[geeks] One (Windows) Laptop Per Child

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 01:17:49AM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> There are several targets for the laptop, some of which will certainly
> have the money.  Those that don't, I'm willing to bet won't have the
> money for it period, especially after you add the extra costs of owning
> it.

My expectation is the primary target is to school districts and charity
organizations. 

> The cost of the machine and the budget of the user have zip to do with
> how much data they need, or think they need, or what applications
> they'll want to run.

That's true what I was trying to point out is that many uses of computers
don't need most of the features of the software they use. Most applications
that require gigabytes of disk and half a gig of RAM to run are no better
for many users than programs which are under 10meg of disk and run in 32m of
RAM (or less).

> Maybe this one will get it right, but I have my doubts.  It's just not
> as easy as "build cheap machine by the millions".

I don't know about heavily computerized countries such as the U.S.,
etc. In places that there are no or few computers now, such as rual China,
south India, most of Africa, there are people who have never seen a computer.

Giving them a computer that does email, simple web access, document writing,
a simple spreadsheet and data base functions is a giant step forward.
Add an MP3/MP4 player, typing and reading tuorial software etc, and you
have literacy and numeracy (oh I hate that term) in a box.

I am in the process of filing a provisional patent and seeking funding
for a system to diseminate information to such devices in remote places.

It came from a blog entry, I'll post the link later.


> Yes, it will run... but to actually do anything you need more than that.

Sure, I use it to run games, but if you had a bigger screen and a keyboard,
it would be a functional word processor, web terminal, MP3/MP4 player,
etc. 
 
> I think even fairly low end users will eat 1GB pretty quick.  In fact,
> since a lot of them will be ignorant and inexperienced, they might
> well use it up faster than normal.

I don't know. I can fit a lot in a gigabyte. Thousands of pages of formated
text, 1000 hours of highly compressed audio books, news, entertainment
and educational audio, etc. 

> That's another problem with projects like this.  Locally old comnputers
> are put into service by various organizations, and this is exactly what
> happens in those projects.  The people try to run too much and store too
> much, even when shown alternatives.

Education is the key. Just giving them a computer, except maybe a HAL-9000
would be a disaster. 

> No, I'm not aiming too high.
> 
> I'm just reflecting on what I've seen happen in the past.
> 
> Maybe this will be "the one", but the odds are against it.

As I just said, it's what you teach them, not what they come up with on their
own.

I remember when I tried the first free (UNIX) version of Star Office. I came to
two conclusions:

1. M/S Office was pretty darn good.
2. Sun was a hardware vendor. Star Office used a lot of hardware.

 
> This is a hard thing to make happen.
> 
> The engineering to build the machine cheaply with good features is only
> about 10% of the whole game.

Agreed.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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