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In the year since MIT's Nicholas Negroponte unveiled his prototype, he has found himself wrestling with Microsoft and software politics. 
The New York Times
The story "Are politics delaying the $100 laptop?" published January 30, 2006 at 5:42 AM is no longer available on CNET News.
Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.
questions about Negroponte's laptop, pointing to the price of
Internet connectivity, which can cost $24 to $50 a month in
developing nations."
Clearly, the United States is still a developing nation.
The cell phone idea is a poor play by Microsoft to spread FUD
about the laptop project. They don't want open source to gain
mindshare in potential future markets. When Gates talks about
the ubiquity of cell phones, he's also talking about the very
markets that don't need a $100 laptop program.
For this reason Windows or MacOSX do not qualify.
Also, wasn't Mundie the same guy who said that a striped down operating system won't do well? I think he fails to realize that there is a full fledged OS for no cost. It is called Linux.
I am just glad that M$ didn't give the OS away for free. This would have been smarter than letting Linux get onto the laptops. One day these countries could see the potential in technology and in Linux and one of them might produce the next Google.
It is naive of Microsoft to write these countries off so quickly because one day it could happen. And if it does they will be using Linux, not Windows.
Funny: I'd be extremely interested to see the open soure version of CE.... How stripped down can that be?
the only reason its a $100 laptop is that this guy probably has PR'ed his way to financial commitments from these oompanies to offset the actual costs.
again, you want a goodwill grant to get your good idea off the ground? no prob. you expecting an annuity of money, products or services? ummm...don't be surprised if companies aren't so keen on that one.
in India I have been told, they teach C++ before calculus.........
Of course Mr. Gates could fund the entire thing just like he could fund any number of projects. His foundation does exactly that. Because he doesn't sign on to this one somehow he's preventing it?
Mr. Negroponte himself says that "I chose open source because it's better". So then how is this a Microsoft problem?
This is ALL a PR game to let the UN look good. Maybe Mr. Negroponte doesn't remember that when HE was a kid what he needed was some paper, pencils and teachers.
**** the 100 dollar laptop.
Why does this little weasel need to use the power of government to dip into my personal wallet and fund his work...
And this c|net article plays right into that. Crying like a baby that "darn it, those mean governments and politicians just hate third-world kids". **** c|net.
but schools (ie: institutions) are an entirely different matter.
there are many ways to structure a brain.... and I find it quite concerning why the global elite are preoccupied with structuring these societie's minds.... especially in the context of all the homelessness and advertising in industrialized worlds.... what makes the elite think they can take care of the rest of the world when they cant seem to do much for their homeless neiborhood brethern? this is ethno-centric to the max.
Let's say somebody develops a great piece of cheap hardware that's perfect for this laptop that requires a change to the kernal. If you were to put your faith in one organization, that organization might not be willing to make the change you need for a number of different reasons.
Somebody might want to design a more intuitive file system that makes more sense for kids, or parts of it may need to be translated another language.
There are a million things that might need to be changed on the OS level. If you go with a closed source solution, you're screwed.
Obviously, there are some people here who can acutally predict the future by looking in their rearview mirror.
The bottom line is their is somebody who is actually doing something, not just talking. And, the product is REAL, it's tangible, it's done.
Why is the product being delayed? Because everyone else in the world is just like us - they want to talk, not execute. Those folks are experts at not doing anything, so they'll say anything in order to avoid actually doing something. We can put the blame on companies (like Microsoft), but in reality, it's individuals who actually do the doing.
I know...let's pitch the idea of 100$ cars to the 3rd world too...I'm sure I could get everyone that currently gives up their car for a $75 tax receipt to give it up for $100 instead. Then the 3rd world could have cars too...thats just great.
I don't have a problem with the idea of a computer for all BUT I do have a problem with it being funded by governments when their money could be spent on more pressing needs. If Mr. Negroponte wants to enlist companies to give of their free will without tax breaks directly to the people in 'need' great...but leave governments out of it.
These are meant for the huge chunk of the world's population that is living in the economic band between stark survival and self-sufficiency, with the goal being to get them up to the latter rung of the ladder as inexpensively and quickly as possible. The target families this is geared toward has some form of shelter, but generally doesn't have any phone service and little, if any, electrical service, much less power for TVs (Gates really is such an idiot for even suggesting the cell phone and TV idea - he obviously knows nothing about what Life is like beyond the walls of Billionaireville). The idea is to seed a village with these, provide a terrestrial or satellite Internet connection with local wireless access, and that is then shared among all of the families. Their primary purpose is to improve education that would lead to employment, while eliminating the digital divide for sociological reasons.
This approach doesn't cost additional money to the governments involved, it's meant to make more efficient use of the money available. One of the goals is to replace the cost of textbooks and the ancillary tools used to learn to read and write, and at $100 per family, the payback is essentially immediate, since governments spend well over $100 per student just for such materials in one year. The content in the laptops will be able to be updated continuously, thereby further reducing future costs, at least until the hardware fails (which should be at least several years, even in the harshest environments).
The cost per student of providing the Internet access for a village is well under a dollar a month, if that, which is almost certainly below the cost of providing cellular phone access, particularly in a remote area, where a cell phone tower/station could easily cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how much coverage is needed, and a link to a terrestrial phone/data system would still be needed anyway. The per-laptop bandwidth outside the local network area doesn't need to be that fast, as once one computer has been updated, the rest in the vicinity can use it as a proxy server to obtain their own copies of the same data (e.g., textbook and document updates, course material such as syllabuses and homework and exam questions, media reports and other material associated with current events, such as news, weather, science and technology, etc.). Besides, it's not like each student is going to be downloading a college dorm's worth of MP3s and DVDs every day (at least, not until they discover BitTorrent!).
I've said it before, but the economy of scale for these devices could be improved by marketing them to whomever wanted them, and I wouldn't mind having a spare laptop with wireless network capability that didn't have to be plugged in to charge, that I could toss under the seat in my car for when I needed to map someplace on MapQuest or Google Earth, or be able to use if my primary laptop crapped out, if only for basic e-mail, Web surfing, inane posts in response to C|Net stories anywhere, anytime ... If it helped bring the cost of these to the originally-intended users and their governments down even further, so much the better. I wouldn't even mind paying a 10%, or so, premium to help get things going. Basic laptops are still starting around $450 and up at retail, and the slightly-larger screens, hard drives, AC power bricks, and other whippy-keen features they have over the $100 laptops don't cost anywhere near the $350 differential being charged, which means it's mostly middle-person costs, and those wouldn't exist in a word-of-Net, direct-sales market.
As for Microsloth's offer of an open-source WinCE (the marketing weenies must still be wincing over that blunder-of-a-name), thanks, but no thanks. The open source community (even the nascent Third World portion that will sprout around the $100 laptops) already has a robust, useful OS and plenty of tools and applications to do much more than WinCE ever could, and it's a bit late to ask anyone to finally rewrite WinCE to be reliable and secure, especially for free, and more especially because it's crippled by design, compared with any other OS in widespread use today. For those wondering why some are beating up on Microsloth for making its seemingly generous offer, they're only doing it for the same reason they plea-bargained many of the court cases they've lost at the state and local levels, such that they got off with "donating" or providing discount coupons to school systems for their products. The reason is so they can get their foot in the door on the bet that it will lead to future sales, although I can't imagine how even they could convince Joe Biafran to spend a cent on their buggy bloatware, when Joe is just trying to learn to read (although I suppose the volume of security alerts, update notices, and error messages certainly would provide enough for Joe to read until a very ripe old age! :)). I do also have to admit that it would instantly create jobs, though ... as in lifetime employment for local sysadmins and network admins (Microsloth certified at a substantial additional cost, of course - batteries not included, shipping and handling extra, your mileage may vary, caveat emptor, etc.).
A software user community that is substantially different from those found in more affluent societies may eventually emerge that is focused squarely on the needs and desires of the recipients of this technology, rather than the estimated or imagined (and likely incorrect) guesses that well-meaning people who have no clue as to how this technology could best be used by the populations inheriting it. This would be a terrific outcome, especially if a dialog can begin that results in better mutual understanding between the have-a-lots and the have-very-littles, which might be just what's needed to break the cycle of poverty that inevitably leads to a rich recruiting pool for terrorists, tyrants, and other low-lifes who prey on uneducated masses to do their bidding. $100 a kid would be incredibly cheap if it were able to contribute anything at all toward that goal. In that case, sign me up for 100 of these laptops.
All the Best,
Joe Blow
Perhaps the problem is the political structure in these countries and not the inherent 'poor'ness of their people.
Hey, I thought Bill Gates was a charitable man! Why would he want to short-change the third world kids, especially concerning a product he can easily afford to provide?
Maybe India and other third world countries where Bill Gates has so generously contributed should pool up the charity money and pay Mr. Gates for the correct Windows software.
anyone who wants to kick it around. But the basic problem is
that so far, no one has shown that they can build and support a
PC, especially a crank powered PC, with adequate OS and
software in multiple languages for a $100 out the factory door
price. Then, are there Distributors? Warehousers?, Shippers?
These people/companies work for free?. And if the price
delivered to the customer is supposed to be $100, the factory
cost will probably have to be less than $20. This is realistic?
Nicholas Negroponte is an idealist and a dreamer, but he is not a
miracle worker, at least so far. Nor does he seem to show much
skill in gaining help from the big boys. The situation is not likely
to change, and an idea, dubious in the first place, will probably
just fade away.
There was an article a couple of months back on
CNET News.com, on a practical $100.00 laptop that had been developed. It was a prototype, but the plans for it were beyond the prototype stage. It was a hand-crank type---probably the one that is championed by Mr. Negroponte.
I would like to add that your arguments about the cost of manufacturing such a laptop are not exactly to the point. In the earlier article concerning the $100.00 laptop, it was mentioned that the laptops would be paid for by the governments of the third world countries, to improve the educational situation in their countries. So the cost of manufacture in this country is not as much of a concern as you might believe.
As to Mr. Negroponte being a "dreamer", I would say---It is "dreamers" that with enough effort make the world a better place. If it were not for "dreamers", then Thomas Edison would not have begun to "dream" of the light bulb. Of course, he invented the light bulb later---but everyone has to start somewhere.
The biggest portion of the population does not live in Shangai, it does live in rural areas in very poor conditions.
One thing is to have a great purchasing power (because they are a lot), the other is how that welth is distribute. The population of China (and India) will be the perfect candidate for starting with these project.
Those are not easy to come up with at $100 per unit.
Eventually, there will be a political factor. Not yet, IMO.
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- by thebignoticeboard.com February 1, 2006 7:34 AM PST
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