Sunday, January 14th 2007
$100 laptop not for the public
It was reported a few days back on techPowerUp! that the One Laptop Per Child project intended to release its $100 laptop to the public, but apparently the organisation has now claimed otherwise. An announcement from the project said "contrary to recent reports, One Laptop per Child is not planning a consumer version of its current XO laptop, designed for the poorest and most remote children in the world." The non-profit organisation is considering commercial ventures beyond 2008, but for the meantime they will only be available to the governments of developing countries. It's not yet totally clear why OLPC is against selling the laptops to the public if it could raise money to benefit the poorer countries, part of the reason could be that it wants every laptop it produces to benefit poorer countries.
Source:
Reg Hardware
13 Comments on $100 laptop not for the public
The problem with merely giving money is that it does not make people any more self reliant and the grow to depend on charity. Giving an impoverished family something as simple as a goat or cow has a much greater effect than money. It allows them to produce fertilizer for crops and/or dairy products to sell at the market, in many cases allowing their children to gain an education and go on to be much more successful than their parents.
who will fix it when problems come
will it be in their language
1. They will fix it themselves.
2. This strange new job will be created called "computer repair guy".Of course, computers are already available in every language why would these be any different?
This could cause a wave of discontent that wouldnt help the OLPC stakeholders, and potentially make them loose their funding, and hence their "profits". :)
Remember that there ARE some people hoping to make a lot of money out of the OLPC concept. If it backfires, an end to their little earner