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OLPC Manufacturer to Sell $200 Laptop On Open Market
srinravi writes "ArsTechnica reports that Quanta, the company manufacturing the XO laptops, has plans to begin selling low-cost budget mobile computers for $200 later this year. 'According to Quanta president Michael Wang, the company plans to leverage the underlying technologies associated with OLPC's XO laptop to produce laptop computers that are significantly less expensive than conventional laptops.' While OLPC plans to sell the laptops in bulk to governments, which will then distribute the hardware to school children, the XO computer itself is not for sale on the open market. These XO-like commercial devices are still something of an unknown, but it has been announced they'll be using Open Source software."
How about they just sell the laptops on the open market and forget about sending them to developing nations. Of course they won't because a child without food or clean drinking water really gets a huge benefit out of a laptop or the support infrastructure to support it.
People forget just how cheap it is to prevent water borne illnesses in comparison to other problems. If these people promoting this project have any decency, they will use the laptops to brink food and water to the people. Yes, eventually they will probably need net access, but all the internets in the world aren't going to feed somebody that is starving.
My biggest problem with the OLPC project is their (apparent) target. I keep hearing about providing $100 laptops for poor children in Africa and I think that is the incorrect target as most poor children in the wilds of Africa stay in school for (probably) 8 yrs and then go work on the farm or someother non-highly technical area. (I have no data to back this up, I'm only talking from what I perceive.)
A far better target would be those children in semi-"developed" countries where the extra technical skils of knowing how to operate a laptop would greatly increase their human capital vis-à-vis the "developed" nations. To even prvide them to countries like France (where I have lived) would be a boon to the children. The level of exposure of the typical French student to computers is surprising considering how much computer skills are valued, although in France the last few years has seen a great rise in the exposure of the pupils to technology.
I think a $100 laptop would be of largest value to those in the semi-developed (say, Brazil, Ukraine, and South Africa) as many of these countries are getting to the point where their workers are starting to compete for jobs with western workers. Also, the introduction of these low-cost computers in countries were there is little exposure to technology would also be advantageous. (I can think of areas in the US where they could be put to good use, and if I'm correct (i.e. according to wikipedia) there are schools in Massachusetts and Maine are looking to deploy them.)
The OLPC computers should go to those students who are going to be needing technical skills in the work place, not those who will be working in the african savannah after only a few years of basic shcooling.
As for making a OLPCs or OLPC-like computer available to the general public, I think it would be a great idea. (Hey, I would love to have one.) I also think that the price should be elevated to off-set the cost to the true target audence (that is education departments in various nations/states). Care must be taken, however, to not elevate that price too much as I could easily see (if demand were high enough) a crooked national government buying a lot of laptops at the "government" price and simply reselling them to rich westerners. For example, if the sovereign government price was $100 and the price for individuals was $200, then what's to stop Nigera's government from buying $100 laptops and reselling them. Maybe, a $25 price over the 1M-unit bulk price would be low enough to discourage resale. It all depends upon demand. Additionally, keeping the price difference as a seperate charge, and a charge which is directly paid to a non-profit would, I think, encourage people to accept a higher price as they can have a tax-deduction to justify it.