India Says No Thanks To The $100 Laptop
from the priorities dept
One of the most common retorts to the often-tried idea of creating ultracheap laptops for the world's poor is that they have more pressing needs than the ability to surf the internet. The Indian government apparently believes this, as it has decided not to participate in Nicolas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative, which wanted to sell $100 PCs to governments around the world for them to distribute. According to India's education secretary, the need for more teachers and classrooms outstrips the need for students to have laptops. This is the sort of ideological stumbling block that programs like Negroponte's will have to overcome if they're to ever succeed, but they also reflect the rather poor job these projects have done at clearly elucidating their benefits. It's unclear yet what the fallout of India's decision will be, as it was hoped to be a major customer of OLPC, which won't begin manufacturing until it's received orders and payment for five million to ten million machines, but in better news, Nigeria has said it will order a million. It looks like in the short term, though, at least some of the countries projects like OLPC are supposed to help are having a hard time justifying their costs to their benefits.
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more spam!
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Re: more spam!
I don't understand how some body can blame to efforts to educate the people in the third world,
Education is the key to fight violence and powerty and a $100 laptop is a key weapon n that war.
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Yay for spam!
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Re: Yay for spam!
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What you're saying might be true to an extent, but I'd hope that laptops would prove a more positive influence than negative.
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Re:
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Pessimists, Unite! - NOT!
What about a more expensive laptop with bloated Windows, will that make them honest cyber citizens instead?
Get real! That's just a load of bunk! 99% of these kids are gonna learn how to communicate and express their ideas, and become more successful than their parents were. That's the idea behind this endevor.
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SPAM insults
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$100 Laptop Computers
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Infrastructure
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Get real
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Powerweb
I hope it all works out.
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Get Real, Empty heads
Yet you have the nerve to talk down on less fortunate people in poor countries
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Re: Get Real, Empty heads
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Re: Get Real, Empty heads
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Re: Get Real, Empty heads
Go home to wherever you reside. The only idiot is you. The bloggers you are responding to know exactly what they are talking about!
For all you smart people Nigeria and India are known as thee premier hiding places of this sort of spam that the previous bloggers jokingly reffered to.
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cheap OLPC
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Spelling bee!
As for the $100 laptop for the poor kids. Why? Who is going to train them? Who is going to service a $100 laptop? Hopefully not the Dell Support team located in Mumbai.
The fact that India doesn't want to buy a bunch of disposable computers makes me think even higher of the officials there. They have better things to do.
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Go India!!!
India has the right idea, get more and better teachers, which will make smarter kids, who then can afford computers better then $100. If you look at how much we outsource to them not only in terms of call centers, but also medical stuff, they are doing much better then we do here in america.
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Re: Go India!!!
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laptops
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Praise Allah. Or Buddha. Or whoever.
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Here we go again!
O.K. a poor kid gets a laptop. I know alot of prople with laptops. They ARE educated with B.S. degrees and whatnot. Even they don't know how to use a laptop how are poor kids with no education supposed to use it.
Is tech support included? If so, how can they call with no phone? Well maybe it comes with a "Laptops for Poor Kids" manual of sorts. If the kid is uneducated how can he read it? Even if he got hte laptop to a browser, how can he read anything if uneducated.
Seems to me they need $100.00 schools and not laptops.
Are the people pushinmg these laptops even thinking?
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The U.S. Poor
They already own a playstation and or Xbox.
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wtf
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bring out the
It's a great idea, but not all of the world is ready for it. Some cultures don't value a computer as much as modern society does because they don't have the level of integration of computers and the internet with their daily life that we see in more modern society.
I'm not worried about a spammer out there with a really crappy $100 laptop. I'm worried about some bum in Colorado (no offense to Coloradites) sitting around and sending 10 million spam messages out in one day from his much more expensive group of servers.
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OLPC solves both problems, if kids and schools have this set up they won’t need to find pencils before they can go to school, education will be accessible to all kids. This will help them when the make it to college since they will be able to type the required reports.
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laptops - waste of money and time
The sad truth is that all these supposedly 'necessary' things - laptops, electronic black/white boards, etc - are not improving test scores or reasoning ability.
Anything relevant to a childs education is already in print before it is on the net (except perhaps tomorrows newspaper). Computers and the like are just a crutch and another education 'advance' that people are too scared to call their school boards on for fear of being labeled a neanderthal and wanting to 'hurt the kids'.
Let Johnny learn how to surf the net at home or the library.
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Re: Get Real, Empty heads
Now on to the article. I find it fascinating with all the other problems around the world, people are focusing on laptops for the kids... maybe they can melt down the gold on the mobo and processor and get some food as no one's going to want to trade anything for a computer you need to crank for a minutes to get 10 minutes of use... let's see... I used a computer about 14 hours a day on average... that's 840 minutes... 84 minutes of cranking... damn, these kids'll have some strong arms at the least...
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Strong arms
How long will it take a kid to rig together some system that cranks this for him? I can see it now a water wheel crank or a wind crank, maybe I can join the fun and start a wind turned crank that localities can buy and kids can gather around to have their laptops cranked by the wind. Wind turns the blades which turn cables which turn your crank and power you up.
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Who will pay to service thgese cheap PC's
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$100 Laptops --- isn't this just Marketing?
It's not what they need now. Or possibly ever. How about give them $100 USD? In places where a buck a day feeds families, I think would have a more positive impact than distracting youth from learning basic skills within their culture or for their survival.
Or perhaps this $100 Laptop will simply wire their thoughts into the booming market of the cyber world where they can be enticed by products they will never have a chance to own when a basic credit card is as attainable as a car or a horse for that matter. Oh wait, there is always time to learn credit card fraud (I figured it out at age 12). Gee, be poor and own nothing, or steal from the white devil.
Laptops are not a wholistic approach, and is not a solution. Nifty, yes, but wont put food in mouths.
Tom a.k.a white devil
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Re: laptops - waste of money and time
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global mesh network run by children
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Funny Blogs(lol)
I would have to agree on basic principle. If I didn't know where my next meal was coming from, the chances of me exploring opportunties would be dim.
As much as we hate to admit it, as people when our appetites rather food, basic needs, or attention grow to an outstanding level. We tend to not have a balanced perspective of right and wrong or even a progressive nature for that matter. We only know that our needs are not met and will not be anytime soon.
So we explore what some would call hustles rather theft, robbery, soliciting drugs, or yes ofcourse fraud to supply the current need.
To put it all in short. If my basic needs have not been met for a time, I'm not exploring my opportunities.
You cannot tell me you're for my advancement while seeing my hunger and doing nothing about it.
They need efficient schools, teachers, and food before you can implement that level of technology because the sad truth is that until those needs are met they can be concidered a primitive nation no offence.
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Look beyond
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Re: Look beyond
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What, No Gates/Buffett Money?
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Poor state of the US education system
That's why US schools are falling so far behind some 3rd world countries on education.
The US school system is promoting laptops and other commercial products, while countries like India are focusing on... actually teaching something!
So many countries around the world don't provide laptops to their students and their basic school education is far superior to that of the US. Laptop is not the solution.
Rather than trying to sell its products and dictate education methods to other countries, the US should get inspired by the European, Indian, Japanese and Chinese education systems.
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Also for all the people bashing #17 read comments like the one right above him - "theyll figure it out. this will skim the true genius elements out of the masses where they can be picked out by their nation and put to work on scams."
Although this might be sarscasm, it hard to keep a sense of humore when some one is bashing your country. Ask any of the international people you know they will tell you that they al have wanted to yell and scream out exactly what pissed off said.
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Re:
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Re: Re: $100 = Rs. 4500
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When people india can afford a cell phone they can afford a laptop for $100.
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Buy me a hummer!
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Buy me a hummer!
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Laptops for $100
If you want to feed the poor for a day, donate a dollar, he will buy some food. If you want to help him for his life, teach him fishing. He will lead a happy life forever.
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@Indiannn I don't know much about India, outside of the fact that I am Indian and have lived there for most of my adult life.
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give them cell-phones instead
Laptops are primarily calulators and secondarily communication devices. Cell phones represent a more transformative technology than laptops. Their networks are more wide spread in developing countries than internet networks. Give kids cell phones and look out. See what they are doing in the US and European teenage population. Laptops are doing squat.
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feed the body and feed the mind
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Be nice.
It's no wonder there is so much poverty in that land.
Every time one of the few rich people die- there is an evil uncle trying to steal the money and they need to ship the money overseas to protect it from their uncle. (giving 10% to whoever will help them).
How would you like it if you had an evil uncle trying to steal your money when you died?
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laptop
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Laptops? How about books?
Who is going to be paying for the huge costs involved with fixing the laptops when they are dropped, have technical difficulties, etc? Where will the students take the computers to have them serviced?
I know that there will be somebody responsible for those sorts of things... but then more problems come to mind. In many third world countries where there is a sort of "village" mentality, the concept of personal property is much more lax. So you know what? You can bet on cousin Jimmy sneaking that laptop out and giving it a spin. How do I know? I experienced it as a youth myself in the Fiji Islands.
So, I understand the need to educate and the benefits that this could potenially have. On the other hand, I think that it is easy to assume the world works like we do over here in the US, and that is surely not the case.
Regardless, best of luck to the project.
$100 per child is alot of money in these countries. I'd be hard pressed to believe that $100 million wouldn't be beneficial to other aspects of Nigerian society.
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re:
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laptop
it good laptop
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