Bladewatch.com

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8403

The concept of a $100 PC has been held as the Holy Grail for computing in emerging markets, but the reality is vastly different, according to Gartner. Bottom line: $100 for a PC is still the monthly salary of a teacher in Russia and two to three months salary in India. It’s too expensive.

“The $100 PC is still quite expensive for the emerging markets. And that’s just the hardware. There are other implementation costs,” says Annette Jump, an analyst at Gartner who has studied ultra-low cost PCs (ULPCs) like the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop and Intel’s Classmate.

An excellent article talking about the $100 pc concept, and how even $100 might be too expensive. If we step back for a second, would the first step not be to get communities connected by the likes of a mobile phone or mobile device? I’m all for connecting communities, communication and education are the gateway to developing communities to encouraging opportunities for all. At the same time, I get nervous when we try and achieve the big goal – the laptop per child, the low cost computer with this specification – we ultimately need to get there, we need to empower people, create opportunities improve communication. Should we not focus on the achievable?

Providing useable, affordable recycled computers, with an understanding of basic functionality ‘out of the box’? Is there a reason we can’t continue building laptops/pcs from a few generations ago and supply those? I absolutely understand the environmental aspect, but would the manufacturing cost of a G3 or 500mhz processor not be marginal? There would be no real developmetnt

Could the original G3 iMAC not be an ideal pc? A G3 iBook? Going down the pc line, how about a 500MHZ AMD/Intel? Both could run relatively new operating systems, and if you’ve got a set specification developing code need not be difficult. Are many people not recycling those four years old or older computers? Would they not be ideal? Do they not have limited asset value? We’ll see, I could be accused of over simplifying it.

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