Reuters via Yahoo News item

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"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates said.

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Anyone see the IT guy? My highspeed is down and I was in the middle of downloading "Shaggy Dog".

[ 16 March 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

With the profits that he's generated from his monopolistic practices he can afford to. He's got more cash then most third world governments. Obscene eh?

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The $100 price point is the obvious grabber—Negroponte's computer wouldn't make it out of the back of the business section if it cost $499. But is it possible to build such a computer so cheaply? Negroponte says on his site that the screen alone costs $35. A 1 gig flash drive retails for around $70, a WiFi card for at least $25, the RAM perhaps $50, and the hand crank who knows how much. Add in labor, distribution, service, and maintenance costs, and you're over $100 by a couple hundred dollars. If you're willing to assume that MIT can somehow keep the cost at or near the century mark, there's still the question of who will support the computers (and who will pay for that support). When the computers are already in India, there's nowhere to outsource the help desk.

Negroponte claims he won't have a problem hitting the $100 mark because he's only selling to government buyers who purchase a minimum of 1 million computers. But it doesn't seem likely that any client will buy a single computer, much less a million, until they're convinced the computer will work and be as cheap as advertised. Besides, does the Thai Ministry of Education really have a couple hundred million dollars sitting around? According to the MIT Web site, "[m]anufacturing will begin when 5 to 10 million machines have been ordered and paid for in advance." Don't wait around for those conveyor belts to start cranking.

What Negroponte doesn't want Brazil, Thailand, and his other clients to know is that this isn't the first time a $100 computer has briefly seduced the press. Just like the little green laptop, each of these machines came with a gigantic catch.

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In 2001, a group of computer scientists in Bangalore, India, developed the Simputer. It was supposed to be a cheap (around $200), robust computer for India's rural poor. But according to the Associated Press, the brains behind the Simputer have sold only 4,000 of an expected 50,000 units in 2004 and 2005. In addition, only about 10 percent of Simputer buyers live in rural areas. Why? Probably because they have more important things to do than write e-mail.

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This isn't sour grapes. Microsoft sold Slate magazine to the Washington Post about a year before this article was written. And the author, an assistant editor at Macworld, speaks very highly of cheap Linux boxes.

[ 16 March 2006: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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The $100 price point is the obvious grabber—Negroponte's computer wouldn't make it out of the back of the business section if it cost $499. But is it possible to build such a computer so cheaply? Negroponte says on his site that the screen alone costs $35. A 1 gig flash drive retails for around $70, a WiFi card for at least $25, the RAM perhaps $50, and the hand crank who knows how much. Add in labor, distribution, service, and maintenance costs, and you're over $100 by a couple hundred dollars. If you're willing to assume that MIT can somehow keep the cost at or near the century mark, there's still the question of who will support the computers (and who will pay for that support). When the computers are already in India, there's nowhere to outsource the help desk.

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Uh, huh. If you go and buy each component, a $500 dollar system can run upwards to $1,000. There is something to be said for economies of scale.

Then there is the question of support that is always raised whenever MS apologists raise their heads. Who gets MS support right now other than businesses?

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Then there is the question of support that is always raised whenever MS apologists raise their heads. Who gets MS support right now other than businesses?

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It is quite possible the $100 computer won't fly. And if not, it might be because of the only real and credible argument offered in that article: "because they (the youth for whom they are intended) have more important things to do than write e-mail."

However, even with that, is it not worth trying (Gate's concern about lack of broadband aside)?

[ 16 March 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

And as the author says, were I in charge of the Thai Ministry of Education (say), I'd likely have better things to do with any spare $200 million or so I had lying around than buy computers. What will it cost in addition to put a sufficient number of Wi-Fi access points in Thailand so that all those computers could actually connect to something?

Cheap computers = potentially good, it depends. What would people use it for? $100 wouldn't get much in the way of downloading speed - many sites would be inaccessible. Computers can be useful, for some kinds of work and some kinds of learning, but they can also be a total waste of time.

A computer might benefit a community, it might not. Depends on the community, the cultural values and mores, and the aspirations of its members.

Edited to remedy case of mistaken identity.

[ 16 March 2006: Message edited by: arborman ]

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Originally posted by arborman:
As for the two opposing personalities, I'll take Gates. Death squad Negroponte vs too rich for decency Bill Gates. At least Gates hasn't arranged the deaths of anyone, that we know of.

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And as the author says, were I in charge of the Thai Ministry of Education (say), I'd likely have better things to do with any spare $200 million or so I had lying around than buy computers.

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As for the two opposing personalities, I'll take Gates. Death squad Negroponte vs too rich for decency Bill Gates. At least Gates hasn't arranged the deaths of anyone, that we know of.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
Not valid criticism, in my view. He is applying guilt by association. For all we know, the Negrponte brothers don't even like each other.

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He is the brother of Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. Negroponte and his wife, Diana, have five children.

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link

Sure other folks may critique the project for legitimate reasons. I simply find Bill Gate$ critique extremely self-serving.

When you've just about completely controlled the PC desktop for a decade or more and there's a project that doesn't use your "product"...even if its to help connect the poor you dump on it.

BTW for those who are skeptical about a $100 laptop, a Chinese company plans to market a Linux laptop aimed at rural China for about $187.

International Herald Tribune article

[ 16 March 2006: Message edited by: radiorahim ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

Not valid criticism, in my view. He is applying guilt by association. For all we know, the Negrponte brothers don't even like each other.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
It is quite possible the $100 computer won't fly. And if not, it might be because of the only real and credible argument offered in that article: "because they (the youth for whom they are intended) have more important things to do than write e-mail."

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Actually the author makes another real and credible argument, though not explicitly. In effect, Negroponte is asking a lot of poor countries to sink a lot of venture capital into his scheme.

Surely they've been burned too many times by World Bank and other such megaprojects to go for that.

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Well, this explains the strangely nasty comments that Intel's Craig Barrett was making last December about the $100 hand-cranked PCs from Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative. Back then, Barrett said the OLPC device wasn't a laptop, but a gadget, and that what people in the third world need is a real PC, "not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power."

You'd almost think that $100 hand-cranked laptop was competing with something from Intel. Which, it turns out, it is, sort of.

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Gate$ isn't the only one cut out of the $100 laptop that's dumping on the project...Intel's dumping on it too. Could it be that its because it'll run on an AMD processor? (Intel's main competitor)...and that Intel plans to put out a competing product?

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

And what Linux user has ever paid for support? You need support on Linux? The help desk is called google.com.

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Uh huh. Which is why I will never experiment with Linux unless I have a working Windows PC that I can use to research, download, and burn to CD the things I need to fix my Linux system. Funny how that works...

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Nothing wrong with that approach actually. I did that for several years before giving M$ the heave-ho.

Most governments that have made the decision to move to FOSS are doing it in stages over a few years. IIRC most governments are making the change over a 3-5 year period.

But certainly you can indeed research, download and burn to CD anything you need to research using a Linux PC.

Understand you've been playing with Ubuntu. I don't like it that much either...mostly I don't like the Gnome desktop. I prefer the KDE desktop and if you're mucking about with Ubuntu you might want to try Kubuntu instead. I understand that with version 6.1 Kubuntu will become part of the "official" Ubuntu project.

IIRC I read that Mark Shuttleworth...the "money" behind the Ubuntu project is using Kubuntu himself. The KDE CD burning programme "k3b" is really quite nice I think. Much better than anything Windows-based IMHO. I don't much like the Gnome-based CD burning programme. Although of course you can install KDE software on a Gnome based system and vice-versa.

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Originally posted by radiorahim:

But certainly you can indeed research, download and burn to CD anything you need to research using a Linux PC.

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Originally posted by radiorahim:

Understand you've been playing with Ubuntu. I don't like it that much either...mostly I don't like the Gnome desktop. I prefer the KDE desktop and if you're mucking about with Ubuntu you might want to try Kubuntu instead. I understand that with version 6.1 Kubuntu will become part of the "official" Ubuntu project.

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Anyways, to get this thread back on track:

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Assuming that said PC is working, or that I have a few months to troubleshoot by going to the library every couple days to "Google" for a few hours and take a day or two back home to perform the steps I find.

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Originally posted by aRoused:

So pretty much like troubleshooting a wonky Windows installation without a backup computer, then? Unless you're going to try and convince me that a Windows PC can stay connected to the internet when its OS goes tits-up...

Not the most effective argument you've got there.

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Those comments seem pretty asinine on the part of Gates. Does he plan on providing the electricity grids and communication networks his solitions would entail?

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Nah...just sour grapes IMHO because it runs Linux instead of Windows...and now Intel is mouthing off the same way because it'll run on an AMD processor instead of an Intel processor.

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If I really had to, I could install a paralell copy of windows very easily. I don't think you can go installing multiple copies of Linux. Though the boot-from-CD concept helps A LOT. So like I said- yeah, *I* can do it, but would I encourage my mother to try using Linux? No, I am still not convinced that would be productive.

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You can multi-boot different versions of Linux or dual boot Windows and Linux but I find that a pain in the ass.

For a Linux newbie I thing the best thing is to simply run a second "clunker" machine on Linux and play with it till you get comfy with it.

However if you're setting up a machine for someone with minimalist needs (i.e. web surfing, e-mail and some basic office tasks) a good way to go would be to something like Linspire and/or Xandros. These are "commercial" Linux distros...(they're not free) and are designed as Windows desktop replacements.

To be quite honest, Windows isn't easy to run for a newbie computer user either. They have to know about anti-virus software, anti-spyware software and firewalling...and most don't.

With Linspire and Xandros these are complete non-issues. If you want to try Linspire they have a "live CD" version you can download from their website. With Xandros they have an "open circulation edition" that you can only download via bittorrent. They remove anything "proprietary" from the open circulation edition and slow down the CD burning speed to 8X.

I've run Xandros for over a year on one of my machines and its fine if you stick to installing stuff from Xandros Networks. If you go crazy installing stuff from the Debian repositories you can hose the system...but a novice wouldn't even know what a Debian repository is...so wouldn't be doing that.

So...for someone who's a "power" Windows user I'd say run a Linux box in parallel till you feel like you've come up to speed with it.

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Originally posted by radiorahim:
Nah...just sour grapes IMHO because it runs Linux instead of Windows...and now Intel is mouthing off the same way because it'll run on an AMD processor instead of an Intel processor.

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One of the things that it gets used for...aside from being a computer...is as a "light source" at night!

I can see the wireless mesh networking built into this computer as a real bonus. Most textbooks are printed in "developed" countries and shipped to the third world. They're heavy, expensive and in short supply. Hell even pens,pencils and paper are in short supply.

With the wireless mesh networking a teacher would be able to "zap" a textbook in .pdf format to every student in the class in a matter of a few minutes.