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Mandriva Linux pre-installed on Intel's Classmate
boklm writes "Mandriva announced it will have a version of its Mandriva Linux 2007 pre-installed on Intel's new low-end laptop for students in developing countries, the Classmate PC.
This laptop comes with 256MB of RAM, 1 or 2GB of flash memory, 802.11b/g WiFi, 10/100Mbps ethernet, 2 USB ports, a 7-inch LCD display and 4 hours battery.
Produced in Brazil, shipping is expected to begin in the second quarter of this year, and will be available to Mexico, India, and developing countries."
These are not in place of food. They are meant to address a bootstrap problem. A good way to get a country from "developing" to "developed" is to introduce a skill-based service economy. There's no carbon emissions except from the power sources for the computers. There's no huge 8-lane highways needed to ship materials. Intel can sell more chips to them once they start buying higher-end replacement machines. ;-)
The problem is, you don't teach people to use computers, administer computers, build computers, repair computers, and program computers if you don't have enough computers to make these viable career choices. Once the people get their hands on these systems and learn to use them, there will be a market for higher-end systems, and a skilled workforce ready to use them. Much of the world skipped wired phone systems and went straight to cellular. This effort looks designed to skip the steno pool and the industrial manufacturing economy. If developing countries can go straight to lightweight manufacturing plus information economy instead of going through the heavy manufacturing phase most of today's big economies did, it'll be faster for them. It'll also be better for the world economy, less polluting, and maybe even cause fewer wars over access to resources.
An OLPC clone is exactly what it is. Most analysts give OLPC little chance of long-term success. But if any aspect of the OLPC experiment reveals a previously unknown market for computers, the big players like Intel and Microsoft want to be prepared to move in. The potential upside is huge. Currently computers are only sold to a small fraction of the world's population; finding a way to turn the billions of non-computer users into new computer consumers would be a market far to big for any computer company to ignore.
But on a serious note, these people don't need toy computers, especially when the actual cost of a real computer is not that much more.
(Note: I'm not sure if you're talking about the Classmate or the OLPC. I'm responding about the OLPC)
You need to learn more about what the OLPC is. It's not a toy computer, and it's certainly not just a scaled-down, limited version of the PC that you use. Unless you're still in high school, it's more powerful than the computer you learned on, and it's a computer that has been designed from the ground up as an educational tool for kids. It provides a toolset for kids ranging from those who can't even read yet (the basic UI is completely icon-based -- no text at all) through those who want to engage in serious hacking, and provides a smooth continuum of computer use experiences in between. Along the way, it also provides a vehicle for electronic texts, computer art, communications, simulated labs, etc. A "real" computer could do most of the latter, but not all, and does a fairly poor job of the former.
There are also hardware-related issues. "Real" laptops aren't nearly as durable as the OLPC, don't provide the same wireless networking infrastructure and pose significant problems in areas where power isn't easily available.
Not only does a real computer not accomplish the goals of the OLPC as well as the OLPC, it also does cost "that much more". To you and I, the difference between a $130 OLPC and a $300 low-end laptop is insignificant, but only because $170 isn't really significant to us anyway. To people to whom $130 is a lot of money, more than doubling the cost is a big deal. Of course, the OLPC project doesn't plan on selling to the people directly, but to the governments, and any large organization buying millions of anything cares about a 130% price difference.
More than likely when these things are given away, they will for the most part end up on eBay after having been converted to something that these people find more useful, money.
Undoubtedly, that's a problem. I don't think it's a large problem, however.
I spent two years living and working with very poor people in Mexico (and they're actually well off by the standards of some of the areas targeted by the OLPC -- they almost all have electricity, for example) and also spent a bit of time with people in similar situations in Jamaica. One thing I noticed was that most of the parents placed a huge importance on their children's educations. They knew very well that the only avenue available for their kids to obtain a better life was to acquire a good education, and these parents sacrificed a great deal to make sure their kids could learn as much as possible. Of course, even with all the parents could do, the opportunities were limited. Only rich kids' schools could afford computers, of course, and many of the kids had to work part time so that the family could eat. They tried to arrange things so that this word didn't interfere with schooling, but sometimes it just wasn't possible.
I really, really doubt that such families would even dream of selling their children's OLPCs, unless they got into a situation where they truly were starving to death. The idea that their kids could jump into the computer age, learning high tech skills that would allow them to compete internationally for high-paying jobs (yes, taking our jobs away) would make it clear that the value of keeping the OLPC and using it for its intended purpose vastly outweighed any short-term monetary windfall they might percieve.
Keep in mind, too, that these parents want their children to get ahead not just because they love their children, but because their own futures depend on the kids' success as well. For better or worse, the industrialized world has moved away from the idea that adult children are responsible for the welfare of their aging parents, but in much of the world the idea is not only prevalent, it's the only way for elderly
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