FAQ MIT's wind-up computer marvel/scam ?

Subject: <URL:http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html> MIT Media Lab: $100 Laptop FAQ
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Nicholas Negroponte, founding chairman of MIT's Media Laboratory, answers questions on the initiative.
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What is the $100 Laptop, really? The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display97both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3X the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

A machine with the described specification would be more than adequate to be very usefull. Except that the wind-up-power will be more expensive to acheive reliabily than the all the rest combined. Consider that the users don't expect a 2 weeks use and throw away item.

Why do children in developing nations need laptops? Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think. They are a wonderful way for all children to "learn learning" through independent interaction and exploration. Why not a desktop computer, or 'even better' a recycled desktop machine? Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with regard to taking the computer home at night. Kids in the developing world need the newest technology, especially really rugged hardware and innovative software. Recent work with schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one's studies, as well as for play. Bringing the laptop home engages the family. In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home.
Finally, regarding recycled machines: if we estimate 100 million available used desktops, and each one requires only one hour of human attention to refurbish, reload, and handle, that is forty-five thousand work years.

This reasoning exposes the writer as not having a clue how the 3rd world operates - as is the case understandably, of all 'do gooders' who haven't had appropriate on the ground experience.
As cow-dung is not seen in India as a negative pollutant, but a positive valuable asset, so also the opportunity for countless otherwise unemployed people to tinker with millions of scrap PCs and get some of them working, potentially adds great education and development to the tinkerers and their whole society. If the problem of mains electricity was raised that would be valid.

Thus, while we definitely encourage the recycling of used computers, it is not the solution for One Laptop per Child. How is it possible to get the cost so low?
* First, by dramatically lowering the cost of the display. The first-generation machine will have a novel, dual-mode display that represents improvements to the LCD displays commonly found in inexpensive DVD players. These displays can be used in high-resolution black and white in bright sunlight97all at a cost of approximately $35. * Second, we will get the fat out of the systems. Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways. * Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers (millions), directly to ministries of education, which can distribute them like textbooks.
Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What's wrong with community-access centers? One does not think of community pencils - kids have their own. They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to "own" somethin - like a football, doll, or book - not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.

This is only partly true. Public libraries where I keep 'my' millions of books and don't have to pay for then to be dusted and sorted, work very well.
Trains and busses are perfectly viable. There's no need for everybody to own a private velicle.

What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive in the developing world? When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.

This would be great, but to my knowledge has not been acheived in the worlds's most developed urban areas yet ?

What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can't? Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.

OK.

How will these be marketed? The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of "one laptop per child." Initial discussions have been held with China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand. An additional, modest allocation of machines will be used to seed developer communities in a number of other countries.

Yes the idea of 'seed development' is vital. If it's viable, it will grow/spread like a bush fire [or bird-flu ?!]. No need to start with millions - unless you a planning a scam/hit ?

A commercial version of the machine will be explored in parallel. When do you anticipate these laptops reaching the market? What do you see as the biggest hurdles? Our preliminary schedule is to have units ready for shipment by the end of 2006 or early 2007. Manufacturing will begin when 5 to 10 million machines have been ordered and paid for in advance. <-!!

The whole thing sounds like a Nigerian 419 scam: $1000million in advance !!

The biggest hurdle will be manufacturing 100 million of anything. This is not just a supply-chain problem, but also a design problem. The scale is daunting, but I find myself amazed at what some companies are proposing to us. It feels as though at least half the problems are being solved by mere resolve. Who is the original design manufacturer (ODM) of the $100 laptop? Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan has been chosen as the original design manufacturer (ODM) for the $100 laptop project. The decision was made after the board reviewed bids from several possible manufacturing companies. Quanta Computer Inc. was founded in 1988 in Taiwan. With over US $10 billion in sales, Quanta is the world's largest manufacturer of laptop PCs; the company also manufactures mobile phones, LCD TVs, and servers and storage products. In addition, Quanta recently opened a new US $200 million R&D center, Quanta R&D Complex (QRDC), in Taiwan. The facility, which opened in Q3 of 2005, has 2.2 million square feet of floor space, and a capacity to house up to 7,000 engineers. How will this initiative be structured? The $100 laptop is being developed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a Delaware-based, non-profit organization created by faculty members from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. OLPC is based on "constructionist" theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay, as well as the principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte's book Being Digital. The founding corporate members are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel, and Red Hat. OLPC is funding research at the Media Lab focused on developing the $100 Laptop.

== Chris Glur. Your can fool some of the people, some of the time ?

news@absamail.co.za wrote: ....

The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.
A machine with the described specification would be more than adequate to be very usefull. Except that the wind-up-power will be more expensive to acheive reliabily than the all the rest combined. Consider that the users don't expect a 2 weeks use and throw away item. ....

Reliability isn't terribly important in this application because the hand crank is only to be used as a last resort and they'll still work off other power sources after the handle snaps off. They would be much better off leaving out the whole hand crank generator. That said, it's likely that it doesn't add much to the cost as it's probably designed around a toy DC motor with high gearing and plastic parts.
This design more closely resembles the old Clio and other Win CE palm-top computers of the past than an actual laptop computer. There is obviously a huge market for something like this at this price so I agree that the whole "we won't sell to the public" thing doesn't make sense.
Of course, if they believe they can't produce it at the suggested price then forcing someone (the government) to buy them regardless of cost is the only way they would ever sell.
There are all kinds of better ways to power it than a hand crank.
If human power is a requirement then a foot pedal system would allow them to use both hands and generate power at the same time with the added benefit that they won't tire as quickly. Such a device could also be more reliable than a hand crank or, at the least, more easily replaced as it would be entirely external.
A small wind turbine would also be a good alternative. Since it's likely these things only require one or two watts, a modest (less than 300 watt) turbine could power an entire small school. Small, individual (less than 5 watt) turbines could even be made locally by the same students who would use them to charge their PDAs.
Solar PV is also a good alternative as it would only need a one or two watt panel. If these panels are mass produced at the same price per watt as larger panels then they could cost less than $10 each.
Anthony

The thing that the $100 laptop project's managers are completely missing is that in poor villages, people need basic things such as light, running water, electricity more than a laptop. MIT has an evangelical attitude which is, like most evangelical attitudes, out of touch with reality and suffering from confused priorities.

I can imagine that some day in the future, I will be travelling in some 3rd world country and a kid will run up to me and ask if want to buy a wind-up computer that runs Linux. "Hundred dolla!" he will exclaim. Twenty-five, I will reply. He will frown, but say "deal". And then his family will eat well for a month.

"Viator" wrote in news:1135819151.212408.273540 @g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

The thing that the $100 laptop project's managers are completely missing is that in poor villages, people need basic things such as light, running water, electricity more than a laptop. MIT has an evangelical attitude which is, like most evangelical attitudes, out of touch with reality and suffering from confused priorities.

Not only electricity, Clean drinkable water, but medical help. If there's a remote chance that someone has an interest in medicine of voted to be the village doctor, that $100 laptop could save a life. ex. this person is sick, look for symtoms, here are plants crushed together to eat, spread on wound. How to make a cast for broken bones. Worms in stool? get these plants and eat.
Who needs electricity in a village? Got to have water.No problem fire making. Some villagers want there kids to read and write, because the parents can not. Some of the things that missionary workers do. The laptop remove that religious god stuff.
What a land mine looks like, How to treat a land mine wound, how to amputate without infection. Land mines are the most threat villagers have.

On 28 Dec 2005 17:19:11 -0800, "Viator" wrote:

The thing that the $100 laptop project's managers are completely missing is that in poor villages, people need basic things such as light, running water, electricity more than a laptop. MIT has an evangelical attitude which is, like most evangelical attitudes, out of touch with reality and suffering from confused priorities.

The $100 laptop has the KJV Bible in ROM and no disk drives.
Barry ===== Home page http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og

Barry OGrady wrote:

The $100 laptop has the KJV Bible in ROM and no disk drives.

Where on earth do you get that from? The design isn't finished, it's probably going to be modified per region, and no-one is going to waste ROM space without a customer requirement. Besides, it's not ROM, it's flash, so it's reprogrammable, so we can put in the "Best Of Usenet" and really give those third world heathens some entertainment. 8*)
Sheesh!

William P.N. Smith wrote:

Barry OGrady wrote: The $100 laptop has the KJV Bible in ROM and no disk drives.
Where on earth do you get that from? The design isn't finished, it's probably going to be modified per region, and no-one is going to waste ROM space without a customer requirement. Besides, it's not ROM, it's flash, so it's reprogrammable, so we can put in the "Best Of Usenet" and really give those third world heathens some entertainment. 8*)

I believe they were referring to MIT's evangelical crusade to force laptops on starving children who would be much better served with more basic things like food, water, shelter, medicine, a stable government, etc.
That said, the KJV Bible is public domain so it wouldn't cost anything to include it. It's only 1.2 MB compressed so there would be plenty of space left over for Pilgrims Progress, an english dictionary and other such things.
Anthony

In message , Anthony Matonak writes

That said, the KJV Bible is public domain so it wouldn't cost anything to include it. It's only 1.2 MB compressed so there would be plenty of space left over for Pilgrims Progress, an english dictionary and other such things.

Cultural imperialism at its finest !
J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , Barry OGrady writes

The $100 laptop has the KJV Bible in ROM and no disk drives.

Unlucky !!
J/. -- John Beardmore

What ever happenned to "second world countries"?
"Viator" wrote in message

I can imagine that some day in the future, I will be travelling in some 3rd world country and a kid will run up to me and ask if want to buy a wind-up computer that runs Linux. "Hundred dolla!" he will exclaim. Twenty-five, I will reply. He will frown, but say "deal". And then his family will eat well for a month.

"SolarFlare" wrote in message

What ever happenned to "second world countries"?

I think they call them "developing", like China and India. Those are the folks that want lots of cars and oil as they develop.

"Viator" wrote in message
I can imagine that some day in the future, I will be travelling in some 3rd world country and a kid will run up to me and ask if want to buy a wind-up computer that runs Linux. "Hundred dolla!" he will exclaim. Twenty-five, I will reply. He will frown, but say "deal". And then his family will eat well for a month.

I don't see why a book can't do much of what you describe the laptop as helping with. However I do think that once "electronic ink" becomes affordable and displays start costing dollars inteads of tens or hundreds of dollars, you *could* have eBooks made that will provide vital up to date information with no printing cost.

1st = the West + puppet states 2nd = USSR + puppet states 3rd = everyone else

The $100 laptop has the KJV Bible in ROM

Yikes, so it's also a device for mental enslavement.