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First Photos of MIT $100 Laptop
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed May 24, 2006 07:56 AM
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
An anonymous reader noted that MITs $100 laptop was unveiled at the Seven Countries Task Force Meeting. It runs a special version of the Fedora linux and it comes with native wireless lan support. You can see the
photo album, and you can pledge to buy one at triple price... in order to donate 2 of them to children.
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News: Pirates, Web 2.0, and Hundred Dollar Laptop 339 comments
A few quick updates on some recent Slashdot stories in Slashback tonight. We have some additional information on the ever-interesting hundred-dollar laptop, the ongoing flap over the trademarking of 'Web 2.0' for conferences, and the shutdown of the Pirate Bay site. Read on for details.
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How adorable!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How adorable!! (Score:5, Funny)
What an incredibly racist thing to say. They're human beings, not animals.
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Re:How adorable!! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:How adorable!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How adorable!! (Score:4, Funny)
Alternately, you can send IP Over wind by way of avian carriers [faqs.org]. Just be sure to run a virus scanner on your incoming packets to ensure they don't get the bird flu.
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BSD (Score:5, Funny)
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These look great! (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be noted that the 'horns' are for directional wireless (and also cover USB ports when not in use) - remember that if you want to mock them!
I say kudos to AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel, and Red Hat for making this possible. It's a pity Gates & Jobs couldn't join in rather then attempting to downplay the fine efforts of this group.
Re:These look great! (Score:3, Insightful)
4 colors (Score:5, Informative)
Green wins by the way. Not only does it miss the hump of the blue one but it got Neko ears instead of bunny ears. Neko for the win!
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Re:These look great! (Score:4, Interesting)
Gates maybe, but Jobs offered OS X free of charge but was turned down. He tried, they refused.
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Jobs' offer was grandstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:These look great! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:These look great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which Jobs are you talking about? The only one I am familiar with (Steve), offered free Mac OS X licenses to this group for all the laptops. His offer was declined [macnn.com]. You can argue all you want about his motives, but you really can't say that he "downplayed" anything.
Gates, on the other hand, mocked [informationweek.com] the group's effort.
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Re:These look great! (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Apple would never allow an OSX laptop to retail at $300 in the U.S., which is what OLPC is doing.
3) One of the design goals of OLPC was to be totally open source, to allow third parties to tinker with it and improve the entire system at will. I don't see how OSX could be part of a purely open-source project.
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Re:These look great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Belinda and Gates are attacking a different set of problems and they're doing it everywhere. I think their viewpoint is that this project's priorities are out of whack. Education is great, provided the person will live to use it.
Letter from Bill and Melinda Gates [gatesfoundation.org]We believe health is the cornerstone of human development. When health takes hold, life improves by all measures. Conversely, poor health aggravates poverty, poverty deepens disease, and nations trapped in this spiral will not escape without the world's help. In Africa, the cost of malaria in terms of treatment and lost productivity is estimated to be $12 billion a year. The continent's gross domestic product could be $100 billion higher today if malaria had been eliminated in the 1960s. And if HIV infection rates continue at their present levels, the world will likely see 45 million new infections by 2010 and lose nearly 70 million people by 2020. That's 70 million of the most productive members of society - health workers, educators, and parents.
Therefore, the foundation's Global Health program works to ensure that lifesaving advances in health are created and shared with those who need them most. Our primary focus areas are HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, child survival and childhood immunization, and maternal and reproductive health.
To begin, we invest heavily in research to help discover new and better products, particularly vaccines. The foundation also supports work to develop products that can be manufactured and distributed. Then, once a product is developed, we work to make sure that there are systems in place to adopt and sustain these new drugs as they become available. The foundation is a major supporter of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). This alliance has provided basic immunizations to over 8 million children who would not otherwise have been immunized. As a result, GAVI has already saved an estimated 500,000 children's lives.
---The most pessimistic person could view this project akin to what Apple did when working with schools to get Apple software & hardware in cheap: become the defacto standard via goodwill. Get in early so that when they leave school they come back. Besides, that same person's pessimistic view will believe that they'll be stolen from schools as they'll be the most valuable thing in the school. (due to the fantastic engineering fortitude which is obvious to all).
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Re:These look great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's look at other problems. Many countries in Africa are politically unstable. Certain tribes/countries/ethnic groups want to kill the others. They are raised to think of the "other group" (whoever that may be) as the enemy/evil/not-to-be-trusted. It has been proven that the Internet can break down borders. On a forum (including ones like this), you can have people from dozens of countries putting in their opinion. It helps people to understand their near and distant neighbors.
Finally, some countries have a culture of corruption. When aid gets sent from foreign countries, there is sometimes lots of "palm greasing" just to get the supplies to those who need them the most. And even if the supplies get there, sometimes a few guys with guns take it all away. This is "just the way things are." So, what happens if the children are educated to realize that things do not have to be that way? It is possible that in a decade or two, opinions could start to change.
This is not just about reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic. This is about changing the way that people see the world.
I do admit that this OLPC is not LIKELY to do all of that. But if it changes the life of even a few children, maybe those children will grow up to be the next president/prime minishter/grand poobah of their countries.
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Hand Powered? (Score:5, Informative)
Why are they showing us pictures of them just sitting there? Why aren't their pictures of people powering them up or people checking e-mail/forums?
Possibly the biggest problem working on this laptop is its small 12' screen. I wish I could see what kind of resolution that results in but I can't see the screen in any of these shots.
If you want to make the pledge but don't know the specs, check out the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on it.
Re:Hand Powered? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Hand Powered? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.laptop.org/download.en_US.html [laptop.org]
Still not sure what the "ears" are for.
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Not Hand Powered (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Hand Powered? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but I'd consider a twelve-foot screen huge.
But even a 12" screen is plenty large for a laptop like this. I had a 10.4" screen on a Sony Vaio and loved it. I replaced it with a 12" (different brand) because it was cheaper but would have loved another thin 10.4". It's the same pixel resolution, so it's not like you're losing any desktop space by going to the smaller screen.
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Re:Hand Powered? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually I think the best thing they could do is make a charging circuit that accepts a very wide range of input voltages and frequencies, and then provide a variety of methods for providing power. Hand cranks, foot pedals, stationary bicycles, whatever. It's not hard to make a little generator out of an old AC motor and the back end of a bicycle set up on blocks (it's not terribly efficient either, granted), and you could charge a whole lot of laptops at once that way. The thing that's prohibitive about setting something like that up in the third world would be cleaning and regulating the power to the requirements of most portable devices. But if you designed the device to accept a big voltage and frequency range, I think people would figure out how to power it, if you gave them some ideas. In many cases, people may already have a source of mechanical power that's superior to muscle power, it's just a question of making the system adaptable.
Oh, and use a plug that's not horrendously obnoxious to work with. I'd say the best thing to do would be to use dual-bananna plugs as inputs on the laptop itself (maybe half-depth), since you can pretty easily shove a piece of bare wire in there if you needed to.
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Re:Hand Powered? (Score:4, Informative)
Regrding the electrical supply, I expect the problem isn't so much technical as regulatory. There are fairly specific rules, which are defacto laws, regarding where & what sort of power supplies can be integrated into consumer products. While these rules come from the 1st world nations (many countries just ditto US or EU or whomever for whole blocks of construction & product codes) they apply as well to 3rd world nations - it IS a global market, global standards, and everyone deserves safe products. So what sort of electrical supply is installed, and how it plugs in, isn't entirely up to designers.
On a tangent, there used to be a metal bar in second generation IBM PC's called the "Rube Goldberg connector". Underwriters Laboratories & such required that power-supplies be placed in the rear of PCs, so that was where the "Big Red Switch [catb.org]" was also located, as part of the power supply. However this was awkward to get at, so IBM innovated and put a button on front. They still used the equivalent of the "BRS" internally, all they did was run a small metal bar (wire coathanger gauge, but a bit stiffer) from the front power button across the inside of the PC to the power supply.
Lastly, it is interesting to note that there is only one existing glabal standard for power, adopted in every nation: Power Over Ethernet [wikipedia.org]. Same plug, same supply, same logic, all over the planet, for the few folks that use it.
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Substitute screen? (Score:5, Informative)
I would love to buy one (Score:4, Interesting)
cant they sell me a plain black one?
sure as hell would replace my pda/ipod/other crap I haul around
Re:I would love to buy one (Score:4, Insightful)
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Dupe? (Score:5, Informative)
Photos have been out for some time, actually.
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/ [mit.edu]
I'm in... (Score:5, Informative)
/. effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Software Question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Software Question (Score:5, Insightful)
On a more serious note, I think that your comment has more going for it than just that. Considering the people who will be using these devices, I almost think that it should have something along those lines. After all, all the laptops in the world can only be of so much use - one needs ways to educate people on their use as well. Sure, there'll be the precocious ones out there who will tinker around with the laptop and learn it front to back within a year or two without anyone teaching them.
Most, like the rest of us mere mortals, will need some help and instruction along the way. Are there enough teachers in the wide world to go along with these laptops? I don't know. Bundling them with a sort of interactive and adaptive user's manual (not just for the computer, but for a total education) wouldn't be such a bad idea.
Aiming it towards the empowerment of women in the third world would go a long way, too, I think.
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more useful info (Score:5, Informative)
and from the FAQ (laptop.org/faq.en_US.html):
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display--both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× 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.
For the cheap-arsed geeks out there (Score:5, Interesting)
And we all want one for $100, and we'd all gladly pay up to $400 for one. I've got a PowerBook, and I'd still love one. I wouldn't have to worry about it, but it would be really handy.
This may indicate a market for such a device. Not a PDA, not a full-on "outfitted for war" laptop, not a (god damned useless) e-reader, not a handheld gaming rig, but the space between.
This is the space for essentialy a portable, truly open device that will let us surf the web, and run shells, and edit text files or to-do lists, but that won't break us financially if it's snatched from us on the subway.
MIT is showing us the market, and they're refusing to compete! Why have none of us embraced this yet?
My formula would be a Gumstix and an eInk display, maybe? Anyone have any better ideas?
Re:For the cheap-arsed geeks out there (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't understand this. "We don't want to sell 'first-worlders' these laptops for $100." I sort of understand, if they're taking a loss. But why not sell them for $249*, and advertise that all profits go to subsidize further development and deployment of these laptops in their intended role?
The other reason to do it this way is that you really ought to get these laptops in the hands of "first world" open source developers and users, so they can start working on making these things even more useful. Since you really can't target just "open source developers", you need to let them out to everyone. (Besides, open source communities are generally robust in proportion to the number of people in them, because developers are attracted to larger population communities for a lot of reasons. You can't just magically create a developer-only community of any size.) Hopefully someday the intended users will be able to help, but that will take a while because first they've got to work their way up to "computer literacy" before they're going to be developing.
(*: If $249 would not itself be a profitable price point, then the $100 laptop project has failed in the $100 goal. A $1000 laptop is $100 with a $900 loss/subsidy, but who cares?)
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Sign me up (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another well meaning 1st-world-centric idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise, I'd find some bum on the street, pay him fifty bucks to go into the medical center and get my "care," then buy it off of him for less than I'd actually pay.
There's a reason you don't see too many 'sliding scales' used for physical goods: it's too easy to turn around and resell them. Really, you can only vary the prices by less than it would cost to transport the good to an area where prices are higher. (Unless you have some artificial scheme for preventing the movement of goods, i.e. DVD region codes.) Otherwise, it doesn't take Adam Smith to figure out that people will just ship the low-priced goods to the areas where they sell for more, undercut the "official" channel, and make a profit.
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just like being nice and giving to public radio, and they give you a sweet tote bag in return. Here, you're paying $300 to charity, as a nice, charitable human being, and you're getting a laptop in return.
Don't be so whiney.
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell you what. Why don't you move to Africa with no money or resources, try to find work or an education, with little food, little to no medical care, the constant threat of violence, an unstable government, while relying on the kindness of strangers to even have a stab at making a decent life for yourself?
Then we'll let you pay $100 for a laptop. Hey, maybe someone will even pay $300 to buy one for themself, and you can get one for free!
Until then, STFU and pay $300 for the privilege of owning a toy you'll probably barely use.
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:5, Informative)
It specifically stated that it was not associated with the MIT project and that infact that MIT has specifically stated that they cannot garantee that this is even possible. BUT it was implied that given a large enough order it may be. So some guy setup a website to see if he can meet a goal of 100,000 pledges in hope that MIT will agree.
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, books are important. Those $100 should be used to buy books for schools in developing countries, instead of buying useless gadgets for them.
Hey, I have an idea! Instead of buying paper books, it would be better if we spend that money on e-books, so they can get new and updated books every school year, at almost no cost. But in order to do that we would need an e-book reading device...
I hope someone came up with such a device...
Oh wait...
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Re:Freedom where art thou? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you suggest, by way of your post, troubles me:
1) Children must be taught, or compelled to learn
2) Material must be dumbed down because children aren't capable of assimilating it in its original format.
3) Teachers will only accept this abbreviated "curriculum," perhaps due to their own incapacity to teach directly from the masters, or because teachers must be mass-produced and don't have time for deep learning.
4) Learning doesn't happen without a curriculum.
The $100 laptop is merely a tool - one capable of providing access to the greatest library that the world has ever seen.
I'm reminded of a story that Richard P. Feynman told, about how he used to check books out of the library when he was a boy. One day he brought a book about calculus to the librarian, with the intent of checking it out. He then related the criticism that he received from this librarian, who couldn't conceive how a book on calculus could possibly be useful or interesting to a mere boy. You remind me very much of that librarian. That a child should step out of the commitee-mandated curriculum and pursue advanced topics of interest is inconceivable!
It may be that much important literature is written in language foreign to many people. The mind would necessarily need to be expanded in order to understand the principles of those great individuals who originally thought them. And what is wrong with that? You discount the power of human passion, once that desire to learn has been ignited. We have classics suitable for all types of people, and need only the right access to them. Instead of teachers, they need mentors to inspire them.
I'm sure we can find a place for "school" somewhere. Unfortunately, most of us waste too much time in that pursuit for entirely economic reasons. When has school ever produced a master artist or statesman? Instead we make employees and complacent citizens.
It may be that your ideals are realistic in our estimation - we live in a mass-produced utopia every day thanks to our state-mandated curriculum and business-sponsored systems of bureaucratic education. Having all found good jobs, we're now too busy to pursue our real interests (recreation makes us feel better about this sad loss), and certainly there is no time left for reading classics. Let's not export these chains to our neighbors who we wrongly consider less fortunate.
If anything, access to the world's literature is a prize worth more than many a mediocre teacher.
Just my opinion on the matter. As it is, the $100 laptop might end up becoming yet another way to export our Western excesses and vices (gambling, porno, etc), and not be used as a learning tool at all. I'm worried about it in that regard.
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Specs here (Score:5, Informative)
Features: * CPU: AMD Geode GX2-533@1.1W * CPU clock speed: 400 Mhz with 0.25 W power consumption. * SVGA 7.5 diagonal transmissive and reflective liquid crystal display used in one of two modes: o Reflective "sunlight readable" monochrome mode with 1200 by 900 pixel resolution (for ebook reading outdoors--this is 200 dpi) o Transmissive Color/DVD mode with approximately 693 by 520 pixel resolution with backlighting (for laptop use) * 128 MB of DRAM * 512 MB of flash memory * Wireless networking using an "Extended Range" 802.11b wireless chipset run at a low bitrate (2 Mbit/s) to minimize power consumption. * Conventional layout alphanumeric keyboard localized for the country of use. * Touchpad for mouse control and handwriting input * Built-in stereo speakers * Built-in microphone * Audio based on the AC97 codec, with jacks for external stereo speakers and microphones, Line-out, and Mic-in * 3 external USB ports. * Power sources: o AC Cord that doubles as carrying strap o two C (R14) or D size rechargable batteries and a hand-crank generator o four C (LR14) or D (LR20) alkaline batteries.
Intentionally omitted features: * no motor driven moving parts o no hard disk drive o no optical drive (e.g. CDROM or DVD drive) o no floppy drive * no IDE interface (as there are no drives with which to interface) * no PCMCIA card slot
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Re:For less then $1.00 a day... (Score:5, Informative)
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It amazes me too (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't for areas where people are starving. This is for areas where people have food but now need to advance to the next level. Education is the only tool to prevent people from collapsing to starvation again.
Why PC's instead of books. Because 1 internet capable pc can contain all the books in the world in their most recent version with an infinite amount of paper and pencil.
Books are expenive as hell, ask any student, and schools in poor countries often got to work with hopelessly outdated material and practice books that gotta be reused time and time again.
Cheap PC's make sense, not in starvation areas but in those countries were the basic needs have been taken care off and now education is the most pressing concern.
Because hopefully educated people will be more concerned with creating a better world and not with waging war on each other. Right?
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Re:419 on its way (Score:5, Funny)
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