Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Oct 03, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Oct 03, 2005 |
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Info-Tech
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Hardware MediaLab to distribute low-cost laptops to 15 million children Pratap Ravindran
Pune , Oct. 2 INDIA, which fancies itself as a software hotspot, is conspicuous by its absence among the developing countries that have plans to distribute low-cost laptops to children. These laptops are being developed by a non-profit group called `One Laptop per Child,' formed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. The $100-laptop, designed for children in emerging markets, has an AC adapter that doubles as a carrying strap and a wind-up power source (featuring a hand crank that provides ten minutes of cordless power for every minute of winding.) It has a processor with a speed of 500 MHz and flash memory storage of one GB. Equipped with Wi-Fi, the machine can be linked up with the Internet through a cell phone connection. It runs the free open source Linux operating system and all the machines can have a peer-to-peer network of their own. According to Media Lab, the device will be able to do everything — except store large amounts of data. It is expected that the laptops will be ready for shipment by the end of 2006 or early 2007.
India not among 5
However, going by what Mr Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman and Co-founder of Media Lab, said, kids in India will just have to settle for Bangalore-based Encore Software's $230 Linux-based notebook. Speaking at M.I.T.'s ongoing Emerging Technologies Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the US, Mr Nicholas Negroponte, has said five countries — Brazil, China, Egypt, South Africa and Thailand — have initiated plans to distribute approximately 15 million of these devices. Apparently, the portable PCs will be shipped directly to education ministries in developing countries and will be distributed among elementary-school-age children by government agencies. Mr Negroponte observed that designing the devices was a continuing challenge, as, in contrast to the computers available in the market, they would have to be made less sophisticated and cheaper with each generation.
Corporate partners
However, the Media Lab chief said One Laptop per Child would meet these design challenges with the help of its corporate partners — Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Brightstar Corp, Google Inc, News Corp and Red Hat Inc. For instance, the group is now working out the viability of using a dual-mode, flexible LCD display. Such a display will require only a 12-inch screen that can be built at a cost of roughly $12. By using Linux modified to work in individual nations, the units will need only two-thirds of the software used in commercially available laptops, said Mr Negroponte. Although the low-cost machines will be distributed in some of the poorest societies in the world, Mr Negroponte is not worried about theft or leakage into the grey market. He pointed out that the laptops have been designed so distinctively that they will be immediately recognisable and that stealing and re-selling them would be something like stealing furniture from a church: guaranteed to attract social stigma. By his reckoning, only about one per cent of the machines will be stolen and two per cent will be leaked into the grey market.
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