The laptop for the world's children should be durable and self-reliant
The laptop will be more rugged and flexible than ordinary ones
The Simputer is a handheld solution for developing nations
Posted on 09/30/2005 5:51:40 PM PDT by dennisw
Sub-$100 laptop design unveiled
The laptop for the world's children should be durable and self-reliant
Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC. The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply.
Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village.
His non-profit One Laptop Per Child group plans to have up to 15 million machines in production within a year.
A prototype of the machine should be ready in November at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia.
Children in Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa will be among the first to get the under-$100 (£57) computer, said Professor Negroponte at the Emerging Technologies conference at MIT.
The following year, Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney plans to start buying them for all 500,000 middle and high school pupils in the state.
Professor Negroponte predicts there could be 100 million to 150 million shipped every year by 2007.
Virtually indestructible
The laptops will be encased in rubber to make them more durable, and their AC adaptors will also act as carrying straps.
The Linux-based machines are expected to have a 500MHz processor, with flash memory instead of a hard drive which has more delicate moving parts.
The laptop will be more rugged and flexible than ordinary ones They will have four USB ports, and will be able to connect to the net through wi-fi - wireless net technology - and will be able to share data easily.
It will also have a dual-mode display so that it can still be used in varying light conditions outside. It will be a colour display, but users will be able to switch easily to monochrome mode so that it can be viewed in bright sunlight, at four times normal resolution.
When Professor Negroponte saw the benefits of donated notebook PCs that Cambodian children could carry around with them, he immediately set about planning the sub-$100 machines.
The project has some big-name supporters on board, including Google, which is working on thin-client applications. Thin client computing means several machines can share programs when linked up to a central "brain", or server.
Making them so cheap would mean that developing nations would be able to afford to bulk-buy them, although Professor Negroponte thinks that even $100 remains too expensive for some.
He said he is committed to the idea that children all over the world should be equipped with technology so that they can tap into the educational and communications benefits of the net.
Power is a big issue for developing nations in particular when it comes to technology, which is why the hand crank will be fitted to supply extra juice when it is needed.
By using innovative technologies, such as electronic ink displays, the MIT team thinks it can reduce power consumption even further on the computers. Such displays require very little power to work.
The Simputer is a handheld solution for developing nations There have been several projects to build and distribute cheap computers for developing nations in order to close the digital divide.
A sub-£100 box, called Nivo, has been developed by UK not-for-profit group, Ndiyo. It runs on open source software and works as a thin client.
The Simputer has also been developed for developing nations. It is a cheap handheld computer designed by Indian scientists.
Nicholas Negroponte
Prototypes
might make a good back up machine to throw into my "survival kit"
You can make it real cheap if you use child labor.
Does he also advocate UN control of said internet or some other nefarious
international body?
Make it like a self winding watch.
Shake the bejeebers out of it and it runs for a day.
Heh ... I love it!
Get ready for a million more "Nigerian Bank" emails!
LOL! I had one of those.
Made in China
ROTFLMAO !
That's actually a VIC-20.
I have been really hoping someone would do this...
my 5 year old granddaughter, who has taken computer in school for two years, always wants to use mine...
I want to be able to buy one for her, that I don't have to worry about her breaking easily, and can take in her room!!
Same story with a different headline posted yesterday with 60 replies.
I liked the guy who wrote that kids can break anything that has a wind up handle. So true. This seems to be more pie in the sky thinking. It will never be successful, although it seems to be a neat idea.
Nick, Socialism doesn't work.
Same story with a different headline posted yesterday with 60 replies.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1493781/posts
I liked the guy who wrote that kids can break anything that has a wind up handle. So true. This seems to be more pie in the sky thinking. It will never be successful, although it seems to be a neat idea.
My commodore 64 still works too with the deluxe 5 1/4" floppy drive.
"He said he is committed to the idea that children all over the world should be equipped with technology so that they can tap into the educational and communications benefits of the net."
...and porn, warez, music and movies - all for free!
Radio Shack plans to start selling a low-cost alternative to the personal computer starting Sunday.
The $299 machine, dubbed the Personal Internet Communicator, was designed by Advanced Micro Devices to access the Internet and perform basic computing tasks.
Sunnyvale-based AMD originally conceived the device last year for low-income consumers in developing countries as part of an effort it calls ``50x15.'' AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz wants more than half of the world's population using computers by 2015.
More here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/sv/20050930/tc_siliconvalley/_www12783107;_ylt=Aq.1tI4dUAWqD8xkM8O4_kYjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Picture here:
http://www.amdboard.com/amd_pic_1h.jpg
Well, actually...
laptop for the world's children
Does not include any granddaughters here.. she'd have to be in Equatorial Guinea or something. :-(
The VIC-20 was the cheapest of the cheap.
Sorry - you are an American - you are NOT allowed to have one for your child.
Now - if you declare yourself as an illegal alien -- just think of the benefit$ ! Free school, Free housing, Free cars, Free computers, Free telephone.
Or you can go on welfare. You have to make over $75,000 to get the same benefits (food, shelter, medical, etc) as a welfare queen who does NOTHING but vegetate.
I also have an amiga.
Damn. You still have your Amiga. I had three 500's. A couple of them souped up, and a million games on 3.5 floppy. I gave all the machines to a friend who needed a computer.
God bless you.
I need to buy a new one.
I just had 5 visitors from Cambodia. From what they tell me, it would take your average house worker's salary for 4 months to buy one of these.
As Hurricane Katrina demonstated we don't have any poor children here in America that would benefit from anything like access to a low cost computer. We should definately ship them all to Cambodia or whereever.
I only use AMD. My Sempron 2400 (bought used for 45$/shipped on eBay) is overclocked into an Athlon 2400+ and benchmarks much better than any Pentium 2.4 Gig
;)
You still have a Commodore????
Oh, my----my family has the BOX that the computer (that has long since been discarded)...came in...and every year, I wrap someones Christmas present in it...and it is a contest to see who can guess is going to get the Commodore box...
I guess you would have to be there...
but, I can't believe yours still WORKS!!! Cool!
Yeah, after I posted, I realized that she would be on the outside looking in...lol
Oh, well, it won't be long...
I don't especially even need it to be under $100....it could be more...I just don't want it prohibitive..
I already have about 5 sites bookmarked for her on mine..but whenever I baby sit her, SHE HOGS MY COMPUTER!
and that means I can't be on Free Republic, which makes my cranky.
I've still got my 1982 IBM with the double 5 1/2 floppy drives. Had it on the other day.
Some of the suppliers will, more than likely, give discounts on the parts that go into this product on the condition that they are not sold into their main markets.
They were $50.00 in Richmond. But you had to be careful, there was a woman who would kick you in the ball$ if you got near her.
I had a VIC-20 and later a Commodore 64. I also had the tape storage option for the VIC-20...which appeared to be a standard cassette player. My first computer class in college used punch cards. But I did not pursue programming...looking back, I probably should have. I think those punch cards turned me off to it.
Me to! Paid $225 for it off the shelf. Big money for a 17 year old back then.... been behind the techno curve ever since....
Still got mine!
Remember Cbasic? When the C64 came out it was so cool...floppy disks!
I only use AMD. My Sempron 2400 (bought used for 45$/shipped on eBay) is overclocked into an Athlon 2400+ and benchmarks much better than any Pentium 2.4 Gig>>>
I dont get it. How can you overclock something into the same gigahertz? And how did they manage to add the extra cache needed to make it the same as an Athlon XP, after all an Sempron Socket A is a Athlon with half its cache disabled.
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