Prototype $100 laptop unveiled

Hand-cranked laptop intended for schoolchildren in developing countries

By John Blau, IDG News Service
November 17, 2005

Even if the prototype $100 laptop computer unveiled by Nicholas Negroponte late Wednesday in Tunis had a couple of hiccups, the MIT Media Lab chairman was visibly excited about the prospect of placing the device in the hands of millions of schoolchildren around the globe.

A slightly embarrassed Kofi Annan, general secretary of the United Nations, twisted off the computer's crank handle at the unveiling event, and the screen locked as Negroponte later tried to demonstrate the display. But after a few tweaks here and there, everything worked.

The hand-cranked laptop, shown for the first time at the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), operates at 500MHz, or about half the speed of commercial laptops. It features a low-power display that can be switched from color to black and white to allow viewing in bright sunlight. Many children in developing countries have school outside, Negroponte said.

The machine can be folded in different ways to serve as a computer, electronic book or media player. "We designed the device to perform many roles," said Negroponte, who also heads the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit group. "Learning should be seamless."
<snip>

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/11/17/HN$100laptop_1.html?source=NLC-TB2005-11-17

where electricity is becoming excessively expensive and computers on things you play on only at school.

only teachers are allowed to use them.

if maybe we should be making sure children aren't starving to death/dying from diarrhea/getting malaria first.

Is this just a way to penetrate an untapped market, or will it really work and improve the lives of children?

:shrug:

Anyway, the handcrank aspect is really cool.

...and in the third world, there's more cellular than twisted-pair -- you've got all the textbooks you could want, right there, so long as there's one Adobe version on a hard drive at the Ministry of Education.

The potential savings for secondary students are enormous.

Computers have brought about a new dawn in civilization - free information. Just think about what computers and internet access have brought:

1. Access to education about literally anything you want to know
2. Erosion of information inequities (stock market info, consumer product reviews, price information, mortgage rates, etc.)
3. Political ideas and information - think of all the blogs now serving up REAL news and their impact on corporate news reporting
4. Easy access to online interpreters, health information, scientific info, etc.

Knowledge is power, and when you make that knowledge availablet o everyone, it levels the playing field.

Other groups of philanthropists (for example, the Bill Gates Foundation) have made Third World public health their top priority. I can't imagine that they would ignore such a brilliant new way to reach isolated people and educate them about disease prevention and treatment.

I think that the ultimate decision for what is needed most depends on the people themselves. If communities say "We want a sewer system", then we ought to help them get a sewer system. If they say "We want Internet access for our schools", then we ought to help them get that.

That being said, the laptops may be an efficient investment. The laptops may help kids get access to information and education that they would not otherwise have. It is cheaper to send a $100 laptop per kid and then make textbooks and educational materials available in the form of a document that can be read on the laptop than it would be to send many books and workbooks. Also, specialized education can be provided using the 'net and the laptops to many kids in many schools instead of to only the kids in the school where the teacher is physically present.

and since they will need to be computer literate to survive in their adult world, this definitely benefits them.

(since they weren't invented) and I do okay! ;-)

Maybe I'm just feeling cranky, but I get tired of the Rah, rah, computers will save the world, hand the kid a laptop and she's got a worthwhile job for life stuff. Obviously, I love the internet. But I think it's more important that little kids learn to read, do math, and spend face time with adults and peers than type and stare at a screen.

But of course, if the rich kids have computers, the poor should have them too. So, okay. No more bitchin from me.

:toast: to the inventor of the hand crank laptop.

and there is NO job out there that doesn't utilize computers or computerized technology. When you and I were in school, computers were not so fully integrated into the world our teachers were preparing us for. So of course we weren't exposed to computers.

Kids CAN learn to read, write and compute by using a computer. There are endless possibilities.

Computers ain't hard to use. The idea that a kid must be exposed from birth to a machine in order to know how to use it is nonsense. It took my grandmother about 45 minutes to learn to navigate the Internet.

When I was in high school, I learned how to program computers using Basic. Fat lot of good that was! And in twenty years, who knows what computer technology is going to be like. I don't object to teaching kids to use a computer, but it's not that important. I'd rather my kid learn a foreign language.

And I'll believe that a kid can learn to read more quickly from a screen than from a piece of paper when I actually see that happen.

My youngest son is learning to read right now, and the best thing for him is sitting down and actually forming the letters with a crayon or pencil himself.

If schools had no computers, then the only kids who are exposed to computers would be the ones whose parents can afford to buy them. So this would be one more part of our culture that low income kids would be deprived of. I have a problem with that.

I see first hand how kids who have no access to computers at home learn to use them at school. Sure it might be easy enough, but they are still behind their peers who have been computer literate since they were toddlers.

so I am just skeptical. The brothers could be very different, and probably are, but I just wonder what the king of death squads thinks about this level of access.

I know several people who know Nicholas, and want me to meet him, too. Not that I have a whole lot to offer, but I've worked with them on some of their "wacky" projects that caught Nicholas' eye. They have frequently made mention of the man's charitability and altruism, two qualities hated by the Right.

Bob Bennett, Bill's brother, is likewise a humane guy.

Sometimes things work out like that.

On the other hand: David and Rush Limbaugh. Each right-wing ratbags.

So sometimes they don't.

--p!

If not, it's worthless in the target application, IMO.

was the central plot theme for a 2002 movie, "The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest"--see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280674 .

That's why it's getting so much attention now.

The next step is a $10 computer for the poor, and a $100 computer for the affluent. That would make computing truly ubiquitous, because a lot of those cheap computers could be given away for tax breaks and not break the bank.

I "predict" that day will be here in about five more years.

--p!

http://www.alternativevehicles.com/zem4.html


http://www.surreybikes.com/showroom/index.htm


http://www.quadracycleinc.com/


http://www.rhoadescarshowroom.com/jumpfeat.htm

Other "foot powered" automobiles:
http://www.bhsi.org/fourwhel.htm

equal access to information -- keynote of the Aquarian Age, coming (eventually) to a planet near you.

Your revolution is about to be bested.

That way someone in a third world country (like us in five years) can get two computer free.

That's the way these should be marketed. If you live in an internetted tech savy industrialized country the price is double.

(and that's still a good deal since a 500mhz gateway with a dead battery is $250 on Craigslist)

That way for every computer an american has, someone somewhere else will get one too.

Hell, I will drive to pickup mine at MIT in person just to save them a buck.

the Solar power supply that i was thinking of getting for my old 300mhz thinkpad to take it outside.

Think about it.

Alternatives to laptop batteries (toxic+expensive+don't last = Corporate money and environmental damage) have been around for years and so far this is the only time I have learned about someone using them to power laptops (besides a few hikers with sloar charge grids).

Now THIS will be revolutionary.

Hekate

What an awesome idea!

Some of you readers out there remember cars that had to be cranked to start them. Bet you never thought cranking up a computer would be considered an innovation! Ain't the future cool?

and i just love it. It was supposed to be in my emergency kit but i ended up buying two so I could use it always

The crank was the back up to the electric starter, but if you had not used the tractor all winter the battery was generally dead and he had to use the crank. I show him start the tractor once or Twice with the crank (I was not even in School then) but what I remember it was amazing the technique of starting with a crank.

Anyway, motor cranks were NOT just cranked, but more of a quick flip. The flip provided enough power to run the starter. In some of the old silent movies this "flip" often became part comic routine, it was so common and a technique one had to learn (and only usable on smaller engines, once you get into engines the size of small automotive engines today you had to go to electric starters). The closest thing today is the pull starters on lawn mowers, to start the lawn mowers it is more of a quick tug than a pull. It is the speed over a short time period that provides the power needed to start the engine. Not like the crank on a crank operated flashlight or radio, which needs a constant flow of power NOT just a quick short burst of electric power as in a Lawn Mower engine or the very small engines of the early days of the Automobile.

Anything sold en masse as cheap and inexpensive have more problems...

My $10 heating blanket with the automatic-off switch itself has the switch mechanism regularly overheating. :wtf:

And don't they mean the World Summit on the Uninformed Society (WUSS)?

in a poor country could get a free computer.

I know a lot of adults who could use these as well. In the US,too!

With many european countries going to linux, which is a unix derivative, and over a million windows users in this country moving to OS X in the last nine months, the moisture on Bill's forehead is sweat.

Consider the fack that longhorn won't even work on most PCs out there, they are not nearly powerfull enough. And next year OS X will work on the same architecture as windows, with Apple moving to Intel processors, that will mean you can use any OS on the same computer. Why would anyone choose Longhorn, when the cheaper, better and faster alternatives are available?

Steve Jobs offered free copies of OS X, but the designers were committed to open source. So they elected to go with a version of Red Hat instead.

It was a nice offer, but the reason why MIT didn't go with it is pretty obvious: there isn't going to be any technical support for these things outside of the open source community. Putting proprietary software into the mix will hinder, rather than help.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=13136&Page=1&pagePos=2

About the only way to break a Fisher-Price toy is with a three-pound sledgehammer, and that doesn't always work.

Building a computer out of that same plastic would be a Good Thing.

"Person of the Week"!

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

pure genius. I hope this will be the start of great things for those developing countries. It would be good for the people there to have a better quality of life than what they are accustomed to.

the keyboard looks a bit small. But, hey, 500MHz is faster than the Thinkpad 600E (366MHz) I use at work. Cool.

Just kidding.

It looks like it has at least two USB ports, that ain't bad, especially for the price.

Its truly terrific, millions of kids in the developing world will make their entry in the cyberage.