The madness of third world laptops

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 22 May 2007 07:35

Opinion and Analysis

Those of us in the first world live a comparatively privileged lifestyle. Even so, many of us would think twice before shelling out a day or two of our pay for an underpowered plastic computer. Imagine asking governments of countries where many residents earn as much in two months as we do in a day to spend tens of millions on such computers instead of much needed infrastructure or agricultural projects. This is the madness that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program promotes.

OLPC founder Professor Nicholas Negroponte makes a big deal of the fact that OLPC is a not for profit organization. What he doesn't say is that the components supplied for those laptops are definitely from firms in the business of making money, which is why they cost US$176 and not less than $100.

So when Professor Negroponte cries out with self-righteous indignation that Intel is competing with the AMD powered OLPC notebook with its own cheap box, one must be a little skeptical. AMD will make money from the OLPC program, so why shouldn't the inventor of the microprocessor put forward its own competing program at lower prices?

In a fit of pique, Professor Negroponte claims that Intel is deliberately selling its Classmate notebook at below cost and will raise prices later. Intel, like AMD, will charge what the market will bear. However, all of this is beside the point, which is that OLPC is a ridiculous ill-conceived idea.

Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, most kids in the first world don't own their own notebook computers. Despite the fact that a cheap name brand notebook, can be had for a bit over US$500, most kids at school do work in computer labs and at home they either share a family computer or work on a hand-me-down desktop box. To do work, they log in through the web to an area on the school's network and they save work to their USB memory sticks.

Back in the days before memory sticks, students at some private schools were required to have standard issue notebooks. Sometimes the students were mugged by street kids or drug addicts on their way home and had their notebooks stolen. In fact, notebooks are often stolen from cars, offices, homes and other places - they're good currency for thieves.

Now imagine a scenario where some third world government has been suckered into buying 1 million OLPC notebooks - that's US$176 million! Assuming it has that kind of money to spare, the purchase enables the government to distribute these notebooks to say 10% of the nation's estimated 10 million kids in the 6 to 12 years age bracket. So 90% of the nation's kids miss out.