A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions

[Gorilla]

A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions
How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants
By STEVE STECKLOW and JAMES BANDLER
November 24, 2007; Page A1

In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte unveiled an idea for bridging the technology divide between rich nations and the developing world. It was captivating in its utter simplicity: design a $100 laptop and, within four years, get it into the hands of up to 150 million of the world's poorest schoolchildren.
[Nicholas Negroponte]

World leaders and corporate benefactors jumped in to support the nonprofit project, called One Laptop Per Child. Mr. Negroponte, a professor on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hopscotched the world collecting pledges from developing nations to buy the laptops in bulk.

But nearly three years later, only about 2,000 students in pilot programs have received computers from the One Laptop project. An order from Uruguay for 100,000 machines appears to be the only solid deal to date with a country, although Mr. Negroponte says he's on the verge of sealing an order from Peru for 250,000. The first mass-production run, which began this month in China, is for 300,000 laptops, tens of thousands of which are slated to go to U.S. consumers. Mr. Negroponte's goal of 150 million users by the end of 2008 looks unattainable.

Mr. Negroponte's ambitious plan has been derailed, in part, by the power of his idea. For-profit companies threatened by the projected $100 price tag set off at a sprint to develop their own dirt-cheap machines, plunging Mr. Negroponte into unexpected competition against well-known brands such as Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

A version of Mr. Negroponte's vision is starting to come true. Impoverished countries are indeed snapping up cheap laptops for their schoolchildren -- just not anywhere near as many of his as he expected. They now have several cut-price models to choose from, raising the possibility that One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, will end up as a niche player.

From its inception, One Laptop Per Child posed a threat to the personal-computing dominance of software giant Microsoft and chip maker Intel. Mr. Negroponte's team, drawn from MIT, designed a machine that didn't use Windows or Intel chips. It uses the Linux operating system and other nonproprietary, open-source software, which users are allowed to tinker with.

Last year, Intel, which normally doesn't sell computers, introduced a small laptop for developing countries called the Classmate, which currently goes for between $230 and $300. It has marketed the computer aggressively, although it stands to make little money on the initiative. But it hopes to prevent rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., or AMD, whose chips are in Mr. Negroponte's competing computer, from becoming a standard in the developing world.

The higher price also has made the laptop vulnerable to competition from sellers of more traditional, Windows-based machines. For many education ministries, "it's a no-brainer you go with Microsoft," says Mr. Davies.

The One Laptop initiative is facing competition from Taiwanese, Indian and Israeli sellers of inexpensive Windows laptops, who see the developing world's more than one billion potential young customers as a big opportunity.

Full Article:
A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions - WSJ.com

This project has definitely hit a rough patch but it's had quite the unintended consequence. Its always interesting to see the humanitarian side of computing. In the end, children in impoverished settings are getting excellent learning tools and he managed to shake up the for-profit industry.

[Nyela]

Originally Posted by Gorilla

[b][b]In the end, children in impoverished settings are getting excellent learning tools and he managed to shake up the for-profit industry.

Not a bad return wouldn't you say!

[afrocentric]

i will get a laptop soon.

[elishadp]

Originally Posted by Gorilla

This project has definitely hit a rough patch but it's had quite the unintended consequence. Its always interesting to see the humanitarian side of computing. In the end, children in impoverished settings are getting excellent learning tools and he managed to shake up the for-profit industry.

It is good that at least the children are getting laptops. Even if his plan does not happen as planned it will have sparked a change for the good.

[jimihaze]

what about the poor children here in america? are they able to use this program to get laptops? if so how?

[Gorilla]

Originally Posted by jimihaze

what about the poor children here in america? are they able to use this program to get laptops? if so how?

Sounds like a question for our government. Laptop programs for public education have a pretty dismal track record in the U.S. As it stands currently though, there is a get one - give one program for buyers in North America but it is for a limited time I believe.

[umbrarchist]

Greetings, this is my first post.

I just got my OLPC a couple of weeks ago. I am rather impressed with it and I generally don't like laptops. My other one is a Panasonic CF-27 Toughbook and it is only 500 MHz. But like the OLPC it does not have a fan to keep it cool and suck in dust.

The isuue is what to do with them. What we hear constantly is read, read, read but who suggests what to read?

I suggest SCIENCE FICTION. I learned astronomy and some physics in grammar school though the silly nuns never used the science books they had.

Now you can get free sci-fi off the net:

Free SF Book List

umbra