Intel to Make Cheap Flash Laptop

sien writes "In a similar vein to the One Laptop Per Child computer Intel have announced that they intend to produce a similar cheap laptop using flash storage.The entry of Intel and the declaration that Microsoft intend to get Windows running on the One Laptop Per Child machine suggests that there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage."

Comments

Um...ya,

[jrwr00]

Didnt theu already try this, and failed?

Re:Um...ya,

[jrwr00]

i found it http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/ 18/0733221

Re:Um...ya,

[Total_Wimp]

Didnt theu already try this, and failed?

I think the project is doing ok. I've seen one in person. It has 2GB of flash memory, a 200mhz processor, a Microsoft OS and high speed wireless internet. It happens to also be one of the most portable computers I've ever seen. They didn't get it down to $100, but even with the storage upgrade it was only about $350. I think they called it a Cingular 8125.

Nice machine, and it even makes phone calls.

TW

Re:Um...ya,

[CheeseTroll]

Hey, you're teasing me, aren't you? I'm supposed to be getting that exact model sometime this week for work, to replace our 957's.

I'm told that as a business customer, we're actually getting the units for free with the usual 2-year contract.

Re:Um...ya,

[saboola]

The 8125 has 320 x 240 resolution on a 2.8 inch screen. Screen + keyboard does not a laptop make. By this definition the $19.99 leapfrog learning unit would be defined as a laptop, but it really is not.

Re:Um...ya,

[Total_Wimp]

I think it depends on your viewpoint. The OLPC initiative was willing to make a lot changes in the typical configuration of a laptop in order to make their project work. They have a much smaller screen, a different OS than most people in the world use, a non-standard and very small "hard drive" and an unusual wireless configuration.

On the other hand, I have a full-size external keyboard, an email client, a web browser, the ability to use quite a large number of off the shelf software packages, many of them free or open source, and a full blown SDK available from the OS vendor.

It may not technically be a laptop, but I'd be interested in hearing your take about the things the make the OLPC more of a laptop than my 8125? After you get past form factor, I think it's going to be kind of hard.

BTW, can you guess why I wouldn't include a Leapfrog? No open programing support. If you can't write programs for your general-purpose computer, then it's not a general-purpose computer.

Re:Um...ya,

[saboola]

• A 7.5" display versus a 2.8" display
• A 1200x900 resolution versus a 320x240 resolution
• A real Keyboard (70+ keys, 1.2mm stroke; sealed rubber-membrane key-switch assembly) versus a Thumb Board
• The ability to run a variety of operating systems versus the ability to only run Windows Mobile

I can keep going, but I dont need to...

Re:Um...ya,

[Total_Wimp]

The resolution was a suprise. I thought I had seen something much smaller elseware. 1200x900 is actually pretty good and 320x240 actually kind of sucks.

However, I have a bluetooth (cheaper IR ones are available) external keyboard which negates the keyboard issue. And on the operating system I gotta ask, who cares? Were PowerPC Mac laptops any less laptops because they only ran the Mac OS?

I just looked at the specs of the OLPC laptop. In general, it's much better than I remember it being. Cheaper than my 8125 too. But that doesn't mean my handheld couldn't perform most of the role of a laptop if asked to do so, which I do on a regular basis. I agree that we should send the OLPC laptop to a kid in Africa over my 8125 any day of the week. But that doesn't make my 8125 any less a cheap "laptop" in functionality.
TW

Strange new world.

[Big Nothing]

Microsoft and inexpensive seems like an odd combination to me. Same goes for flash drives. Durable? Yes. Cheap? No.

Re:Strange new world.

[melonman]

In my experience of an embedded linux application using CF for storage, the CF wasn't especially durable if you thrash it like a hard disc. Surely the main point of using this form of storage is to reduce power consumption, which either means much longer battery life or (probably in this case) much cheaper batteries. It also helps to get to a point where you don't need a fan, which in turn means less moving parts and less holes in the case for the monsoon to pour through.

Re:Strange new world.

[bcmbyte]

Microsoft is almost never inexpensive, but M$ sure seems to be leaders in making profit in just about everything they do. Just as with the XBox, they enter the market, price their goods, make a profit and laugh all the way to the bank.

Re:Strange new world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap-ness is relative. Generally, flash drives are more expensive than standard platter based hard drives on a $/GB scale... however in making this OLPC, they need to go by total cost. So although a $60 100GB laptop drive is a better value, a $10 1GB flash drive falls in line with overall budget.

This also doesnt take into account for size and other components needed to operate an IDE/SATA/scsi controller versus an onboard flash drive (which could share other components, such as the usb controller).

Re:Strange new world.

[robaal]

Isn't MS losing money on the whole Xbox operation though?

Re:Strange new world.

[Locutus]

ah but you forget that in markets outside of desktop Windows PC's( all other markets ) Microsoft has lost billions and has paid companies/businesses to use their products. They've lost over $8 billion on Windows CE, they are losing billions on Xbox, they plan on losing billions on Zune. Granted, they've only been willing to deal with the OEM or distributor with regards to moving money to them for pushing the product but it shows Microsoft is willing to use its billions in monopoly money to purchase marketshare.

Don't be surprised to see Microsoft subsidizing an MS One Laptop Per Kid project to get kids hooked on Windows instead of some other product. Intel may be looking to get back in bed with Microsoft to get more Intel chips in devices. If only to limit AMDs marketshare since profits are going to be slim in these. And IMO, Negroponte's willingness to 'work with' Microsoft is foolish. His and their goals are polar opposites and helping Microsoft in any way will only help destroy his project. IMO.

LoB

Re:Strange new world.

[Voicesinyourhead]

Flash Drives get cheaper by the day. Hell my company hands them out with the logo as a marketing tool. They are far cheaper then most other storage options. Durable? Alot of them break really easy so I don' know where you got durable from. As far as Microsoft being cheap, that is most likely a relative term.

Robust?

[AliasTheRoot]

Isn't the weakest point of a laptop the LCD screen rather than the hard-disk?

Re:Robust?

[AusIV]

Probably, but this isn't a chain that's only as strong as it's weakest link. If you can cut costs on hard disks, but not on LCDs, you're still saving money.

Re:Robust?

[hey!]

Perhaps. But we don't have any practical alternatives for LCD yet.

Re:Robust?

[mce]

In my experience, the 2 weakest links are the disk and the hinges of the screen. Personally, I've only had disk problems, but looking back at the company laptop problems I've seen, the hinges (that is: including the electrical connections inside) probably come close in second place.

In terms of "what can you do about it that the customer is willing to pay for", the disk is by far at the top of the list. Apart from the complete newbies, customers do understand that there are major risks involved in disk failure. They also feel the heat and hear the noise. So they're willing to fork over a few extra greenbacks to get a no-heat, no-noise, no-mechanical breakage replacement solution. There's no way you're going to convince them to pay more for better designed more robust hinges, however. Besides, no vendor will want to admit to having done a bad job on those in the past.

Re:Robust?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you'd stop putting apostrophes where they don't belong you could have saved a byte in that post.

Re:Robust?

[Hognoxious]

the 2 weakest links are the disk and the hinges of the screen.

And the batteries. Three. The three weakest links are the disc, the screen hinges, the battery and the keyboard.

Re:Robust?

[werfele]

Three. The three weakest links are the disc, the screen hinges, the battery and the keyboard.

Amongst the weakest links are such diverse elements as the disc, the screen hinges, the battery, the keyboard and the nub thingy pointing device.

Re:Robust?

[Sporkinum]

Three. The three weakest links are the disc, the screen hinges, the battery and the keyboard.

Amongst the weakest links are such diverse elements as the disc, the screen hinges, the battery, the keyboard and the nub thingy pointing device. Don't forget an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms...

Re:Robust?

[ShaunC1000]

Actually, working in a helpdesk I've come across far more damaged hard drives in laptops rather than damaged LCD screens. I would agree that the LCD would probably be the weakest part, but maby people realize this and are more careful with the screens? Who knows.

Re:Robust?

[AliasTheRoot]

shush. we've all read enough 10000 word run-on posts on the net, dont harass the man for over punctuating - the alternative is far worse.

Re:Robust?

[Lord Ender]

NOBODY expects the failure of A LAPTOP!!!

Re:Robust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. I totally, agree. The problem--that is to say, overpunctuating--is not, as bad as it's alternative.

Good save

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Kudos to daddypants for correcting the link timely.

why?

[ocean_soul]

Why would they want to give every child a laptop? Aren't there a lot of children with more urgent needs?

Re:why?

[TheThiefMaster]

Yes, but these companies don't make their money on food or shelter.

Most of the OLPCs are going to countries where the people have shelter and food and water, but are in desperate need of decent education.

Plus I'd love a small laptop I could play simple games or read web-pages on while I had nothing better to do. I have a pocket pc, but software is lacking for it and typing on it is a pain. (I'm not a child btw)

Re:why?

[errxn]

Come on, what could *possibly* be more important than making sure every child in this country can post mindless drivel on their MySpace account at any time?

Re:why?

[Ngarrang]

Each charitable group should work with their ability. If you are good at clothes, then so be it. If you are good at food, then so be it. Computer companies are good with computers. Duh! Right? So, solve that need. The needs of these poor countries go beyond just food, water and shelter. They need education so they can lift themselves out of poverty. And since this world is becoming heavily computerized, give them the tools that will benefit them. I fully support any effort to get computers to the poor.

Re:why?

[drinkypoo]

Those of us who actually want to help the third world are against simply giving them food. If you're going to give them anything, you give them what they need to produce food. Otherwise people just have more babies because they're healthier, they're even further beyond their ability to feed themselves, and now you have MORE mouths to feed. Or children to die of starvation.

Giving them computers, if done properly, is giving the gift of education. The only way out is through.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember the last time I took a laptop out to the garden to plant things.

My son, meanwhile, has serious motor skill problems and can't write, and no one is handing him a laptop. We've got his basic needs covered, and it would actually make a difference, just like giving these kids more than some feel good tech show-off piece would make a difference. A better one.

Re:why?

[drinkypoo]

I know I shouldn't feed the AC idiots, but I guess I'll take one for the team and record my rebuttals for posterity.

I can't remember the last time I took a laptop out to the garden to plant things.

When was the last time you looked up on the computer something about plants?

If you deal with plants regularly, and your answer is not a date in the recent past, you are officially a tool. The internet is the greatest research library that has ever been.

My son, meanwhile, has serious motor skill problems and can't write, and no one is handing him a laptop.

That's good. He might drop it.

We've got his basic needs covered, and it would actually make a difference, just like giving these kids more than some feel good tech show-off piece would make a difference. A better one.

Well, why don't you give him a computer?

The fact that you have time to post on slashdot indicates to me that you could provide him one.

Perhaps no one is providing him a laptop because that's your job, and you are able to?

By the way, you're some kind of arrogant ass to think that handing your kid a laptop will make a better difference in the world than giving them to kids in the third world. Your child is no more or less valuable than anyone else's.

Re:why?

[empvirus]

I agree, though my biggest fear is this: they are given the laptops, but not shown how to use them, or inspired to learn more. Even most people here in the U.S. see the computer as an end, not as a means, very unfortunately. Damn you, Microsoft, for putting planting the idea of having a computer just for the sake of having one. Okay, rant over. Let's hope we can take that into account when we deliver the things, eh?

Re:why?

[Yold]

I don't know how giving very poor people computers will solve much of anything. Give a poor family a computer in the united states and see how well it improves their situation...
I don't think that providing laptops to children in these countries will do much to bridge the enormous gap that exists in world wide education. Computers can be a useful tool, but they are more of a supplemental tool than a stand-alone teacher. I have grown up in the information era, and I certainly have learned a hell of a lot more from my college and highschool education that computers alone. Sure there will be some kids or people that can usefully use laptops to learn valuable skills and research other economically beneficial things, but I believe this will be a very small minority of the population because especially in rural 3rd world areas there is VERY little education (or at least from what I've read and seen in rural Mexico, and Tanzania).

What is the best way to help impoverished people? Well... hope to make them more self-sufficient like the parent said. One way to accomplish this is via "micro-loans", a program established by the World Bank with a few other charity programs running their own equivalent. Basically, loaning people small sums of money (usually less than $100). You'd be suprised at how far $100 will go in terms of establishing farms or creating small industry. The repayment rate is over 90%, but the number of loans made is far less than is needed. Investment leads to growth, simple as that, economics 101. The only problem is that many people don't want to loan their money out at a very low interest rate to accomodate the neads of developing communities, so the lenders are restricted to those in the non-profit category, doing it out of the goodness of their own heart.

The sad reality of a world market-economy is that wealth becomes very unevenly distributed as the labor becomes more and more specialized. In other words, people who don't have valuable skills (usually obtained through education) get left further and further behind. There are many people living in very similar conditions to over 1000 years ago. They are malnourished, poor, and destined to labor VERY HARD to put barely (or not) enough food on the table.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone ever heard of ITO (Intel Tablet Organization)? They tried to produce a wireless product similar to this "laptop" (targeted at children). After two years of development, the product was inferior to the competition, overpriced and still didn't work right. It would be surprising if they do it right. I would expect a company like Apple to do a better job on something like this. I do support helping the poor, I just think it should be done right.

Re:why?

[joshetc]

Interesting as I learned how to read and write in elementary school and learned how to teach myself in middle school. I stopped going to highschool after 1 1/2 years of not caring and learned everything I know via the internet and experiencing things on my own.

Your point is still somewhat valid though as most of these children have little or no reading capabilities. I just figured I'd point out that the usefulness of college and high school is overrated. People can and will learn on their own given the opportunity.

Re:why?

[drinkypoo]

Not only that, but lots of places there simply are no schools. Having a laptop is better than nothing. QED, the OLPC project is potentially useful in certain cases.

I'm with you, by the way. I got my CHSPE when I was in my second year of high school and escaped the stupidity of high school a couple years and change early. I subsequently went out and worked for a living, got hired by IBM out in TX (I was born in CA) and later came back, worked for Cisco, worked for some others... and never even got a diploma, although I have a legal equivalent of course. The point is that formal education is arguably less effective than self-guided study.

I think the real problem with our current system of education is that children are not really encouraged to learn. We just shove some material at them and demand that they learn it. No children will be left behind, so keep up, you little fuckers! Not that we ask very much anyway. But what would it be like if we, say, halved class sizes and did away with a standardized curriculum? I suspect that all students would end up far ahead of where they are now. The solution, I believe, is to support children's desire to learn. Tie the things they need to learn into their interests.

Of course, we cannot do that with our current funding and we cannot do that with our current accreditation requirements. Even if we had the money to double our teaching staff, we could not get so many "qualified" teachers. Unfortunately what qualified means is that you've been brainwashed by ECE classes into being prepared to follow the insipid curriculum down to the letter. And because of the restrictions placed on school funding, you must absolutely follow the curriculum.

As I am fond of saying, our school system is designed to produce lowest-common-denominator factory workers. Too bad we have a dearth of factory jobs. Students are trained to not be the nail that sticks out, lest they get hammered down; conformity is your watchword. (Trust me, I was the nail that stuck out, and I got pounded regularly. And no, not in the ass. Thank you.) Students are trained not to question authority. Students are trained to sit in rows and perform repetitive tasks.

This is one of the major reasons why I have avoided having children, which doomed at least one of my relationships. I've narrowly missed it a couple times - my most recent ex-girlfriend and an almost-girlfriend both bred with the guy after me. I feel like Keanu or something, dodging bullets and saying "whoa".

Back on topic: Even reading could be taught by the computers. You could have a program that read aloud and showed them text with appropriate alliteration. Kind of like the learn-to-read portion of the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer in Stephenson's Diamond Age, but without any intelligence tied right to it. You could get the fundamentals just using hypertext.

Re:why?

[ShaunC1000]

I agree. I actually know a person who has volunteered in certain parts of Africa by teaching basic computer skills. She was saying that the goal over there is to teach people enough computer skills so that they would be able to take online classes. Now, you could argue back and forth about if an online course is better or worse than a real life course.... but since there is a shortage of teachers over there I'd say its a hell of a lot better than nothing. I would support programs that gave free online classes to people in 3rd world countries. Trust me, if I thought sending them food over and over would get them out of poverty I'd be all for it. But.. we need to get these people to help themselves.

Third computer offered by India

[Utopia]

a third computer being offered by an Indian company

Any idea what company this is?
And what computer is being offered?

Re:Third computer offered by India

[jambarama]

Competition will only serve customers. If there are three vendors selling the equivalent of an OLPC, it can only help the governments/poor looking to buy these things. The companies will have to compete on services and price, which is good. That is, so long as no one vendor can put excessive pressure (think bribes/threats) on buyers.

As much as I don't like Microsoft cruft they deserve a chance to get into these markets as much as anyone else, so long as they don't get into these markets by using illicit means. Plus, the OLPC project does have a significant headstart, and they have thought about the project very carefully. I can see a poorly executed Microsoft Windows CE implementation failing pretty miserably.

Re:Third computer offered by India

[gwayne]

Simputer comes to mind...

Re:Third computer offered by India

[Locutus]

Microsoft does not "DESERVE A CHANCE" IMO and I will say that you will win the lottery before Microsoft actually competes in a way we'd a business to compete( ie better, faster, cheaper, etc ). They've never done this and nothing has shown that they've experienced some kind of epiphany which moves them to being truely competitive. IMO.

It is good to see others attempting to join the market for enabling the worlds kids.

LoB

I think it's too expensive.

[IANAAC]

Afterall, I can get a Toshiba Satellite with 512M RAM, 60G hardrive, 15.4 screen for 400 bucks from Best Buy.

Plus, it's too big to be a PDA, too small to be a usable laptop. Maybe a decent movie player, but that seems about it.

Re:I think it's too expensive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed...

Making it durable and low power may add to the cost, but when you consider how much they're taking out of a standard laptop (screen size, drives, ports) that price seems ridiculous.

Re:I think it's too expensive.

[algoweb rulez]

in some countries 400$ is more than a month's wage... so maybe your toshiba is kind of unaffordable

Re:I think it's too expensive.

[gfxguy]

I absolutely agree with you. When I looked at the specs I couldn't believe what a piece of junk this is for the price tag... 7 inch screen? No CD or DVD drive?

Moreover, I've been to Brazil; kids are on the street during school hours because their parents can't afford books and school supplies (yes, they need to buy their own books). The article even points out that some schools don't even have electricity! Is this really the best way to help those kids? "I realize you have no food, books, pencils or paper, but now your school has computers. Congratulations!"

I'm not pro-socialist, I think schools should be run privately, but I will make this complaint anyway - a privately run school system (one run in a particular community through private donations) wouldn't be worrying about computers when their students couldn't buy supplies. They'd take those donations and apply them where they'd do the most good.

Total Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously Intel & MS are feeling lonely after this One per Child thing and want to play to!
I might add that even in the UK wholesalers are selling New(i.e. not used) machines with old specs for
£225 +VAT which is around the $400. Why would anyone purposely go out and buy one of these knobbled efforts when there are plenty already about? Doh! My Brain Hurts!!!

Cheapness aside....

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

If I could buy a drop in flash memory replacement for my laptop's hard drive and the economics made sense (say US$500 for a 20gig device), I'd buy it tomorrow. 99% of the data that I use could easily be fit in that amount of space and if it didn't, I could keep relatively cheap removable flash cards around for data that I need once in a blue moon. The increase in battery life, decrease in heat, and decrease in noise would be well worth the additional expense for me.

Re:Cheapness aside....

[jrwr00]

i thought you could already, http://www.smartm.com/product/product.cfm?productI D=37 seem to only get up-to 8gb tho

Re:Cheapness aside....

[gEvil (beta)]

Pick up two 8GB iPod Nanos for $250 each and duct tape them onto your laptop. As an added bonus, you can RAID them! Sure, it's not 20GB, but at 16GB it's not too bad... : p

Re:Cheapness aside....

[AikonMGB]

So what, you normally use around 20.2GB?

Aikon-

Re:Cheapness aside....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen plug and play 8GB ATA-66 devices in a 2.5" laptop form factor for in the US$300 range. RAID0 of 3 of those is a bit more expensive than US$500, but I suspect the day we'll see a 20GB drop-in replacement for a mechanical hard drive for a few hundred bucks isn't too far in the future.

Re:Cheapness aside....

[Lumpy]

It's a moot point now. The newest Segate laptop hard drives do an incredible job now.

I replaced the drive in my D640 with a 100gig seagate low power 5400 rpm model and the laptop runs cooler and I get longer run times. Also you cant hear the thing spin anymore. You used to almost burn your hand on the spot where the hdd was now it's only warm to the touch.

Upgrade to a decent laptop drive with current tech. Most laptop makers shove low grade crap in there to keep profits up. (dell certainly does as well as HP)

Re:Cheapness aside....

[thue]

http://www.supermediastore.com/super-talent-super- flash-16gb-ide-flash-drive.html

16GiB IDE flash drive for $500.

Re:Cheapness aside....

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You aren't going to fix the biggest power draws, that would be the CPU and screen. The Pmax of a notebook hard drive is 2.5 W, typical power draw may be 1W. For a typical notebook, if you make a drive that doesn't take any power, I think you would increase battery life increase by maybe ten minutes.

I have not had a problem with hard drive noise. My notebooks hard drives are nearly silent if they make any noise audible to me at all. The CPU fans are a little louder, but still that's not very loud.

Re:Cheapness aside....

[archen]

If you run Linux or BSD this is already feasible. Assuming you have a PCMCIA slot you can use a CF card with an adapter as a regular hard drive. CF cards currently max out at around 8Gb. With two slots that would give you about 16Gb for under $300. The main limitation is that swap, logging, tempfiles, etc must happen on a memory disk. That means you might have to invest more in RAM.

Re:Cheapness aside....

[zuiraM]

A 12GB pendrive will run you about USD 200-250 around here, and our VAT is exorbitant, so that goal is already within reach.

Re:Cheapness aside....

[Bert64]

Well, with a low power CPU you could get away without a CPU fan too...
Also, flash makes the machine more resilient to knocks and sudden movement.
What would be a nice idea tho, is to kit a laptop out with a huge amount of normal ram, or slightly slower ram made from obsolete chips... So you could cache the entire OS/apps, and then spin down the drive. You could also have a separate battery to keep the ram live while the rest of the machine is turned off, and a program/procedure to resync the data in this area onto the permanent storage of a physical (potentially external) disk.
Or you could just store the OS and apps in here, and store your data on flash devices, so no problems if the power is lost.
This setup would not only use less power, but also be faster than a spinning drive.

Excellent idea!

[Overzeetop]

It would be even better if they could put it in a truly portable format. With flash it could even be an instant-on type device! To make it small, and inexpensive, they should keep the screen size and resolution low. MS could probably develop a smaller footprint of win/outlook/office. I'm sure Adobe could slim down their reader a bit. They might even consider going to a "tablet"-like format with a miniture keyboard.

Of course, to be really innovative, they could add wireless and connectivity to the cell high-speed data networks. God, this could be awesome!. Oh, right; so much for cutting edge, I guess.

Re:Excellent idea!

[zullnero]

Google the term "Sony UX-50 Palm". Check out the images too. ;)

Yeah, there's a market for personal flash storage computers. Unfortunately, it's small and crowded. However, when it comes to handheld industrial PDAs, the market becomes a lot bigger.

Re:Excellent idea!

[Overzeetop]

There really is a pretty full market between the wristwatch and the almost-workstation portable. At $400, I'm not sure intel is going to be all that successful. Granted, my linked phone/pda retails on the eopen market for $700, and is sold with strings attached for $300 in the US. Commercially, a consumer machine in this class will be little more than a novelty, imho. Maybe the new generation can deal witha laptop as a sole machine, but I need a real sized keyboard and a mouse to get work done efficiently. Most of the time my laptop is used away from the docking station is for reference (I have PDFs of most of my technical references) in the field, and to surf. Since the reference part can't be done on a machine with limited storage, and complex PDFs seem to take a lot of horsepower to view, that leaves surfing as the primary use for such a "toy." *shrug* If they can sell it, more power to them.

No sense.

[MBCook]

As a third world country, why should I buy this for $400 when I can buy OLPCs for like $150?

As someone in a first world country, why should I buy this when I can buy a REAL laptop for $400 or under thanks to sales, rebates, the used/refurbished/surplus market, etc?

As for the optical drive, this made be think that I use mine for two things: ripping CDs and installing software. I can see why someone wouldn't need on in an OLPC type situation (or where they want to sell these), not to mention that they are fragile (relative to flash memory and other parts of the computer).

Re:No sense.

[massysett]

As someone in a first world country, why should I buy this when I can buy a REAL laptop for $400 or under thanks to sales, rebates, the used/refurbished/surplus market, etc?

Yeah, I can get a luggable for $400. Big screen, no battery life, delicate. Don't mention the hassle of rebates, which is so bad I don't even factor them into prices when I'm making purchase decisions. A truly portable laptop costs at least a grand. I'd like a OLPC-like device myself. Very rugged, and powerful enough to run vim on (perfect for taking notes in meetings.)

Re:No sense.

[Lord Ender]

Your laptop has moving parts. A flash-based laptop does not. All other things being equal, no moving parts is WAY preferable to having moving parts. They last longer, are more reliable, use less power...

What will really be accomplished by these?

[emor8t]

I think that NickNeg had a great idea with the OLPC. Make a computer, portable at that, cheap enough for most consumers to own.
But if it can't run most of the new programs or aa new OS for that matter, the overall use of this thing is going to be nil.

Even if that is not that case, assuming it runs everything swimmingly, what is to stop people and corporations from buying a ton
of these to use for various reasons. I mean suddenly your boss can afford to give you a laptop and say, "Hey I need this report finished by morning, heres a company laptop?"

It's not that this will be the case, but its the actaul effect of these cheap portable devices going to be what it's creator had in mind?

Imagine a Beowulf...

[eno2001]

...bah... forget it! No one thinks that's funny anymore except me.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf...

[Anonymous Coward]

*sniff* But I still think it's funny. Every time I read it, in every single thread. It gets so much funnier every time I read it. It's like Family Guy, where they take a lame but cute joke and stretch it out until it's no longer funny, then downright annoying, and then so much longer that you begin laughing hysterically. You know, like the episodes where Peter hits his shin or stubs his toe and goes "sssssssss-OW! sssssssss-OW!" for like 20 seconds straight. Yes, that kind of funny, because you drive the rest of us so insane with these cliches that we cannot help but find it funny and laugh hysterically.

And it's not the joke that's funny, it's the lame writing that is funny. So, in the end, we are laughing AT you, not WITH you.

Have a nice day.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf...

[eno2001]

You obviously fail to understand the finer points of humor on many levels. Too bad for you.

Handheld Industry

[drewzhrodague]

there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage

Ah, so *there* is where our handheld industry went! And with all seriousness, I have been horrified with all of the handhelds since the Palm first came out. I can't understand why they don't build general-purpose cheap and fully-functional small computing devices -- that aren't obtusely designed and super fucking expensive.

I'd love to get my hands on one of Negroponte's OLPC laptop thingies. If Microsoft is getting into the market, lets all hope and prey that they are ultra mass produced, and flop terribly.

Re:Handheld Industry

[Locutus]

I think the handheld market moved to a point where companies grew too large to sustain low margin products. The low-end Palms( III and m105 ) are great handhelds but they made very little on these and as Palm was purchased by larger and larger companies, they insisted on more profits. And, IMO, one of the main reasons cheap devices have disappeared is the marketing guys need for a color screen and more ghee-whiz features. The battery power and processing power requirements drove the system prices up up and up. As you mentioned, there is no longer an entry level handheld outside cheap mobile phones. And phones suck as a PDA because they have small screens and the 3rd party software just isn't there like it is for the Palm PDA market since the device is so tightly controlled.

I know people who still use their old Palm III based handhelds even when they could easily purchase some other device. They love the device because its battery lasts for weeks with heavy use and the screen is easy to read and use in almost all lighting conditions. I'm sure they also appreciate how easy the Palm pen interface is.

LoB

Sounds virtuous, however Intel is still bad

[Anonymous Coward]

They're polluting and not paying taxes in New Mexico.
http://malfy.org/

It's a simple business reaction

[suv4x4]

Intel and Microsoft are big corporations. Big corporations:

1. can't afford to take chances when there's even slight chance a startup may become a viable competitor
2. can afford money-wise and resource-wise to react to even the silliest of those potential competitors

I'm not saying OLPC is silly, but I'm just saying: don't make a big deal of it. Intel/MS just want their options covered.

Let's not forget that cheap computers for poor countries were made long before OLPC (and all failed) and will continue to be made. The least thing: it'll be fun to watch the development in this "market".

Re:It's a simple business reaction

[Locutus]

But now, Bill Gates has billions in his foundation to purchase his way into the hearts and minds of the worlds youth. IMO, he may be retiring from Microsoft, but he's going to be peddling their 'stuff' in direct competition to the One Laptop Per Child project. And he'll do it not because it's the right thing to do but because he thinks the Microsoft way is the One Microsoft Way and only way. IMO.

LoB

$400 is not cheaper than $100...

[ravee]

In fact, it is 4 times costlier than the one hundred dollar laptop being developed by OLPC. And more over, OLPC project is purely a humanitarian project aimed at improving the education of the children. Where as Intel's project even though commendable is no where near to the lofty ideals of OLPC.

Re:$400 is not cheaper than $100...

[geobeck]

It wasn't long ago there was an article here about a 20GB flash drive being $750-$1000. If an entire laptop containing one is now estimated at around $400, these things will be cheap quite soon.

Re:$400 is not cheaper than $100...

[mobby_6kl]

The $100 laptop doesn't cost $100. It costs $150 and that price, according to the article, doesn't include shipping. OLPC would be manufactured in China, while Intel plans to do it (at least the final stages) in Brazil. Think jobs & additional demand for the better education these computers would be providing.

I'm not making the final judgement yet, I haven't even seen the complete tech specs for it, or results of the trials.

Re:$400 is not cheaper than $100...

[Locutus]

Smart move by Intel to include having the manufacturing done in the country they're selling into. It will make the devices more expensive but it gives the government a good public marketing pitch for keeping the money local. I don't know if they could even consider using Microsoft on these if they're pitching localized financial spending.

Unfortunately, this doesn't scale out to all countries but will work in the largest of markets. You know, the ones that'll have the most press potential. Interesting plan...

LoB

Re:$400 is not cheaper than $100...

[CAIMLAS]

Who gives a fuck?

Intel apparently sees a commercial profit in something like this. I happen to agree - it's basically what I've been looking for in a computer for years.

If 3rd world countries want their own computers, they should build the infrastructure to have a use for them, not expect 1st world countries (that is, the US) to come up ways for them to use inexpensive computers. We're doing them a disservice anyway - they need things like domestically-initiated agriculture, industry, and commerce, not more handouts.

It's warm-hearted, half-brained things like what OLPC is doing which leads to 3rd world countries like Nigeria: the only thing they use technology for is to gain access to richer, more affluent societies and prey off their gullible, warm-hearted people more thoroughly.

There's this thing called the INTERNET, where...

[Medievalist]

...you can look up stuff.

Might I recommend the OLPC home page for starters - which is where you end up if you type "one laptop per child" in pretty much any search engine (or your browser's search bar, if you have one)?

Take ten seconds to learn about something before commenting on it, and you will look like a genius compared to most people around here. Your question is answered in the WIKI, and probably about ten thousand other places already.

Ahhh...

[Zebra_X]

"suggests that there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage."

No? India and other countries are already miffed that the U.S. has tried to foist substandard hardware on their "poor" populations to make technology more accessible.

While the intentions of OLPC program are commendable it really ignores the fact that basic education and literacy - a prerequiste for computer use, and power are fundamental components that are not readily available in developing areas of the world.

Re:Ahhh...

[emj]

Actually you should take a look at the software being developed for OLPC, there are some cool things that lets you be very creative without reading.

Re:Ahhh...

[Hognoxious]

India and other countries are already miffed that the U.S. has tried to foist substandard hardware on their "poor" populations

Considering the quality of the software they send back, I'd say it's a tie overall.

Re:Ahhh...

[DragonWriter]

While the intentions of OLPC program are commendable it really ignores the fact that basic education and literacy - a prerequiste for computer use, and power are fundamental components that are not readily available in developing areas of the world.

Er, no, actually its aimed at exactly the problems of basic education and literacy (content aimed at that is as much part of the project as the hardware), and a big part of the design was aimed at making it usable independent of power infrastructure.

Your charges show complete ignorance of the OLPC project.

Re:Ahhh...

[mrchaotica]

...it really ignores the fact that basic education and literacy - a prerequiste[sic] for computer use...

This is false! Basic education and literacy are not prerequisites for computer; on the contrary, computer use is a good tool to achieve basic education and literacy! Just take a look at this experiment -- the guy put a computer in an alley and just left it there with no instruction whatsoever and the ghetto kids taught themselves how to use it!

Furthermore, he suggests that giving computers to schools all over India -- and teaching the teachers to stay out of the students' way (which is the primary problem with computers in the classroom here in the US) -- would be a great idea, but he thinks 100,000 computers could teach 500,000 kids and would cost $2 billion. This was before the OLPC project; with the $150 laptop that cost could be cut by an order of magnitude.

A. Portable thin client for under $100

[davidwr]

And the Final Jeopardy question is:

Q: What do I really need in a laptop?

I figure NX, vnc, GoToMyPC or one if its friends, or any other remote-screen system will let me get to my office or home PC from the road or around the campus and really, that's all I need in a laptop. Of course, it should have local audio/camera for videoconferencing and local printing for when I need it.

As far as truly local/disconnected operation goes, I need lightweight viewers for Microsoft Office so I can read and print files and do presentations, a notepad for taking notes, and maybe some games to keep my mind sharp when I'm in a motel room out in the boondocks. I'll need a small amount of local read-write storage for these files, which should auto-sync with the office machine upon connect.

Just make sure I can add on new wireless technologies as they become available.

Cheap or not

[kentrel]

All I want is something that I can use to read PDF files on the go. I originally bought a handheld because I desperately needed to read documents while on the move - even one of those hand held ebook readers would have done the job, but I have yet to find something that does everything I need to.

Of coures, now that I think of it, most of my woes were down to the fact that PDF is a horrible format at the best of times, and no matter what you just can't read a PDF document on a handheld.

If these laptops turn out to be cheap why can't we get handhelds with bigger screens, or even dual screens that fold over to fit in your pocket. I'm sure they exist, but they're either expensive or lack the complete functionality that I need, or frustratingly, it turns out that there is hardly any free software available.

Re:Cheap or not

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want is something that I can use to read PDF files on the go.

Huh? I think you logged onto the wrong website. ;]

Re:Cheap or not

[kentrel]

Hehe.. well unfortunately PDF files have become the standard everywhere. Even my government documents are all released as PDFs, yet even on a modern PC they can be slow to load - the standard reader lacks even the basic features I expect out of HTML or TXT readers and trying to convert PDFs to HTML is like trying to get a PS3 and a Wii before Christmas.

Re:Cheap or not

[Orange Crush]

Acrobat Reader 7 was considerably better than prior versions but is still kindof a beast. If you want a nimble PDF reader and use windows, I'm pretty fond of Foxit.

Re:Cheap or not

[metamatic]

Sony eReader?

Re:Cheap or not

[Grishnakh]

Of coures, now that I think of it, most of my woes were down to the fact that PDF is a horrible format at the best of times,

What in hell are you talking about? PDF is anything but a horrible format. It does exactly what it's supposed to: it's a Page Description Format. Take a PDF and send it to your printer (either converting to Postscript or send it directly with the newest PDF printers) and you get a page that looks exactly like the document that was created, independent of platform, printer model, etc. Even better, the format has been stable for over a decade; view a PDF created in 1995 and it'll look just like it did back then. Best of all, it does this job very efficiently. Compare any PDF document to a TIFF or JPEG version of the same document; the PDF is much smaller, and faster to view on a decent viewer like KPDF. (Of course, the newer Deja View format is much smaller even than PDF thanks to its advanced wavelet compression, but this came out some time after PDF, and it also never caught on because of the stupid practices of the company which owned it. It's also no faster for viewing.)

Maybe you don't like it because it isn't the best format for saving textual data for viewing on handheld screens. Too bad. It wasn't designed for that; it was designed for making it easy to save scanned-in or electronically created documents meant for printing. Your complaint is something like complaining that WAV files ripped from CDs suck on MP3 players because they're too big and don't have ID3 tags. Use a more suitable format instead of complaining.

Windows CE License: $4 or $15

[everphilski]

Windows CE Licensing, you would probably want 'core' ($15) as it comes with Word and the other goodies ...

*profitable* Market?

[awfar]

said better elsewhere...

Microsoft/Intel cannot lose the Windows mindshare, marketshare, niche market, quarterly analysis, exposure, or allow the embarrasment of missing a potentially revolutionary nascent technology or low-budget competition.

How much is the exposure worth? Brand imprint? Visual or Process (how to do things) imprint? Said to be lots.

They would do the project(s) at a loss.

Re:*profitable* Market?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but I read this a bit differently...

This is just to instill doubt in potential OLPC customers about which one they should buy. If they can keep them from buying OLPCs long enough (and having to choose can be a real project killer in any bureaucratic environment), the OLPC will be dropped due to lack of firm customer commitment, and that cheap Wintel thingy will quietly be cancelled.

It's just good'ole FUD.

Things Could Get Interesting

[carrier lost]

Seeing as how MS seems to favor a $100 price-point for its OS, the laptop would have to cost $0.

If that actually happens, and then if, by some remote chance, refunds for the Microsoft Tax were suddenly made mandatory (by a state's law, say, Massachussetts). Wowee-Zowee. Free laptops for everyone, courtesy Mr. Gates!

(I'm not holding my breath)

MjM

market

[flawedconceptions]

I think that there is a huge market for a low-end, pretty laptop. If Intel designs and markets it correctly, it will be the next "must-have" for college students. If the specs and price are right, I'd happily sit one on my parents' desk when replacement time comes around. I do my work on a desktop with a nice big monitor and I have a beat-up desktop at home: my laptop needs to give presentations, keep me in touch while travelling, and not break when airport security plays with it.

But what I really want is a PADD.

Re:market

[mrchaotica]

But what I really want is a PADD.

You and me both! Why do the device manufacturers not seem to understand this? The closest thing to what I want would be the Apple Newton or the iRex iLiad, but they're just a little bit too limited. The iLiad, for example, would be almost perfect but for the crippling lack of USB host. And if it were a convertible tablet, it actually would be perfect.

What's cheap about flash?

[greengarden]

I am not sure how a laptop with flash memory would be any cheaper than one with a hard drive. Also, Microsoft is not going to be doing this for free, so the OS would be adding to the cost (unlike one with Linux). Last but not least, flash memory has a limited number of read/writes, and it gets slower as it approaches that limit.

I like the idea of a cheap laptop for the world masses, I just don't see how this fits the requirements.


Cheers,

Paul C.
Sr Developer
http://www.jbilling.com/ - The Open Source Enterprise Billing System

Form Factor Form Factor Form Factor

[sammyo]

And loose the concept of a laptop. Do I know what to make of it? Would I be posting here?

There is something that I would carry with me contstantly. But do you
need a full Vista? Do you need a useable keyboard? How much 'disk space' do you really need?
If it had integrated wifi, cell/w bluetooth, media options, gps? And was LIGHT and COOL and
LOW POWER?

Maxi-Ipod-Mark-VI

Re:Form Factor Form Factor Form Factor

[CAIMLAS]

Here's a synopsis of what I'd want:

- about as big as a thin hardback novel, maybe a bit longer/deeper (whatever) for the keyboard
- at least 9 hours of battery life, running cool
- running something as simplistic as Wince 3.0, but as accessible as the later versions (ie minimalism without compromising function)
- CF, PCMCIA, USB host and client ports
- any power adapter for it would be unobtrusive and lightweight (i'm thinking 'ibook')
- preferably on an 'open' hardware platform so when it ceases being supported I can (say) slap linux on it and still get some increased functionality
- 512M operational memory (RAM)
- aside from OS ROM/flash, about 2G of flash would be more than sufficient (say a total of 3G) - it is, afterall, routinely syncing with somethign like a fileserver or desktop. you're not going to need that much data at anyone time, period. not on a device like this.
- Xscale 400Mhz would/should be fast enough
- audio would be niceb ut not needed at all
- sceen size of around 10"-12" diagnal.

Re:Form Factor Form Factor Form Factor

[Darth Hubris]

We had a prototype of the device you are mentioning back in 2000, it was called the IBM Workpad z50 http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/documen t.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=BMOE-46XPTL. I have one. It runs WinCE 2.11. Using it's built-in compact flash adapter, and the upgrade to 48 Mb, it's possible to run NetBSD on it. http://www.tux.org/~bball/z50/ This could work.

What about flash's limitations?

[mstahl]

Doesn't flash have a finite read/write limit? Isn't that kind of important to know if you're using it as a hard drive that *might* contain swap space, might contain files that are read and written a lot? What about the fact that flash can only be erased in blocks? Hard drives are cheap, reasonably robust (it's been a long time since I've broken one), and for the time being can hold a tremendous amount of data in a small-ish package. Why not work on making the more immediately sensitive parts more "robust", like someone mentioned above with the screen?

Re:What about flash's limitations?

[JCondon]

"Why not work on making the more immediately sensitive parts more "robust", like someone mentioned above with the screen?"

Because Intel and Microsoft don't make screens.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

[everphilski]

It is actually sub-$300, better specced than an OLPC, several *gigs* of memory (512M in the OLPC) and a faster processor. This is beefier than an OLPC and built to survive a harsher environment than a standard notebook. It fits a need, IMO.

engadget's review from 2 months ago.

Re:Makes a lot of sense to me.

[smoker2]

It is actually sub-$300, better specced than an OLPC, several *gigs* of memory (512M in the OLPC) and a faster processor.

Well, actually :

a)"The Classmate PC is also now being labeled as "sub $300," From your link. (My bold)

b)"Although the final price has not yet been determined, Intel says that it will probably start selling them at about $250, and reduce the price to $200 as the volume of orders increases." (My bold) My link

c)It has 256MB RAM as standard and 1GB Flash. Intels product brief [4 page pdf warning]

It looks to me as if they are designed for completely different markets, Intels aim is to get developing nations on the "Upgrade" treadmill, whereas the OLPC project is actually trying to help out in as inexpensive and unobtrusive way as possible. Plus you need mains power for this Classmate PC, whereas the OLPC has a hand charger.

Oh, it does have a faster processor, so give yourself a consolation point.

Re:Makes a lot of sense to me.

[grcumb]

Plus you need mains power for this Classmate PC, whereas the OLPC has a hand charger.

Well, that's a show-stopper. In the country where I live, that removes 80% of the population from the market for this device.

More likely

[Shivetya]

3. Big corporations can afford such small expenditures.

Why? The return is so great on the investment. It would probably cost less to offer tens of thousands of these things that to pay for their name to be favorably placed in major markets around the world.

Re:More likely

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

4. Big corporations know how to get press releases into the IHT by referring to another "cool" project.

It doesn't matter that they're not competitive on price, or even whether the device will ever actually appear.

Durability

[jlebrech]

I think the durability of storage goes, Magnetic, Solid-state, Optical.
Most optical drives dont last longer than 2 years.

Because they can

[yoprst]

that's all

Re:There's this thing called the INTERNET, where..

[Anonymous Coward]

Take ten seconds to learn about something before commenting on it, and you will look like a genius compared to most people around here.

Sssssh, don't give away our secrets!

We fixed that part already...

[pointbeing]

Aren't there a lot of children with more urgent needs?

I haven't seen a lot of this in the tech journals but I understand that almost all of the laptop's components are edible - so not only will giving every child a laptop improve social networking it'll also keep third world kids from starving to death.

Need food? Don't have any of that but here's a laptop.

Re:We fixed that part already...

[cbacba]

I wouldn't advise eating one. After all, we're being told every day there is a pending disaster of a hazmat nature with all those dead computers.

While maybe it's possible to do, I'm not at all convinced that is is a good thing to allow kids to have computers, at least not until they have the knowledge to design and program one (and I use the term design to mean circuit level, not plug boards into a box). Such efforts could result into creating a generation of vidiots, actually, we seem to already have one here in the US (shades of that shoddy sci-fi novel series Perry Rhodan). At best, it means the kids won't learn multiplication and long division or be able to truly create the basis of rational thought.

Some have considered that the creation of socialism/communism was actually a plot by capitalists to prevent the rise of competitors or the exploitation of natural resources in 3rd world countries. Perhaps this is the plot to prevent intellectual competition.

While it's true that computers could be used for improved education, it's also true that the they're also used for games and the creation of a virtual reality unrelated to reality.

Also, what happens when the technology changes? Is it time to create a new computer to give away to those who have insufficient productivity or opportunity to feed themselves? And, assuming the education part works, what will the world do with a generation of programmers and data entry clerks when it becomes necessary for most to become familar with shovels, lawn mowers, hammers and other tools needed to make a society function?

Flash cheap? No? Yes?

[yabHuj]

No: Flash is more expensive per GB when measured in quantities.

Yes: look at PDA memorey requirements, or PCs just for Mail, Web and a bit of letter writing - there 1 GB is plenty. And in Flash still cheaper than the cheapest HD (80GB or where is the cheapest HD nowadays?)

Re:Flash cheap? No? Yes?

[Dr. Smeegee]

I agree: plenty of size for what the projected use would need. (Though I'm sure most kids can find ways to use whatever space you provide them + n.

Another thing to look at is the ease of repair. I'd much rather replace a CF chip than a hard drive, wouldn't y'all?

The upgrade path would be a bit cheaper as well, one would think.

I have to say, I like the whole idea of giving a bunch of cheap, limited hardware to kids (regardless of socioeconomic status). I have visions of the Genius Colonists in Fredrick Pohl's Starburst "sliding the board across the floor". (A reference to a psychological experiment where groups of kids were given lengths of rope and two boards and asked to cross a room from point-to-point without touching the floor. Of course the kids all tie the ropes to the front of the boards and use them like skis to shuffle across the room. Then they are given a rope and one board. The kids do the same thing, except they stand sideways and use their hips to effect the sliding motion - the funny thing is, it's always faster to use one board and one rope, but no one ever tries it until the 'extra' rope and board are removed from the plenum. :-)

Of course, one could consider Rumsfeld's 'experiment' in supply, deployment and maintenance funds in Iraq as a nice collary.

How do we build these now?

[scottsk]

I'll bite - where are the parts lists, schematics, etc to build this now? I have a 1GB USB drive - what do I attach to it to make a computer? Particularly one that can play MP3/OGG? Where's O'Reilly's hacks magazine when you need it? I mean, with a Linux bootable distro and a RAM drive, this could be pretty slick.

Re:How do we build these now?

[xtal]

You could do a pretty good job with a nanoITX, and a small TFT. The keyboard would be the biggest challenge to do cost-effectively. Then there's the matter of getting it in a case.

I've used a industrial PC with no HD as a primary computer in the field before. It worked well. Looked like a flat slab of metal connected to a screen though, with a half-size keyboard.

Re:How do we build these now?

[metamatic]

What you want is a VIA Antaur system. It's like the VIA EPIA mini-ITX C3 systems, but tailored for laptop use.

e.g. http://www.sub300.com/port.htm

Wth?

[Zex_Suik]

Hey I love Slashdot and all, but why are you linking to another news site and not Intel's,

Re:Wth?

[Zex_Suik]

hey nvm I noobed out for a second...apparently there is a ton of pictures and descriptions of the machine out there that I hadn't seen yet. forgive

Well it really should be...

[fury88]

Same goes for flash drives. Durable? Yes. Cheap? No. Durable? No. Cheap? Yes. Flash drives IMO aren't that durable but they are pretty inexpensive I think. Depends on the type I guess.

Re:Well it really should be...

[Wite_Noiz]

I think he was referring to no moving parts and cost per GB. Using these criteria, flash is less likely to fail from careless usage and much more expensive per GB. However, the maximum writes per block (albeit approx. 1 million in high-end flash) might be a limiting factor. If you think about how much HDD work any OS performs when doing normal work, the lifetime of these 'drives' is significantly lower than a physical HDD. As soon as some of the newer flash tech becomes commercial viable, things are going to get very interesting for the HDD market, though (oh, the speed!)

Re:There's this thing called the INTERNET, where..

[Hognoxious]

Wow, you aren't full of yourself. Much. Why isn't the program called OLPCWAHFAS?[1] I read around the site and they come accross as middle class ninnies solving the wrong problem in the wrong way.

[1] Work it out yourselves, I can't be arsed.

no market

[JustNiz]

Making windows run on the OLPC laptop has nothing to do with perceived marketability.
Microsoft are just trying to establish/maintain a monopoly on schools software. They are trying to brainwash kids into the microsoft mentality so they've got customers for life.

prototype of Microsoft One Laptop Per Kid device

[Locutus]

;-)

http://www.hasbro.com/playskool/videonowjr/

LoB

I'm probably blind, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...where does it say that the laptop contains a 20GB flash drive?

thank you, moderators! (no really, I mean it)

[drinkypoo]

Note that this got a funny mod. It is funny, because every time one of these stories comes up, someone makes a comment like that, and then we get a brand new flamewar about this topic.

I think an appropriate solution to comments like the parent is to alternatively mod them "funny" and "redundant", which to my mind, are both true. (Certainly the latter is.) Do it long enough and you can drive their karma into the basement :P

It would also be accurate to mod it flamebait but that one's harder to have come through metamod.

Very insightful comment. I wish I had mod points.

[CyberLord Seven]

Everytime this discussion comes up someone asks why computers should be sent when there are other needs. Your comment was direct and to the point. I only wish I had been the one to make it. :)

Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[Comboman]

No matter how much RAM you have, Windows still seems to need a swap file that is constantly being written to (not to mention all the writing to the registry). Given that current flash technologies have a limited number erase/write cycles, I hope the flash-based hard-drive is replaceable (CF card maybe?).

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[LWATCDR]

I would bet this would run Windows CE or Windows Mobile or what every they are calling it now.
If not I am sure that that you can turn off the swap if need be.

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[Anonymous Coward]

It might not be your stock Windows XP. There is Windows XP embedded and Windows CE. So it looks like Microsoft cam make things run without swap when they have to.

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Right on the swap, but I don't think it's really a big problem if you make a few changes in the memory management system.

How often is the registry written? Isn't it mostly on software install/uninstalls? I really don't see a person needing to install tends of thousands of programs.

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[Electrum]

No matter how much RAM you have, Windows still seems to need a swap file that is constantly being written to

Nice FUD. You can disable the pagefile in Windows XP.

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[Anonymous Coward]

None sense, XP embedded runs from cd or dvd. Do you boot to your knoppix everytime you want to work on your computer.

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[evilviper]

No matter how much RAM you have, Windows still seems to need a swap file that is constantly being written to

True for 2000 and previous versions, but as of XP/2003, you can disable swap completely without adverse side effects (if you have 512MBs or so).

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[slashdot.org]

No matter how much RAM you have, Windows still seems to need a swap file that is constantly being written to (not to mention all the writing to the registry). Given that current flash technologies have a limited number erase/write cycles, I hope the flash-based hard-drive is replaceable.

Nah, that's old news. Tons of current Flash implementations have a transparant 'load balancing', combined with much improved erase cycles. Look at the datasheet for some modern Flash devices, and do the math. The last time I checked it on a 4GB device, it would take 10 years of continuous writes before you'd hit the write cycle limit.

Re:Windows + Flash HD = early failure

[Bert64]

That's a step backwards...
With 3.1, you could disable the swap if you had 8 or 16mb of ram, and performance was hugely improved (not sure why, i imagine the swapping system was just incredibly poorly designed).

Mobile phones

[Rob Kaper]

Within a decade, mobile phones will be the primary computing device for the majority of the market. Yes, you'd connect it to a docking station at home and at the office so there's a proper input device (keyboard/mouse) and output device (TV/monitor).. but for 90% mobile devices will be powerful enough to handle e-mail, the interweb and calendar/groupware functionality.

Heck, even as a software engineer the only reason I use a laptop is the lack of a proper Wifi, keyboard and screen for my phone.

Re:Mobile phones

[Anonymous Coward]

My major issue with cell phones as computers is that you can't do anything on a cell phone without paying for it. It's pretty much entirely controlled by the company who sells you service. Also, cell phone batteries aren't quite good enough to do the wi-fi thing like a computer can, although that might be better in the time frame you've proposed.

Re:Mobile phones

[Lord Ender]

You must not engineer much software. How does Visual Studio look on an iPaq?

Re:Mobile phones

[Rob Kaper]

Sorry, I forgot that all software is written using Visual Studio. I suppose what I write in a simple text editor could not possibly qualify as software.

Re:Mobile phones

[Lord Ender]

Actually, I'm a unix guy. vi is my primary text editor. But, for coding, I would hate to work with something that doesn't at least have syntax highlighting and code folding. Argument hover-shadowing and method/property completion should be there as well. I've never seen such an editor on a hand-held. The only reason I mentioned VS is because it is the most well-known development environment that has those four essential features.

If you do actually code using just a text editor, do you spend half your time tokenizing in your head, looking for syntax errors, or just looking up whether the method you want is called .get_lenght, .get_size, .count, or whatever?

Or maybe you don't make mistakes and have a perfect memory. If that's the case, I envy you :-)

You're right that we will soon start to think of "computers" as "LCD, keyboard, and mouse connected to a handheld cradle." But I don't think we are nearly there yet. Especially for developers (which is why I ribbed ya).

Re:Mobile phones

[Rob Kaper]

A decade is actually a very long time. We went from consumer market Pong to Netscape 1.0 in a decade and from Netscape 1.0 to a a fully functional J2ME Opera for mobiles in another. I'd be very, very surprised if we wouldn't have a useful J2ME (or equivalent) Visual Studio or KDevelop for mobiles in 2016, let alone vi(m), joe and emacs.

(You might be right about my memory. I like syntax highlighting (when it works), but I can do without looking up methods. I don't even attempt to write down anything significant until I am 99% sure of how a specific task or stand-alone part of it should look like. By the time I launch an editor, I'm usually already done coding and pretty much all I do is type to translate my thoughts to computer-readable form. Maybe I'm just lucky, maybe it's what happens when you start on a Commodore 64 and have almost 20 years of programming experience before you hit 30.. writing the actual code just isn't the hard part anymore.)

My point...

[IANAAC]

My point was that if I were to spend 400 dollars (which, BTW, is what the Intel Classmate PC costs with much less onboard), why on earth wouldn't I buy a full-fledged laptop?

400 dollars is still 400 dollars, whether for a scaled down laptop or for a full-blown laptop.

Re:My point...

[toganet]

It's not only cost reduction they are going for here, but simplicity and durability. While the screen is still fragile, using flash instead of a HD, and building a more durable case make it more appropriate for children than the Satellite.

So the comparison is acutally $400 for this vs. $400 + new HD + broken hinges repair cost + etc.

Re:My point...

[dreamlax]

I work for Toshiba fixing laptops. I have fixed more Satellites than NASA. The main reason people need laptops fixed is because they don't know how to use them.

Re:There's this thing called the INTERNET, where..

[socalmtb]

There's this thing called the INTERNET, where... ...you can look up stuff.

Re:There's this thing called the INTERNET, where..

[Total_Wimp]

It was a legitimate question. There's no reason reason to chastise him for asking it. I think the fact that he read the origional article and was reading through the comments was proof enough that he was already taking time to learn about the subject.

One good thing about article submiters is that in addition to a link, they also give you a summary. You can learn enough to know whether or not to click the link, and sometimes the summary itself is good enough to tell you what you need.

It's nice that you took the time to tell that guy where to find information, but you could have helped him, and the rest of us, by giving us the short version in your post. It could have kept us on site reading other insightful comments and "you will look like a genius compared to most people around here."

TW

Bought a Jornada 820 - great little machine!

[Anonymous Coward]

After the last thread on this topic, someone mentioned the HP Jornada 820. I was shocked to discover that a whole class of computer - hard-drive-less laptops - had appeared, thrived for a while, and died out, and I never noticed them. Apparently the last and best was the Compaq Aero 8000. I managed to buy a used Jornada 820, and it's really neat! It has a real keyboard, a big enough screen, and huge battery life. I also got a wireless card for it. It could use better software - the browser doesn't support https - but I'm working on that.

This sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shades of the eMate, Batman!

Microsoft's interest in this....

[Trailer Trash]

The OLPC or a similar project is another great way for the Gates Foundation to funnel money back into Microsoft while perpetuating the Windows monopoly. That's why they have such an interest in running Windows on the OLPC platform and making a competing platform. Better yet if the mesh networking doesn't quite work.

I can imagine Bill going to various corrupt governments (look at Thailand right now for an example) and saying "We can run Windows on those things and make them useful for you, and the Foundation will even foot the bill".

CF-based systems and swapping

[Kadin2048]

Just out of curiosity, were you using the CF as swap space? I can imagine it wouldn't last long under those conditions, particularly if the system was also RAM-starved (or any situation where RAM working set). But as a regular hard drive, it seems like it ought to be okay for a while (though I suppose you'd want to disable logging, too, as much as possible). How fast were your systems failing?

I've often wondered how CF or other limited-write systems handle swapping and memory-management. It seems like it introduces a whole new set of trade-offs; in addition to the usual speed vs. cost and speed vs. space on disk trade-offs, you also have to deal with speed vs. system life.

Re:CF-based systems and swapping

[tylernt]

It should be possible to write a Linux kernel or fs patch for a "flash-mode" not unlike the existing patches for laptop-mode. Laptop-mode saves up disk writes (meaning that Bad things happen if you should lose power) and then commits them all in one go. I'm sure you could tune that same idea for flash storage. You would probably need some code in the filesystem so that if an application truncated and then rewrote a file, you could examine which sectors didn't change between the old and new versions, and only commit the changed sectors to flash.

If anyone remembers the old Psion Series 3 handheld computer, it came with removable flash disks and features addressing the flash issue were integrated into the OS. Whenever you made a "change" to a file, the changes were merely appended to the end of the existing file (thus requiring, say, only a 1K write on a 100K file instead of the full 100K being rewritten). If I remember correctly, you could periodically run a shrink operation to commit the changes back into the main file and thus free up the space wasted by the change logs.

Man I miss my Psion...

Re:CF-based systems and swapping

[melonman]

My main experience was with CF-booting wireless routers, with a linux setup that did no logging and had no swap. Total lack of local logging is not great for a router IMHO. The main thing that we wrote to the CF was a single config file, and we also used to remote upgrade the build from time to time. Out of 15 or so routers, at least 2 CFs died over an 18-month period. That hardly qualifies as robust in my view - I'd expect a lower failure rate with hard discs doing far more writing.

We also used IPCop, looked at running it off CF, but decided not to because of mailing list concerns about CF failure when using swap. The recommended fix was heaps of RAM so you never needed to swap, but, at the time, this made a big difference to the unit cost of our firewalls.

Yesterday I bought a replacement hard disc for a client in a high street store for under 50 EUR. Last time I looked the CF adaptor cost almost that much before you add the CF. Obviously the economics work a bit differently if your name is Intel and you build CF-enabled motherboards on a huge scale, but then the same economies of scale apply to a disc interface. I can't see that CF gives you huge savings on component cost, although I can see benefits in terms of footprint, power consumption (and therefore heat) and so on.

Re:CF-based systems and swapping

[arniebuteft]

Well, the goal has to be limited erase-write cycles on the flash memory. Just thinking of a normal operating system, you erase-write on the hard drive most often for a swapfile, temporary internet caching, and document editing. On a CF and fast RAM only laptop, you simply can't have any kind of a swapfile, period. Everything like that has to go into fast RAM. Ditto for caching of internet files. If you knock those two out, I would say that document/file editing isn't going to make too big of a hit. You would only write to the CF drive when actually performing a user-directed SAVE operation, or perhaps for automatic saving. No temp files being written to the CF drive during the editing process. Everything gets chucked into fast RAM. You'd also need to design the filesystem for the CF memory to spread out the write-erase cycles evenly.

Another alternative would be to use a combination of fast RAM, a main CF storage drive, and a smaller, easily replaceable CF card that acts as a go-between for the fast RAM and the main CF storage drive. The idea would be that you can replace the CF card when it gets burned out after a couple hundred thousand write-erase cycles of doing document caching and perhaps temp internet file caching. Last time I checked, a 512MB flash card was going for under ten bucks, who cares if you replace it once a year?

Also, as time goes on, flash memory is getting cheaper, more durable, with more write-erase cycles. Having an easily replaceable CF card for caching your editable files and internet crap would be a big bonus in the ease-of-upgrade category. You might reach a point where you CAN use the CF drive as a swapfile, and can cut down on the more expensive fast RAM in future models of the laptop.

Re:CF-based systems and swapping

[jsiren]

Were I to build a CF-based Linux system (I've been thinking of doing just that), I'd do it much like SLAX, i.e. treating the flash almost as a read-only device. The operating system and preinstalled software would be on a separate flash device, user data on another (to avoid OS being blown away if user data device dies, plus the OS flash could be read-only). Also, all changes would be made to memory and only committed at specific times (at a set interval, on user request, or on shutdown).

Re:CF-based systems and swapping

[arniebuteft]

Yeah, I like that idea. Have tiers of memory, depending on how often you'll write-erase it. Fast RAM for running programs, constant writing and erasing. Then some small chunk of flash memory for a temporary files cache - replace every year or so when it burns out, and it never stores any data except when the computer is up and running. Another, large flash memory chip for the 'hard drive' where you'll keep documents, media, etc., written to occasionally (10-20 times a day?). Finally, a flash chip for the OS and programs - this would almost never get written to - just when installing programs and updating the OS.

Re:CF-based systems and swapping

[timjdot]

Jym Zavada demoed this at the LUG before last here. He got a DSL machine for about $300 and then migrated to another distro. One trick is to turn off inode read counters to minimize hits on the flash and give longer lifetime. His presentation info is at: http://www.trilug.org/?q=node/30

Looks like Intel wants to do the same. With the low cost of ARM and other processors, they are just trying to get in the market before it blossoms. Low cost, good power computing will be upon us at least by 2008. What I imagine is a PDA-like device that blootooth's to a large screen, DVD player burner, and other periphs/household electronics. You can carry the PDA and for the average user it will be fine for a laptop/PC. It'll have the 2in-3in screen but also can have a touchscreen (like Motion computing sorta) that one could carry with it.

Nice to see Intel and others promoting computing. Will certainly be a computer world in a few years. Not too long until everyone alive will have been born after the computers were invented.

TimJowers
http://www.serviza.com/ - Serviza Monster Linux Computers. Power. Power on and GO!

Re:CF-based systems and swapping

[Bert64]

The beauty of laptop mode, is that, short of a hardware failure or user stupidity, a laptop knows how much battery is left and won't just power off randomly. Laptop mode disabled the delayed writes feature when your battery gets below about 10%.

thin laptops means big servers

[Anonymous Coward]

And it makes sense. It is easier to administrate a few servers than many clients.
The history of computers revolves on that choice : how fat the clients must be?
The evolution of technology and consideration of prices makes that the answer evolves
over time: mere terminals, fat PCs, diskless workstation, flash laptops...
But are flash laptops really usable in the absence on a fast network connexion?
How many gigabytes of flash is the tolerable minimum.

Aww, how wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

That they are giving these poor children laptops. Isn't that just wonderful... Perhaps if their AIDS infested, low IQ parents didn't fuck everything that moved, valued hard work, and quit supporting socialist movements they'd get somewhere but that wont ever happen. Niggers in Africa and elsewhere are too fucking stupid and backwards. They are not worth saving. Natural selection has indeed selected them... to perish. The proof of African mental inferiority is proven by their history. Look at Zimbabwe (RIP Rhodesia) or South Africa for instance. They don't need laptops... they need intelligence.

It's called education...

[huckda]

there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage. Schools would die for laptops that cost 100 bucks and would simply run what the sys admins put on the flash image and ONLY what they put there.

Nokia 770 for PDF reading

[Locutus]

This device might fit you needs:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nokia770.a rs/5

LoB

Does Linux make other arches viable for laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of RISC processors that are powerful and don't require a lot of power. Are they being considered for any laptops? Linux and the BSDs would seem to remove the dependency on x86.

Wil Shipley's Encounter with Nicholas Negroponte

[druske]

I enjoyed reading Wil Shipley's take on this and his somewhat humbling encounter with Nicholas Negroponte. Wil's conclusion for the those who don't want to read through it:

...So do you think Nicholas Negroponte will feel like he's lost if his OLPC initiative forces Intel and Microsoft to subsidize PCs for children in every developing nation in the world?

I do not.

Oh, sure, I know he's a proud man, and naturally part of him wants the credit for changing the world. And he'll be (validly) pissed that the Classmate is not based open source and that he's not able to prevent Microsoft from basically using this as a chance to infect the rest of the world with its blecherous software...

But deep down in his heart? He's laughing. He wins.

This is the Intel Classmate PC

[Thag]

PDF brochure is here.

On the one hand, not as inexpensive as the OLPC, and it seems to lack some of the features like the mesh networking.

On the other hand, you might actually be able to buy one, and it should be able to play StarCraft.

Intel FTW!

A "real" computer?

[soupforare]

I thought this concept died in the US along with the HP200LX.

Laptop price points

[HikingStick]

Intel has the idea right (on the business side--I'm not here to argue the socio-economic points of money spent on computers in non-1st world economies), and the track record to know that economies of scale and scope will drop prices.

My question is this? With other players in the laptop market selling machines in the sub-$500 range, why not leverage some of those existing supply chains and commoditize basic laptops (let's set aside the typical supply-chain Wintel duopoly for this discussion), pushing those price points down to the sub $400 range? It just seems that the industry is reinventing the wheel in search of this holy grail of "laptops for the world", incurring additional R&D costs in the process, when they could already move closer to this reality by creating a commodity baseline laptop.

I do acknowledge that in designing cheap laptops for the world there are some key differences in user needs and system requirements, particularly limiting power consumption and minimizing the risk of mechanical failure, but aren't those benefits we all would want to reap in the consumer and enterprise markets as well?

I already have one. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

It's an HP Jornada 820. It's from 1999 and it isn't particularly powerful as processing chips go. You can pick one up on eBay for about $300.

But it's possibly the coolest device I own. It's footprint is an inch or so smaller than a sheet of typing paper, but it has a full laptop keyboard, a big-enough screen and no moving parts. All Flashcard memory. The battery runs for twice as long as that of normal laptop. It has enough screen size to make itself useful where a palm-sized device is not. That is, it's comfortable to read and write on where a palm device cannot even get through a single paragraph without the need for a scroll function. This means you can easily do real work on it, and opening it up isn't like deploying a small RTS factory.

Granted, it's no good for games or your .MP3 collection. And it isn't wireless. But as a light weight, highly portable word processor/reader, it's amazing. I use it all the time. Best of all, when I'm working on it, I cannot be distracted by. . . games, an .MP3 collection or the internet. I've had it for almost two years now, and it has become indispensable.

It would be cool if Intel were to put out a better version of the same thing. There is a real market for a dedicated portable word processor/reader, without the bells and whistles and distractions/irritations of a regular lap top. --But very few players have stepped up to the plate to offer such a tool.

Every writer I show it to drools. They know just how dumb a laptop is for writing; it's like owning a car so you can have a decent glove compartment.

-FL

not looking hard enough

[zogger]

Agriculture is one of the more intensively computerised industries out there right now. I am in agriculture and we use computers all over. In the house, in the buildings, in the equipment, and having a lot of it net enabled is a big help. I mean there is an A to Z list of where computers are useful and are being used in everything from the backyard garden to the highest levels of commercial production. There's some pretty darn neat stuff too, for example, we just bought a few truckloads of corn for our beefers. The guys we get it from use an autonomous tractor to work their fields. That's right, no humans drive the thing, GPS and a computer does it once the field is surveyed once to define the limits and shape (by driving the perimeter once), a computer analyses it and determines the most efficient planting and harvesting pattern, and then goes and does it with little human intervention. Where we live part of the operation is poultry and the houses are heavily computerised, everything, temperature, feeding, watering, electricity supply for all of that, all mostly automated now, and net enabled so it can be remotely monitored and trouble-shot if needs be.

If I was joe farmer in the developing world, I would want at least one computer and net access, for the weather, looking up parts and suppliers, monitoring the markets, learning about new techniques and improving technology, etc, etc. All good stuff and useful. Heck, I use the net just to look up weeds to see what they are sometimes, or to look up more exotic seeds to try for instance, or to look at new breeds of animals, etc. I've ordered a lot of old weird parts for machinery online, because that is a lot more efficient than driving around dealer to dealer. I use the net all the time for stuff like that.

no or limited virtual memory?

[peter303]

File writes are unlikely to exceed flash's 100K lifetime, but virtual memory might. You may get away with eliminating with a couple gigs of core.

kudos

[poly_pusher]

Everyone is too hard on Microsoft. I share the many frustrations people have with their software, costs, and obtuse licensing. However, if Microsoft is going to help advance the development of cost effective flash based storage, I for one can't be critical.

This is SO Newton circa 1997

[Anonymous Coward]

...to bad Steve 'Steved' this project in lieu for heralding the 'iMac' generation, but I guess a company bleeding to death in red ink has its priorities... *eye roll*

This description fits the Newton eMate to a tee, using 8MB Flash RAM or some such amount, plus about the same amount of space in built in Flash ROM apps. All the basics any student would need, with some expandability thrown in for the odd Newton app. Plus, the eMate had the option of stylus or keyboard (with handwriting recognition that pales even today's tablet PC's). Put all this into a near indestructible translucent green clamshell it made for one sweet offer to students. The only barrier was the price (as with all Newton products).

I was *this* close to getting one, but decided to hold out due to rumors of some 'eMate-like' product in the works (Mac-OS Lite they were calling it)...but it never panned out. The rumor turned into the Tangerine iBook, and I had to go back to saving up my dimes (eMate listed @ $700 vs. iBook's $1299).

If I were Steve reading this headline I would seriously consider taking the eMate out of the mothballs and revamping this with some 21st Century slickness (like maybe a color display).

Hard drives are fragile...

[Svartalf]

Vibration and shock are the enemies of most HD tech. Flash is pretty much invulnerable to that compared to hard disks and while it's write operational life is less than a hard drive, it's seek time is nonexistent and it has a superlative read lifespan.

For a device where it's not a simple matter of ordering a HD or popping over to Fry's or CompUSA for a replacement part, Flash, if used right is the right answer even if it's "more expensive" as the cheaper part is actually more expensive in the long-term sense. Until you see something like the rigid foil media technology, where it's vibration and shock characteristics appear to match Flash's and it's read/write endurance exceeds it as well, Flash would be the answer there.

Sign Me Up...

[LEX LETHAL]

Heck, I'd buy a cheap laptop where I can enter data and send it to a remote storage location (email account, remote desktop). I'd gladly sacrifice having a harddrive and optical drive.

Just don't make it look like Strawberry Shortcake and I'm there!

Market has been waiting since 1982

[Anonymous Coward]

"there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage"

Portable computer with flash memory? Try the Radio Shack Model 100, circa 1982. Microsoft had a hand in bringing in that Kyocera product to the US. It was a success, especially with journalists. It stored files in memory and had a built in modem and lcd screen.

What better way to reduce the weight and increase the battery life of a laptop than to ditch the hard drive? The laptop my son carries to school doesn't need more than a couple gig above the OS's needs on it. He could download older school work to the home network via wifi when he gets home. For my work, I'd need something with larger capacity, but a business would be willing to pay for that and I'd love the reduced weight when walking through an airport. A system like this would find archival storage wherever it could find wi-fi access, and that is more and more places.

I wonder if in ten years, only specialized high end laptops needing a lot of storage will have hard drives.

Microsoft will tread carefully here. If $500 buys me a laptop with only 1 gig left after loading Vista & Office, I'd start to wonder about smaller OS's and good-enough, but smaller, applications.

Newbie flash question

[fantomas]

Hi all - so a naive newbie question about flash drives: their operational life is less than hard drives, but how much so?

How about a flash drive in a shared student house firewall box? I've been running Ipcop on an old pc to support a house full of college students who probably all go on line for a couple of hours each day. It seems like overkill to have a big old pc consuming a lot of electricity for this simple job. I love the idea of swapping out the old pc for something a lot smaller and tidier running ipcop off the flash drive as an embedded firewall. My question is - how long would a flash drive last if you're saying it won't last as long a hard drive? I know that's kind of "how long's a piece of string" but can you offer any estimates? weeks? months? a year? two years? cheers!

Re:Newbie flash question

[Svartalf]

If you're using IPCop in flash mode instead of HD mode, you should expect about 2-3 years, maybe 4-5, from the configuration. It avoids writing to the flash constantly, keeping logs, etc. in RAM as long as it can. Flash memory has about a 1-3 million write operation lifespan per any given cell of memory. Newer memory has better lifespans, obviously, and you can pay out the wazoo for a much larger write endurance. In all, HD's have a better write lifespan (Billions or more write operations before failure...) but for power consumption, access time latency, and hostile environment conditions, Flash is still king.

For your configuration, if you've got an IDE CF adapter, enough RAM, and use the Flash configuration install instead of just installing it, it will rock, so long as you've got your configuration backed up, logs periodically backed up, and have a Flash spare identically configureed for it's inevitable failure of the CF...

that nub is aka...

[Anonymous Coward]

and the nub thingy pointing device

also known as the "clit mouse".

I think it's AMAZINGLY cheap!

[mrchaotica]

And just how useful would your Toshiba be when you can't keep it away from dust and rain, and when you only have access to electricity every other week? There's a hell of a lot of design (and therefore cost) that had to go into these things that simply doesn't apply to a normal laptop. In fact, the appropriate thing to compare these with would be a rugged laptop like the Panasonic Toughbook, which would probably run about $2000 for the same specs as the Toshiba you mention!

Talk about spin...

[Duggeek]

Didn't they already make something like that?

I think they've called it the Ultra Mobile PC. (UMPC) Incidentally, I clicked on "hardware" and found amusingly vague specs.

Here's what you do: Just strip-out all the junk (HD, and WindowsXP) keeping the real goods (install around 40GB permanent flash storage, upgrade RAM, expand Wi-Fi with 10/100 Ethernet) and you've got a suprisingly usable brick. Expand further to use CF/SD/MMC/PCMCIA and it becomes ultra-usable. I bet it wouldn't cost all that much in the end.

Add some embedded linux and you're ready to go!

Just how much do they pay people to think up these things anyway? (too much)

Re:Talk about spin...

[daverabbitz]

install around 40GB permanent flash storage If I had to guess I would think 40GB of Flash (in current CMOS processes) would require more power than a 1.5" HDD, probably faster though...

Re:Talk about spin...

[Duggeek]

40GB of Flash...would require more power than a 1.5" HDD

You bring up a good point, and I would agree but for the "mobile" factor.

You can still crash an iPod by throwing it across the room, (same goes for any HD) but not so with an iPod Nano. It will take bump after thump and still keep playing.

You can't beat zero-moving-parts for stability.

Then again, there are advances in "shock proofing" hard drives; Hitachi has led the way in zero-G sensors (parks and suspends the drive within 4" of being dropped) and now Plextor has their alleged "shock-proof" portable drive. (though it has been de-bunked in this extreme testing experiment shows) So much for empirical terms in marketing.

Would buy one for gps readout, email etc

[Jeff1946]

Sounds great for simple tasks on the road, reading email, simple internet, readout for my gps. I assume it would have a USB interface to upload gps maps etc. Obviously a wi-fi as well. Cheap enough to leave in my car. Sometimes you don't want all the bells and whistles on a device.

Or Thinkpad z50...

[argent]

Back before Microsoft decided to caponise their consumer Windows CE platform and only promote the stripped down version in the Pocket PC there were a number of flash-based "laptops" like this in fairly common use. The Thinkpad z50 was the first really practical one I know of...

Pity about the Jornada line being dumped. I had the Jornada 568 and it was a much better handheld than the iPaq.

Apple did this

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? There might be a demand for a laptop without a hard disk or optical storage based entirely on Flash memory? Too bad nobody has looked into the market of plugging a keyboard into a palm pilot or getting an e-mate. Oh wait.

Tighten up those loose goosies!

[Anonymous Coward]

And loose the concept of a laptop.

Ah, Yes! Cry havoc, and loose the concept of a laptop!!

Wait, did you mean lose the concept?

Never mind.

You've only raised more questions....

[Medievalist]

I thought I was supercilious, but I must bow to the master!

Pray enlighten us, what exactly is the right problem, and how are upper class geniuses (such as yourself, presumably) solving it?

And incidentally, is it painful to be without arse? Just curious.

Aaaiight, here's a short version since y'all asked

[Medievalist]

It was a legitimate question. There's no reason reason to chastise him for asking it. I think the fact that he read the origional article and was reading through the comments was proof enough that he was already taking time to learn about the subject.

But, as Dogbert would say, "where's my satisfaction?" ;)

Short version is "A guy named Nick Negroponte, who has devoted large portions of his life to helping others, experimented with giving used laptops to kids in areas where the population was technologically illiterate. The results were astounding , yet clearly the lack of power and networking in technologically underdeveloped areas was holding the children back. Thus Nickneg gathered a corps of geeks and industrialists to push human-powered, mesh-networked systems outwards from the edge of the developed world. The phenomenal success of cell phones in Africa and Asia indicates this could work. Extremely well-informed scientists and government agencies have examined the project's supporting science and data and are enthusiastic about the project, but because it has the potential to bring millions of 3rd world children into cyberspace without any dependency on telephone companies or software suppliers there is growing opposition to the project."

As for "looking like a genius compared to most people around here"... not my job, man!

Mac Donalds

[Tama00]

These laptops are so cheap soon kids will get one with their happy meals.

Question for Toshiba laptop repair guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, in case you happen to see this reply, can you tell me if there is any way to get a different keyboard (maybe from a non-US model) of the Satellite P100/P105 17" laptop that doesn't have the small keys over the right side to make room for the stupid and useless full sized numeric keypad?

A long shot, but hey...

Email me at slice1900 hotmail.com if you can help, thanks!!!

$400 laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the developing world? When $2200 a year salary puts you into the top half of the worlds wealthiest people? You have got to be kidding me. Get real, get the costs down to 2% of $400, and then come talk to me.

Intel, expensive and bloated.

I learned computer programming on a C64, which is not even 1/100 as good as the $100 laptop is. They are going to do just fine with the $100 model and be able to get these computers to 4 times as many kids as the $400 model would get to.

I think it's more important to get this communication and learning tool to as many people as possible. There is real genius going to waste in the world, because it is never given a chance to bloom. Getting computers to as many people as possible is the only way to let people communicate, learn and contribute to the worlds scientific advancement.

Obvious?

[Iron Condor]

there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage."

Uh, what? You imagine people like stuff that is expensive, breaks easily and is heavy and power-hungry?

Jobs Already Offered Free OS X For Kiddie Laptops

[gig]

Steve Jobs already offered free licenses for Mac OS X (Intel) for the one laptop per child project, which is committed to using totally open source software. However if Intel is doing a similar project, it's easy to imagine OS X being on there.

Re:Windows registry

[ggeens]

Windows puts a lot of things in the registry. This includes software installs (should be rare - especially if you can install from an image file) and user settings (everything you would fill out in the configuration dialogs) are stored there as well (again, this shouldn't change very often).

On top of that, the registry also contains a lot of rather volatile data, like MRU lists, window positions and so on. These would change every time you start or close an application.