$100 Laptop for Each Child…
When I first saw a report where Nicholas Negroponte, the founding chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Laboratory is promoting the idea of a $100 laptop (roughly worth around 5,700 pesos) for the developing world, my interest was immediately piqued. His idea is to distribute these $100 computer to the less privileged children to help bridge the digital divide.
This pipe dream is slowly coming to reality — current technological advances are all falling into place to make this $100 laptop into something tangible. I’m sure that this project will be of great help to a lot of people and if only tech company gives back a portion of their huge income for this project, we may yet see this in worthwhile project on a global scale in a couple of month’s time.
Ever since the Palm OS first came out, I’ve always dreamed of seeing a very basic, widely affordable laptop in the market. All you needed was a monochrome screen, a full keyboard, and a widely used port (today’s USB). Add built-in office software and you’re off. I’ve always wondered why Palm didn’t go this route to expand its product line back in the late 90’s. At any rate, that’s all water under a sinking OS.
There’s no question that the technologies for constructing a truly cheap laptop have been here for ages. You don’t need the state-of-the-art, and even 5-year-old processor and display technologies will do. I’m betting that a company can make a “third world laptop” and make money even at just $100 per, given the potential volume. Heck, school kids alone are a huge market.