is for children that have overcome the daily quest for food.
Why do people insist on thinking this is for children that dont have any food and live in ditches.
Not every poor person falls into that category.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I think you're confusing this with the Amish laptop.
... so that by age 18 they can change their professional name to "Bob" and tell Americans weaned on PlayStations that "WiFi connections do not involve 'gremlins,' sir;" "any software company offering free pornography for each install probably should not be trusted" and "there is no 'feng shui' component on your iPod, and if there were it would not be defective, and if it were defective then no, it would not be covered by AppleCare."
Yay capitalism ;->
I think this is a great humanitarian initiative, showing that there is more to living than just staying alive. I'm not saying we should stop with the food, but this here is very much a Good Thing.
From the article:
"This working model sported many differences from the early prototypes that were seen previously. The biggest change is that the laptop no long features a directly attached crank for powering the laptop in areas without electricity--the crank has now been moved to the power supply."
Seriously, aren't bright reds and oranges supposed to make you a little nuts if you're surrounded by them too much?
Not really. Colors have different effects depending upon the culture. For example, Americans tend to associate orange with hunger, but in the far East it is considered soothing. Some colors do have cross-cultural implications, like splatters of red increasing blood pressure and stress, but those are usually less prominent. Offering a variety of colors provides options for different regions.
Oh that's right. $800 back in 1997. By Moore's law, that should be about $25 now. So with a color screen, USB, and wireless, $100 isn't bad. Lost the touchscreen though. :-(
As initially envisioned, the laptops sported a hand crank on the side to generate power, but Negroponte has scrapped that idea because the twisting forces that would be bad for the machine. Instead, some form of power generation device, likely a pedal, will be attached to the AC power adapter, he said.
You said you could get it done..more than half the world did not believe you. You have got it delivered within such a short span. Its sheer brilliance compared to certain companies promising certain products and the timelines getting forwarded by years. I remember a specific company doing that about a product called Vista :)
Speaking about the OS, great that it uses fedora core.. Open Source for a Good Cause. Way to Go.
BTW, fire the designer for that orangey look..uh..wait..may be this might catch on like the old ibook..keep him for the timebeing.
"The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own..."
As a future warning for Fedora community, expect sudden jump in n00b questions in several different languages. Also keep in mine that those n00bs are mostly children. Please refer "RTFM" as "Read The Fine Manual" and "STFU" as "Stop Talking Fast, User".
And most importantly, every time you use "LOL" and "ROTFL" and "LMAO", just remember; You are laughing with them, not at them.
Thank you,
concern citizen from Softer Gentler Linux community
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
This has been addressed many times.
Yes, kids need water, food, vaccinations, a place to sleep, and if they and their communities are to be successful and self-supporting an education also.
Is a $100 laptop extravagant for supporting an education? No,because it's multipurpose tool offering information, tutorials, communications, and soon after distribution locally built & relevant applications. By offering these kids access to the larger world, to an education in their own language, to contribute and distribute materials, it gives they, and their communities, opportunities to break their cycle of poverty.
It's not an either/or proposition between food and education, BOTH are needed, one fills the short-term need and the other the long-term.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
So there :-)
I have strange feeling that this laptop will be more popular in western world than in developing countries. I, for one, will definately buy it, just have a nice new gadget. $100 is cheap for any gadget.
:)
But hey! I have an idea. Let's make the price $200 in western world and each computer that we buy, will give one for free to someone in developing countries! $200 isn't much for a working computer. Plus, atleast for once, you get a good feeling for buying something that you don't really need
Wait, I thought the US computer makers said a $100 laptop was impossible. 8 months later, it's done.
But then, IBM said it was impossible to keep its HD and PC businesses before selling them to Hitachi and Lenovo. Those companies are making big profits continuing the business.
Making money and new products when you're positioned at the top of the computer business is now so easy that it's looped all the way around from "impossible" to "inevitable".
--
make install -not war
I know schools here in the US who can't even put a computer on the desk of any of the kids; many share 5 crummy machines between two (or more) classes. There are many places here that could use these things; I don't understand why there is no interest in marketing them right here. It seems like having electronic books would be cheaper/easier too?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Actually, the crank idea seems to be trashed now. Plans seem to be for a foot-pedal device. I will of course do the hamster-in-a-wheel mod.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Oh, you're speaking of the laptops. I thought you were speaking about Slashdot.
I love seeing poor grammar in a post about education. It's a hoot. :)
You are not the customer.
Yay, now that Nigerian prince can email me directly!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
It certainly does, and if you were paying any attention you'd find lots of organizations devoting to addressing those immediate needs.
OTOH, if they don't deal with the longer-term needs of education and economic development -- both of which dirt cheap, mass-produced computers that are nearly universally available can help with -- those underlying problem driving those "immediate needs" that are temporarily alleviated by cash and food will simply worsen, and more cash and more food will be required to acheive the same results.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004543.html
I found this bit fascinating:
Typically, people starve in the third world because they lack the skills and/or resources to provide anything to the global economy that can be exchanged for food, and because the subsistence agriculture that they do have the skill to do is inherently risky, threatened by pollution and climate shifts, and often not the way that the people in power can make the most money; further the crop failures are as often the result of bad agricultural methods as they are by actual drought.
Enhancing education helps deal with the underlying problems that cause starvation. OLPC is certainly neither the whole solution, nor the component most related to short-term needs. But there are lots of other groups involved in addression the problems of the developing world, and pissing on OLPC because it doesn't address all the problems, or the one piece you think is most immediate, is idiotic.
The people doing OLPC aren't hurting the efforts of organizations like the Red Cross or Food for the Poor. Indeed, it seems to me like it goes hand-in-hand with the efforts of small business development and microcredit in the third world that have demonstrated that building economic capacity by providing basic assistance aimed at enabling individual productivity can have considerable effects in dealing with the crushing poverty that produces hunger.
This is, really, about helping developing societies develope more of the tools they need -- in terms of human capital -- to feed themselves.
I can Google and order food off the internet with my laptop, but I can't afford it because I have NO MONEY.
As I have said before, improve the infrastructure of most third world countries so that every citizen has access to food, clothing, shelter, clean water and medicine, then I will support the idea that children in these countries need a computer.
Children need to eat before they need to learn! MIT doesn't seem to think this is necessary, they even developed a computer that will kill off a child starving of faminie more quickly by forcing them to have to use up what little energy they have to wind their computer up. I think this will be used as a form of genocide. Don't worry about sending in the Red Cross, just air drop cheap laptops, that will take care of all those poor starving children!
Sorry, this will be a gimmick product that will sell well in developed countries but I don't believe for a second they will improve the life of third world children.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
There's already lots of education in Africa supplied by organizations like the Peace Corp and churches. Trouble is, it's targetted at the best and brightest children, who, after they do well in school, tend to leave and never come back. What 3rd world countries need is broad education that includes adults. The networking aspects of this machine could help with that. The children could be less likely to leave if they are in constant contact with their peers, learning from and teaching them and their parents. Imagine, distributed schools. Imagine a beowulf cluster of them. (:-)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
1: Dump the desktop metaphor.
2: Get rid of menu bars, status bars, process bars, window borders, titles etc.
3: Go full screen for every application
Unfortunately we're still getting portable machines, handhelds, pdas with very limited screen real estate ridiculously cluttered by windows, borders, menus, button bars, status bars. Qtopia for instance is a pain in the arse because of this.
Deleted
Let me inform you...
The most powerful thing in the world is an idea.
Some people want to blame guns for violence, but one little book called the "Communist Manifesto" is responsible countless deaths.
Also, there was this guy named Ghandi with an idea. Ever hear of Martin Luther? Or how about Martin Luther King Jr.? All of those were just otherwise ordinary guys who had ideas that changed their countries.
I am not an expert on Africa. However, I get the impression that part of their problem is environmental (climate, drought, etc.) but part is in-fighting, genocide, corruption, and political instability. Education cannot change the environment, but it CAN spread ideas and combat the other problems. History has shown that one powerful leader at just the right time can make a huge difference. If these laptops can help to shape just one child who will grow up and be a leader who promotes peace and honesty, that will be well worth the effort.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Is it just me, or does this laptop remind anyone else of the short-lived Apple eMate? In fact it seems to me that the concept of the computer was lifted from Apple. Gaudy colors, slimmed down OS and functionality, built rugged for students. Obviously the tech in the machine is a decade newer and as such likely significantly more powerful, but the same principles apply, low power footprint, small screen, readable outdoors.
s tats/emate_300.html
Outside of some modernization of the concept and technologies can someone show me what this device does that the eMate didn't? The eMate even lasted up to 28 hours on a single charge. I don't want to discount what MIT Media Labs has accomplished, but it looks to me like another rip-off of Apple technology.
Here is a link to a picture and the specs of an Apple eMate 300.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/messagepad/
Actually the laptop comes with its own fold-out dance pad power adapter. The more you boogie, the more the battery is powered! If you want to use one of these babies, you best get to steppin!
-Aedon
(rolls fist out a la Breakin 2, Electric Boogaloo)
And when you do go that route, might I suggest "pinfo"?
Actually, I kinda like both. I like 'man' pages because often time I have no idea what section will answer a particular question I have. Since a man page is flat, I can just grep through it looking for phrases I think relate to the issue. With Info pages, everything's all subdivided and categorized, so if I miscategorize my question, I'm going to be there awhile.
That said, Info files tend to be more complete than their man-page counterparts.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
I put it up on the internet at: http://wcitvideo.com/?p=16 Full 28 minute keynote of the One Laptop Per Child chairman at the WCIT in Austin texas last month.