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The green-and-white cute little laptop does attract children, doesn’t it? But then how useful is it for a developing country where basic needs are yet to be met is the question? If you are wondering what am talking about, it is the $100 laptop project, otherwise called the ‘education project’ by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the same. The purpose is to provide children in developing countries with technology and a platform to learn and share knowledge.
The project was sacked by Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Intel’s Craig Barrett quite sometime back. Negroponte took the failure to impress Microsoft or Intel optimistically and went ahead with the project. The laptops called XO which are now actually sold for $188 has been running on an interface called ‘Sugar’ built on Linux. Linux being a free OS and easier to configure, was advantageous to produce the so-called $100 laptops.
The news is that Microsoft has supposedly changed its mind and has customized a version of Windows that can run on XOs. But seems the price of XOs is only going to rise because of this. Also, the XOs will not be able to use security features and their built-in “mesh” wireless networking, in other words destroying the entire purpose. The goal of the NGO seems to have changed from educating the children to selling more laptops.
But Negroponte claims to be looking forward to reaching more children in more countries through this collaboration with Microsoft once the “dual-boot” mode for using either Windows or Linux every time is established. This XO will cost around $200! But again the question is if children start using Windows as their primary OS on their laptops and ‘Sugar’gets second-hand treatment, where is the purpose?
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When the idea of a US $ 100 laptop had been mooted, laptop in our country was not available below the price tag of Rs. 50,000 but now a laptop of a reputed company is available within India at the cost of Rs. 25,000 i.e. US $ 6000 and now the cost of the US $ 100 laptop too has doubled making it in the range of US $ 200.
Microsoft would like to do anything to contain its rival Linux which comes free.
what's wrong if someone's providing kids with $100 laptop and what's the point of thinking about basic needs? think about the future..that's what coming into the hands of third world kids. and i don't want to hear that it's a good tool for letting the third world kids access to pornography.
But again the question is if children start using Windows as their primary OS on their laptops and ‘Sugar’gets second-hand treatment, where is the purpose?
Presence of windows actually enhances the purpose of the device. Most of the PCs in the world run on Windows, and making people work on ’Sugar’ just to save money is second hand treatment.
Ofcourse the Windows OS isn’t going to be the complete version, but nobody will do high-end work on the XO anyway, so, that’s the least of the problems.
Laptops?
Prioritize people, please.
Secondly, what is required is a ’multidimensional’ approach to solving these problems. Going after a single issue and leaving others out won’t help.
Hopefully, the $100 laptop will contribute to technologically empowering the younger generation in developing countries to better tackle developing countries problems; HIV/AIDs, poverty, illiteracy etc
Education is this charity's thing and that's what they do best. You can't have everyone focus on just the basic needs and btw education is every individuals basic need.