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Laptop Makers Skeptical of $100 Laptop Schedule 302

Posted by Zonk from the get-them-to-smart-brains-stat dept.
coolgadget wrote to mention an article at DigitalTimes reporting that the production schedule MIT has laid out for the $100 laptop may be unrealistic. From the article: "Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and Inventec, which are reportedly bidding to manufacture the world's cheapest notebook distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives, consider that meeting the volume shipment schedule for the US$100 notebook would be 'unlikely' given the current technical hurdles that need to be overcome ... The OLPC project will need huge support from governments to solve a variety of software and hardware problems including handwriting recognition, translation, and panel issues, all under a low-cost production budget, Taiwan notebook makers stated. Related components for the low-cost notebooks are still in the design stage, indicated the makers, noting that a 7.5-inch display sample for the US$100 model could be released by January of next year at the soonest." We've previously discussed this story.
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Laptop Makers Skeptical of $100 Laptop Schedule More

Laptop Makers Skeptical of $100 Laptop Schedule

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  • Not ready for prime time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:28PM (#14166345)
    This is the notebook that partially came apart while Annan was demonstrating it at the U.N.? Probably not quite ready....
    • Though lack of planning, the $100 laptop is in thousands of small pieces..

      Maybe they should have had the Archbishop of Canterbury's brother do the demonstration?
    • Philanthropy is always appreciated by the not so well off. It has traditionally been the means for those who "make it" to give back. The Carnegie endowments are a good example from an earlier era. The Gates Foundation; another from today. Helping the poor always garners karma points but, mandated help as a buy-off does not. Another point: the Free Market has always been the best machine to design and build a product at the most economic and durable price point. Schools do a good job of developing
    • It was on the UNDP booth. The thing was made out of balsa wood, with a photo where the LCD display would one day sit. It clearly was nothing more than a mock up.
  • Maybe the folks at MIT Media Lab with all the funding they get from the US government should be concerned with providing laptops to underprivilged children in Appalachia instead?? Of course that won't garner headlines that they so crave.
    • Well firstly they aren't providing laptops to third world countries. They are merely designing and outsourcing the production of a laptop such that it is cheap enough to be bought in bulk at $100 a time by third world governments. I assume that, should the US government consider it necessary to provide a large number of its citizens with laptops, they would also be able to purchase them at $100 a time, if they filed a sufficiently large order.
    • An existing product for underprivileged children. It is about one inch thick and roughly the size of a piece of paper, has a screen in the center, a red (usually) border and two very ergonomic rotational controls at the bottom right and left corners. It has advanced security features and is erased by shaking.

      I guess no one gives a shit for technical development / opportunity in rural Amerika. Just don't teach any of that dammed Monkey science ...
    • I thought the laptop would be available to all students EVERYWHERE. In the orginal article I thought I read that at least one state (Mass?) was alreaady considering aquiring these for their students...

      What is the problem with having a design goal, that would allow it to be deployed in thiord world countries? They will still work in the USA....

      -MS2k

    • Re:Why the Obsession with Third World Countries? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zulux ( 112259 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:42PM (#14166977) Homepage Journal
      I give to third-world causes for several reasons:

        1) More bang for the buck - $100 goes further in Sudan than it does in Appalachia.
        2) Need. People in Sudan face war, Aids, typhoid, and rape. Appalachians are born into the easiet country in the world to live, so I tend to take a dim view of people that don't seize the oppertunity. 80% of world would switch places with the Appalachians and count themselves blessed.

  • I hate subjects... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GmAz ( 916505 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:33PM (#14166388) Journal
    Well, they are trying to integrate WiFi, Bluetooth and all this other stuff. Why? For $100 bucks, I wouldn't expect all the bells and whistles. A keyboard, trackpad (if not a trackball like the oldschool macs), screen, CDROM (not one of those new fandangled DVD-ROMS), and a USB port for thumbdrive access. And besides, $100 is a good price, but even $300 would be lower then most if not all other laptops.

    • Re:I hate subjects... (Score:3, Informative)

      by kebes ( 861706 )
      Integrating wireless is not for "bells and whitsles" reasons. They are not trying to make the 100$ laptop "cool," they are trying to make it functional. The FAQ [mit.edu] explains it quite well:

      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

    • I wouldn't even expect that. I'd be thinking to make a glorified Zaurus. If you've got a firewire port or a USB port, you don't need a drive - they can share one. If you've got handwriting recognition (which they're talking about) - even something as simple as Grafitti (gesture-to-letter mapping) you don't need a keyboard - just the shift/alt/otherbucky keys next to the drawing pad. That way multilingual support becomes entirely a software issue. Personally, I prefer a keyboard - but I wouldn't be surp

  • The $103.67 laptop (Score:3, Funny)

    by chunews ( 924590 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:35PM (#14166398)
    This really should be indexed for inflation. By next month, the $100 laptop project should be changed to compensate for those on a fixed income.

    I thought we would have learned by now that refusing to index the cost and benefit of items (Alternative Minimum Tax, 401(k) maximum contributions, defined pension plans) is just the wrong way to go.

    By the time the $100 laptop takes off, $100 will buy you 4 gallons of milk, 3 loaves of bread, and 5 sticks of butter. And who wants to compute when there's buttery milky bread to injest!

  • Missing software? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wasn't it shown again and again that if you provide an open platform to people, you don't really need much more: the 0.1% super-savvy will eventually write the missing drivers/software for the platform.
  • Why can't they build a $200 machine and subsidize half the cost for the first few years? Even at a $100 subsidy a pop, how much could it possibly cost to outfit the first generation of customers? You could outfit 1 out of 6 people in India for an outlay of $200 million bucks.
  • Why don't people notice that this is all transparently implausible?

    They'll have a $100 laptop if they can solve the software, the hardware, the screen, the power, the engineering, and the manufacturing... and it'll be $100 if they can solve all those issues for under $100.

    Suckers!

    • At this point in time, I agree. It's 100% impossible. There is NO WAY that a working laptop computer can be produced for under $100. I don't understand why Slashdotters, who probably spend more time shopping for computers than most people, dont' see this. If a $100 laptop was possible, some bottom feeder like Wal-Mart would already be selling it. As is, we have people beating each other up in big box stores all across the nation to get a $400 loss leader laptop. The $100 laptop is complete and total b
      • If a $100 laptop was possible, some bottom feeder like Wal-Mart would already be selling it. As is, we have people beating each other up in big box stores all across the nation to get a $400 loss leader laptop.

        That's because all mainstream laptops have hard drives, expensive monitors, expensive processors which generate heat that is expensive to cool, and more than 128 MB of RAM because they have to run Windows XP. Have you actually looked at the specs of this laptop and compared it to anything on the ma

      • You're forgetting that even the loss-leading walmart specials include a 12-15" screen, a hard drive, a 1GHz+ processor, a cdrom, and even an OS license cost of some sort (even if it's just Linspire or the like).

        The MIT system has none of those.

        Additionally, commercial laptops also have to include at least SOME type of profit for the manufacturer / retailer, otherwise there is no motive to build it. Additionally, there are typically less than a million of each model / spec produced, leading to higher devel

      • You could give out a 0 dollar laptop to millions of starving kids across the world and it wouldn't change one goddamn thing.

        They would be sold on the blackmarket, traded for food, or outright stolen by roving gangs of "revolutionaries" eager to trade them for arms, or drugs, or worse.

        It's a monumentally stupid idea to think that low-budget laptops will solve *any* problems in 3rd world cesspools, and sheer arrogance on the part of those involved in even trying to attempt this misguided effort.
        • They would be sold on the blackmarket, traded for food, or outright stolen by roving gangs of "revolutionaries" eager to trade them for arms, or drugs, or worse.

          If the world was flooded with millions of these cheap little laptops, who the hell is going to be buying them off the black market? If they are cheap to begin with and widely distributed, they remain of low value to anybody. What is an arms dealer going to do with the couple hundred crappy little laptops he was traded for a Stinger missle?

      • If a $100 laptop was possible, some bottom feeder like Wal-Mart would already be selling it.

        Gee, I didn't realize that Wal-mart made laptops.

        These free laptops have nowhere near the screensize, processor power, storage, and probably battery life of any laptop on the market, even the loss leaders. The average Joe isn't going to be clamoring for a laptop that doesn't (and likely can't) run windows. Plus consumer laptops have to be priced with some degree of profit in mind for the retailer and producer, a

  • Gee, ya think? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:42PM (#14166459) Journal
    A loudly-publicized, world-transforming project from the MIT Media Lab turns out to be a lot of hot air? Gee, what were the chances?

  • Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gonoff ( 88518 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:48PM (#14166514)

    So manufacturers are not 100% enthusiastic about this idea? Well what a surprise!

    If the third world gets $100 laptops using open source software, this will be really bad news for harware manufacturers and the end of the road for many closed source software manufacturers.

    If tens of millions of those things go there, they will end up in the developed world as well - and they won't help the bottom lines of the rich companies.

    Of course there are difficulties. What do all the trainers with their suits and powerpoint keep telling us? "There are no problems - only oportunities!"

    • What makes you think that the margins for the $100 laptop are going to be that much thinner than margins for the $4/6/800 laptops? The actual hardware producers will be operating under similar margins regardless of what they are producing.

      I'm also a bit confused as to why the $100 laptop will destroy the closed source software people unless you are prophesying the coming of the Open Source Panacea. Giving people $100 laptops will not magically make throw out their desktop machines, abandon proprietary app

    • If the third world gets $100 laptops using open source software, this will be really bad news for harware manufacturers and the end of the road for many closed source software manufacturers.

      Man, this must be the 10th time I've read that such-and-such means the end of the road for many closed source software manufacturers. It makes me wonder how they could *still* exist in this day and age.

      Oh, and I don't see alot of people giving up their high-end gaming, video crunching, widescreen laptops for a $100

    • "the corporations" not to blame (Score:4, Informative)

      by mosb1000 ( 710161 ) <mosb1000@mac.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @03:21PM (#14167910)
      These manufactures don't care about the end price of the laptop. The MIT lab designed the project with the intent that manufacturers could profitably build them for a reasonable price. The manufacturers aren't saying that it won't happen because they won't make enough money, but because they don't have enough time.

      My personal experience is that academics do not fully appreciate the amount of time and work required to make something that works in theory work in the real world. When products are brought to market, it is usually the result of years of planning, design, and development (even in the computer industry). Most academics seem to think that once the concept is developed, most of the work is done, but in reality that is a very small part of the overall process. While the MIT lab has been drumming up political support for the project, they've left most of the real work to the manufacturers they plan to contract to (they've really only designed the concept). Since it is still the bidding stage for all of this work, we are really only at the very beginning of the process. The MIT lab has given an unrealistic estimate of the amount of time the project will take. Manufacturers don't care who they work for, only that they get paid.

  • Laptop bidders say it is too difficult eh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WickedLogic ( 314155 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:48PM (#14166515) Journal
    Never let the person who says it is impossible, stop the person who is actually doing it.
  • At last the rubber hits the road, and the people charged with actually making this guys dream come true announce that they can't, without a massive infusion of support from the government. Since governments are representative of the general population, this basically boils down to: we need a big fat subsidy, which means: all your taxes are belong to us.
    But hey, who's going to complain, that extra USD on your tax form is for a good cause right? I mean, its for the children. Are you going to be greedy?

  • North America (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gbdc ( 708056 )
    Would it be marketable in North America?

    I for one wouldn't mind a second laptop that's cheaper than many PDA's, even at reduced featurset.

    Only real negative I see is the ~7 inch display -- I hope they'd provide external display option, though I don't think it's likely due to cost constraint.
    • I wouldn't mind the 7" display much.

      I would use it for some kind of media app (if processor/ram allow).

      I'd find a way to integrate this into my media centre as a controller of some sort otherwise.

      (if it's small enough, I'd make it the "smart" remote)

    • Re:North America (Score:3, Informative)

      by Rude Turnip ( 49495 )
      I believe the idea is to make this laptop available to developed countries for about $200 to help subsidize the $100 to under developed and developing counties. I like that idea and would buy one just to help out.

      • I believe the idea is to make this laptop available to developed countries for about $200 to help subsidize the $100 to under developed and developing counties. I like that idea and would buy one just to help out.

        Why not just help out anyway?

  • Evidence that this will help? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:55PM (#14166554)
    I don't mean to troll, but I wonder if Negreponte and crew have any experimental evidence that these laptops will actually help. Have they done any studies in which they gave laptops (of any price) to one set of villages and didn't give laptops to some similar set of other villages? Given the contentious issue of whether computers really help in U.S. classrooms, I wonder if they will help in developing nations.

    Rational (i.e. non-empirical) arguments for the plausibility of improvement are not sufficient. For example I saw very nice properly randomized study about giving textbooks to African school children. Children with textbooks did no better than children without textbooks. That is to say, textbooks were a waste of money. The failure was ascribed to the textbooks use of English, but who knows if that was really the cause.

    On the other hand, I can see a higher chance of positve change by providing laptops for farmers and small businesses -- especially if the laptops provide access to market data, aid management, or foster B2B commerce. Improving the productivity of small farms, factories, and distributors would raise wages and living standards. This has clearly occurred in the developed world although it takes decades for businesses to really change their processes to get the most out of computers. Helping 3rd-world businesses may not have the same level of charitable karma as aiding school children, but it might provide a greater reduction in poverty.

    It would be very sad to see this effort fail because of unfounded assumptions about the impact of laptops on school children.

    • On the other hand, I can see a higher chance of positve change by providing laptops for farmers and small businesses -- especially if the laptops provide access to market data, aid management, or foster B2B commerce.
      And where are those business people going to learn to use it ... if not in school?
    • I agree. Also, there HAVE been studies showing that investment in cell infrastructure produces positive ROI (The Economist runs an article about this every month is seems like) Having access to a cell phone give someone the opportunity to run a business (rent out time to other folks without phones) for farmers to get accurate market pricing and access to remote markets without travelling so they can get the best possible price for their crops, allows for dissemination of weather and public safety informatio
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'm curious as to why there seem to be so many manufacturing hurdles before this project. After all(Maybe on a slightly simplistic level), what is it? An LCD screen, input devices, a processor, some flash memory, a power supply and a plastic case to put them all in. Take away the flash memory and input devices and replace them with a DVD drive and what you have starts to look a lot like a portable DVD player, something that's manufactured for prices in the same ballpark as the quoted $100. Would the economi
    • Your calculation isnt that sensible...
      I mean, you can get below 100$ if you just cut corners everywhere, easily. Just look at the lowest end pda. They have a screen and a processor and a memory== portable computer.

      But you want a 12" or so lcd. In colour, most likely =20$ at least, even for a crappy one.
      THen you want a dvd. Laser&pickup/lenses dont grow on trees, so at least 10$, too.
      Power supplies are AMAZINGLY mass produced goods with near zero profit margin, but still cost some money. For a 50-75W PSU
      • No. You or I would want the big colour display, DVD drive and long battery but as I understand it this project isnt about that. It's about a basic portable computer that does the job without being too flash because it's cheap enough to be affordable by the target user. At that point the portable DVD analogy isnt so far out.
    • Take away the flash memory and input devices and replace them with a DVD drive and what you have starts to look a lot like a portable DVD player, something that's manufactured for prices in the same ballpark as the quoted $100.

      A portable DVD player can only play DVDs. That is to say, it has custom chips for decoding DVDs (MPEG2, etc.). If it has a truly general purpose computer inside, it's a very, very small one. You can't just throw another 20 cents into a DVD player and have a general purpose computer, y
  • I'm very sure that they can get $100 laptops by next year. I can't wait to get signed up on the waiting list!

    Here are the proposed specs:

    486sx 25 MHz
    2 Gig HD
    16 MB RAM
    2" Passive Matrix LCD
    MS-DOS 3.2

  • Can we lower the goals a little? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hosiah ( 849792 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:57PM (#14166574)
    You've gotta be kidding me about the hand-writing recognition. For a machine that will be deployed all over the planet? What for? Won't it have a keyboard and the keymapping/Unicode doodads? Handwriting recognition is tough; even our best AI is still challenged by it, and that's just for *one* language.

    This is turning into one of those misguided-with-the-best-intentions type projects, I can see it coming.

    • You've gotta be kidding me about the hand-writing recognition. For a machine that will be deployed all over the planet? What for? Won't it have a keyboard and the keymapping/Unicode doodads? Handwriting recognition is tough; even our best AI is still challenged by it, and that's just for *one* language.

      Probably mostly for the non-alphabetic CJK languages, (Chinese/Japanese/Korean), which are fairly complex to enter via keyboards, but are relatively easy to OCR, because the stroke patterns are more regular

    • Re:Can we lower the goals a little? (Score:4, Informative)

      by grumpyman ( 849537 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:40PM (#14166956)
      ...handwriting recognition is tough; even our best AI is still challenged by it, and that's just for *one* language.

      I'd dispute that... Have you ever tried to draw a Chinese character? Basic day-to-day use characters are about 1000, and English has 26 characters. The Chinese has used touch-pad for Chinese character hand-writing for YEARS (the same software can also do English/Numeric/Symbols/Japanese/Korean). I've owned one for 5 years+. Have you seen those business card scanner?

  • An interesting social experiment? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @12:57PM (#14166579)
    Even in the western world, I can't help but wonder what might come out of the widespread adoption of a $100 notebook computer. Not only would this put computers in the hands of people who might not otherwise have the opportunity, but it would also put them in a lot of places where they're not cost effective right now.

    Increased accessibility to communication would be the obvious one, it would become VERY interesting if that played off into productivity and creativity growth as well.

    Might even make e-books mainstream.

  • Software problems already solved (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anyone who thinks there are software problems has never heard of the Sharp Zaurus or the OPIE distro of Linux. All the problems they mentioned have already been solved. This laptop is rather like a large-screen version of a Sharp Zaurus with an integrated power generator.

    As for the $100, that is the final volume price. The earlier models will cost more but will be subsidized by the later, high-volume production. This is normally how manufacturing costs end up in the real world.

    The problem-solving costs are

  • Dupe Protection v0.3 (Score:5, Funny)

    by hagrin ( 896731 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:04PM (#14166648) Homepage Journal
    We've previously discussed this story.

    If I were the Slashdot editors, for dupe protection sake, I would add this statement at the end of every submission.

  • I think the project is just slightly out of focus:

    which are reportedly bidding to manufacture the world's cheapest notebook distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives

    As other posters have vocalized, our students really don't need laptops. Here in California, I've witnessed the pains of introducing computing to our schools. The labs were over-stuffed with cheap machines from Gateway, and there were two or three in every single classroom. The labs were chaotic and full of malw

  • 1. There are plenty of underpriveledged children here in the United States who could benefit from this kind of program . . . inner-city and rural. At the risk of seeming selfish or callous, shouldn't we take care of our own first?

    2. If there is an absolute mandate to help the children in underdeveloped nations, wouldn't food, shelter, clothing and basic education be more suitable areas in which to provide assistance? To lift a line from M*A*S*H* - it is wholly inappropriate to give dessert to a child w

    • There are plenty of underpriveledged children here in the United States who could benefit from this kind of program . . . inner-city and rural. At the risk of seeming selfish or callous, shouldn't we take care of our own first?

      They can already get computers cheap. Not new, top of the line computers, but cheap. Plenty of used stuff avaliable out there for well under $100. Heck in some places they're tossed out as garbage because of spyware infestations! Easy to snag one for free in such a case.

    • 1) This program is being aimed at allowing gov'ts to buy them for schools. This is not being done by the US gov't, so there isn't any "our own" to take care of first. The US govt is free to buy them, and I've heard Massachusetts is considering it. 2) This is being sold to gov'ts, not given to them. This just makes education and networking possible in areas were it wouldn't be otherwise, especially because the laptop can be used to read e-books. Food, shelter, and clothing are already attacked on differe
  • Obviously the laptop manufacturers aren't excited about this, as it may lead people to wonder why all laptops are so feature-rich, and why the "sub-notebook" segment has only the best components, but smaller, instead of having a lower-end variety as well.

    That would be something with like a mini laptop (or extra large PDA?)with a 8" screen, 1Gb flash memory as permanent storage, 1 usb port and 1 PCMCIA slot, for people who really want to add ethernet or wi-fi.

    I've seen portable DVD players with the right siz

  • Jhai PC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by General Alcazar ( 726259 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:15PM (#14167283)

    There is an organization that is already doing something similar: the Jhai Foundation. [jhai.org] They have developed a PC [jhai.org] (not a laptop, but still portable), designed by Lee Felsenstein, with no moving parts, that runs on Linux, and can be human-powered, and is based on wireless networking.

    They are not as well funded or well known as the Media Lab, but they are already in the field doing it.

    Here's more information via Google. [google.com]

  • Why go through all this development. Why not attempt to RECYCLE all the pc's geeks like us go through every year. 7 inch LCD? Are they crazy ! For the same resolution how about a TV out ? (eg. C64 or ZX Spectrum, come to think of it that would be so hot, tape drives and all, man they could probably afford floppies !) What use does the 3rd world have for a portable computer ? Are they going to be working whilst commuting? Do they have electricity at home? Do they even want to have something that valuable in
  • "...The OLPC project will need huge support from governments..."

    So... It's not really going to be a $100 laptop. I mean, whan was the last time any goverment supported project came in on budget? It would be nice, bet real...

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