[LINK] $100 laptop could sell to public

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:30 AM 1/16/2007, Stewart Fist wrote:
>I wonder how many metres of water-pipe that $100 would buy ...

About 21 m (not including delivery): 
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000LNJXFE/qid=1168990015/ref=sr_1_23>.

At 12:40 PM 1/16/2007, Adam Todd wrote:
>Bit o' pipe and a few pumps, some solar stations and presto. ...

Solar panels are not cheap 
<http://astore.amazon.com/smart-apartment-20/?node=9>, nor are water 
pumps <http://astore.amazon.com/smart-apartment-20/?node=13>. Also 
they need some training to install and operate. One way to provide 
that expertise would be via on-line education, but I am still not 
sure a $100 laptop for each child is the way to do it.

At 06:03 PM 1/17/2007, Stewart Fist wrote (was: "Re: Link Digest, Vol 
170, Issue 38"):
>Brendan writes:
>
> > So you'd rather the government spent the money on weapons instead
> > of laptops? ...

It should be kept in mind that some of the OLPC PCs may be used for 
warfare. They are semi-rugged and have daylight readable screens and 
so are similar to hand held military terminals.

>The fact is that illiterate people can understand audio and video - 
>but surfing the net is generally beyond their capabilities.   ...

The Indian developed Simputer PDA 
<http://www.simputer.org/simputer/history/> was designed for 
illiterate people, with a touch screen and voice output. This is an 
open source hardware and software project with some clever features.

My suggestion was to combine the design skills which went into the 
Simputer with the marketing hype of the OLPC 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2005/11/is-100-laptop-windup.html>. One 
way is to build a Simputer with a larger screen, bigger batteries, a 
keyboard and wireless interface.

Indian company Encore, one of the makers of the Simputer, also offer 
the Mobilis tablet computer 
<http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8377345968.html> and SATHI military 
hand held terminal <http://www.ncoretech.com/sathi/index.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml