$100 Laptop For Poor Countries

[Tuckerfan]

The damn thing’s cool enough, that I’d like to have one.

This is evident by the buzz the past week over Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop.

Negroponte is founder of the renowned Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, he showed leaders and pop-culture icons a mock-up of a laptop he says could be sold for $100.

Negroponte says he has figured it out. Half the cost of today’s laptops is in the display screens. Negroponte’s mock-up uses a far-cheaper technology that works like a miniature rear-projector TV. It’s not elegant, but it seems to do the job.He also plans to run the laptop on a Linux-based operating system — which would be free — instead of Microsoft’s Windows.

By using 1 gigabyte of solid-state memory to store software and data, “We’re thinking maybe you won’t need a hard disk drive,” he says.

And instead of expensive batteries, the $100 laptop could come with less-capable batteries and a hand crank for juicing them back up, like a radio on MAS*H.

The idea’s impressed a lot of important folks, Google, AMD, Samsung, Motorola, News Corp., Alan Kay, Quincy Jones, and Bono have all expressed interest in the idea.

[Duckster]

It will probably go the way of wind up radios. Originally designed for poor countries (where batteries are scare), wind up radios are great in disaster areas. But apparently the biggest users are ordinary folks in first-world countries. They don’t have to buy batteries and you can take them anywhere - the beach, camping, etc.

Given the opportunity but I’m betting sub-$100 laptops with be under all sorts of Christmas trees for recipients who can well afford a current laptop connected to the Internet via cable.

The world twists in mysterious ways.

[CynicalGabe]

I’d buy them drinking water first. Read Paul O-Neil’s book about the Bush administration. He calculated that we could provide clean drinking water (a primitive system, but still better than the status quo) to the entire country of Uganda (the example he used - the math scaled well for other countries I believe) for $25 million.

[RTFirefly]

@CynicalGabe

I’d buy them drinking water first. Read Paul O-Neil’s book about the Bush administration. He calculated that we could provide clean drinking water (a primitive system, but still better than the status quo) to the entire country of Uganda (the example he used - the math scaled well for other countries I believe) for $25 million.

[Nitpick]
That would be Ron Suskind’s book about O’Neill’s experience in the Bush Administration.
[/Nitpick]
What’s not a nitpick is that while we can drill the wells for pocket change, the cost of keeping them operational is an open question, and very well might involve real money.

[LionelHutz405]

“We’re thinking maybe you won’t need a hard disk drive,” he says.

Well, I’m thinking maybe you do. Some sort of permanent storage anyway. But it’s easier to just assume you don’t need any and therefore it’s cost is zero.

[Kent_Clark]

Computer - $100

Internet access - $21.95/month

[GorillaMan]

@LionelHutz405

Some sort of permanent storage anyway.

That’s exactly what solid state memory is. It’s not RAM.

[CynicalGabe]

@RTFirefly

[Nitpick]
That would be Ron Suskind’s book about O’Neill’s experience in the Bush Administration.
[/Nitpick]
What’s not a nitpick is that while we can drill the wells for pocket change, the cost of keeping them operational is an open question, and very well might involve real money.

You’re right. My bad. :smack:

[Wearia]

That’s pretty amazing. Its just going to get cheaper and the technolgy is just going to get better. Hell, you could afford a PC for every member of the family and just set them on a LAN for printer and internet access. The bulky high powered monstrousities we use may soon be a thing of the past.
Or we might just get some useful developmental offshoots. Either way, interesting news.