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Just a thought:

How expensive is a 6 year old Dell? Rather than building a crippled, new machine for $100, why not get additional use out of existing machines? I realise that there is value to be had in uniformity, but laptops will be difficult to manage centrally in any case. I recently heard that some developing countries have the equivalent of a single broadband connection worth of internet access for the entire country, so the laptops will be limited in what they can bring to the students.

A "used Dell's to developing country universities" program would seem to be of immediate benefit and immediately achievable. Why Dells? Businesses offload computers in bulk and most would be PCs. Macs retain their dollar value much longer, so would be significantly more expensive. There are simply tons more PCs than Macs in the world.

It would be altuistic recycling. A six year old machine could provide significant value for years to come. The program could be encouraged financially through trade in incentives, existing tax laws, etc.

Go down to the river and pick up some nice, rounded stones, and distribute one to each student to use as a paperweight. That's basically what you're doing with a $100 laptop, only it costs $100 more. Aren't there more pressing needs? Like, say, a roof that doesn't leak ... a faucet or sewerage system in the village ... electricity ... phones ... fuel to cook with ... a tree to sit under?

Each teacher needs to have access to a computer, an internet connection, a printer and copier, and a decent enough salary so they don't have to moonlight to make a living. From there you can go to a classroom full of computers shared by all. But a laptop for each student sounds bizarre.

Hey, Negroponte, why not tour the needier schools of your own country first before throwing good money out the window?

It really annoys me to no end to see that people STILL spit off the lines regarding "these people" needing food to keep them from hunger pangs rather than technology.

Please stop assuming that every family in the "third world" who cannot afford technology has starving skeletal dirty children with flies hovering around their nostrils.

The point of this project is to spread technology as cheaply as possible and be sustainable as cheaply as possible in places that have been "left out" of the technology loop, whether the recipients are well fed aggrarian herders or poverty stricken city dwellers. They don't have to be starving to death to qualify for a need for technological help.

I agree that the MacOS is awesome and the easiest OS in the world to use (that I know of), but could or would Apple strip it down and completely open it up for modification (present and future) for the machines these MIT people are trying to put together? If they turned it down, I suppose not. No guarantees for years? No go.

sadface

I'm picturing gradeschool kids running Linux on their $100 laptops...

Hmm...

I'm a software developer, and I find Linux unnecessarily difficult to use.

foolish to refuse os x... definitely.

but comparing os x to a lexus? yuk!! more like a ferrari!!

"Tinkering" ?!

Great. So the world can now look forward to a gazzillion more up and coming virus writers.

At least they won't be for Macs.

Careful, Evgeny, you may be banned for overuse of logic.

pat the ex:

Thanks for your comment. My comments were really about the mac, OS, and applications which is what the article of this story is about. It had nothing to do with the i-Pod/music. I don't know if Apple is promoting the i-Pod but that is an easier product to promote and Apple has little competition at this time.

I did not want to suggest that there aren't Apple computers/store in Latin America but the truth is the market penetration there is even lower than in the US. I have seen stores like the ones you mentioned and they do have the look and feel of Apple owned stores but are not owned by Apple and typically they are months behind in the stuff that they carry.

When "free" looks like "free with strings attached," Microsoft has given closed source/private a bad rep.

Papert (of "Mindstorms" fame) is still alive?

Sadface, you are creating a "strawman" argument. It's you who are ascribing these stereotypes universally. No one is saying that everyone in the 3rd world is poor and hungry, and need food before education.

BTW, I worked for the World Bank, where alleviating poverty in the 3rd world was our mission.

Why must it be bright green?

...needing food to keep them from hunger pangs rather than technology.... Please stop assuming that every family in the "third world" who cannot afford technology has starving skeletal dirty children with flies hovering around their nostrils.


Besides countries on the level of Sudan, developing countries with a very wealthy upper class and a developing middle class have slums alongside open sewers where school-age-children sift through mountains of the formers' garbage. Receipient countries are supposed to come up with $15 billion collectively to fund the program. And you can bet the local pol's will distribute these machines to their namesake schools with much fanfare of reporters, banners and a band. And yet a significant percentage will end up in the black market.

I'd rather see a Sponsor a School project where there is no school, which feeds and pays school-age children to attend (these kids are breadwinners)
and with just one computer, printer and copier (be sure to include the ink) paid for and watched by corporate donors to ensure the funds don't get diverted to the Minister's Mercedes.

As for Romney's middle and high school students in Massachusetts, and other states in the great United States, I'm equally skeptical.

The machine is as follows..

AMD 333mhz embedded CPU
128M of RAM
16M Video card (non-accelerated)
Flashbased HD

Sorry elitists, but even thought I own two Powermacs and I Powerbook.. I don't think OS X is the best choice for this machine. Tiger WILL absolutely not run on this machine they are building and they can hack KDE or Gnome down to the bare essentials in order to make it run smooth. This machine will let Granny do email and surf the web for $100. It's a good choice to go with Redhat.

And the commentary by MDN is just crap. Linux runs on **4** OUT OF THE TOP **5** super-computers in the U.S. so it's not a Lexus vs. Fiesta arguement.. more like a Lexus SUV vs a Hummer H2 arguement. The best tool for the job is what should be picked... not some tool based on an ideological argument.

And remember Aqua is NOT open source software it can not be hacked to fit this low cost, low power computer. Darwin is open source and maybe Darwin with KDE and/or Gnome would rock.. but they chose the Linux kernel and not the Mach kernel.. the rest is all GNU in any event.

So take your noses out of the air or you might just drown the next time it rains.

they want an OS that the tyrannical rulers of the third world countries will be able to censure, without having to tell some company what they're censuring. Open source is great, just as long as there are no political parties trying to maintain dominance over the people.

The big problem with a program like this, is it really needs internet access to make the laptops useful, and who is going to provide that for a reasonable amount?